A Sobering Breakup
Lindsey Goodrow
I was so excited to throw my love at something and finally have it stick.
After a good time spent alone, learning how to be fully comfortable with myself, I welcomed romance into my life with a newfound appreciation and wide open arms.
I remember asking if I could kiss her and seeing stars when our mouths finally collided. No one has ever wanted me that bad, she said.
Now that it’s over, I have all this love to give with one less container to hold it. I can’t sleep, I don’t want to eat, but I need to keep moving because if I stop I’ll start crying again and I’m so sick of crying.
They say crying is good for you—that it regulates your nervous system—but these tears are all the love I have leaving my body, falling to the ground, sinking into nothingness. The act itself offers me no relief or catharsis. But it’s better to cry than to mask, project, or self-destruct.
I am grateful to feel it all while completely sober. Grateful to not be numbing the pain with alcohol, drugs, or another body.
I try to redirect the love to myself and to the people in my life that stay. I eat, I run, I walk, I write, I kiss my friends, I let my family hold me, but there’s still so much excess.
The excess love is wasted, washed away, like tears in the rain. Better this love and those memories be washed away in the rain than drowned in booze.
I recognize that my love, while earnest and far-reaching, could not save a relationship that had split in two and moved in polar opposite directions.
I can see now how my sobriety and recovery was and is fragile, so sensitive to the ebbs and flows of life and love. I didn’t know then how quickly my addict brain could shift from substances to a person and then back to substances. I didn’t see it happening. And I couldn’t have predicted that this big love could not save us in the end.
So gradual was my relapse while we were together. I started taking sips of wine from friends’ glasses. At first, they protested and slapped my hand away. But I persisted and eventually, they conceded. And anyway, it wasn’t their responsibility to keep me clean.
It is no wonder that I befriended and fell in love with friends who love to live and let go in Bacchic bliss, as I once did.
It was with those friends that I spent many a drunk and drug-fueled night, staying up until the sun peaked out to start the new day.
Nothing good happens past midnight.
My occasional sips turned into a full glass of wine with my partner, as cozied up on her couch, safe in the bubble we created to shelter us from the world. One glass. It felt so pure, so wholesome, so ceremonial.
But as the story goes with addicts, my thirst was and always will be unquenchable. One glass would never be enough.
My partner did nothing to stop or discourage me. She rolled with the shifting tides of my relapse, enjoying our new activities together that centered around alcohol and being out past midnight.
She loved having fun, even if it was at the expense of my sobriety. She did not understand and could not predict the damage those little sips would do. And it wasn’t her responsibility to save me, either.
I had become terrified of myself soon into the relapse, so depressed, worried, and helpless. I was a shell of the person I had grown into before falling in love. And now I wanted this love to save me.
I pushed all my pain onto my partner expecting salvation, looking for redemption, and desperately searching for any shred of hope. But she didn’t have the capacity, the understanding, or the empathy for such an undertaking. Only I could extend that grace to myself.
I tried to balance self-care in one hand and an all-consuming love in the other, but it wasn’t sustainable. One was not possible with the other. They were both bound to fall.
Still, I didn’t see it coming—and have difficulty wrapping my head around it—the end of what was. The sobering breakup.
Despite the warning signs, I was still shocked to discover that my partner never wanted the calm, sober life I needed to lead and forever tend to.
She didn’t want quiet or peace or to be content in the present moment. It was easy to slip into relapse after abandoning myself to a love that was so misaligned with the life I wanted.
I chose, for months, to stay blind to how unviable our relationship had become. I longed for slowness, ease, and to embrace a gentle heart as I learned to love myself again. She craved new experiences, unending self-improvement, and the freedom to find herself.
She wanted fun that would last past midnight.
Despite the confusion, pain, and loss, I still have immense love for her. I’ve never trusted a lover so instinctually, been treated so tenderly, or experienced the level of belief she had in me.
Had the bubble not popped, I probably would have liked to stay a little longer, if only to keep myself from facing the fear of what I had slipped back into and the pain of having to drag myself out of it.
But the sobering truth was there I couldn’t turn away—I had lost myself, been swept away by a white-hot, intoxicating love. Not only had I relapsed, but I had forgotten who I was and what was important to me. And now I had to pick up the pieces alone.
The next time I kiss someone and the stars collide, I’ll make sure my feet stay firmly planted on the ground and my mouth remains far away from any wine bottle.
I finished writing this past midnight. You know nothing good happens past midnight.
Lindsey Goodrow is a very gay and newly sober essayist based in Long Beach, California. She is obsessed with unearthing and unraveling life’s addictive feelings. Her work has been featured in The Gay and Lesbian Review and her newsletter, Sober Gemini, is published monthly on Substack.