Okay so I don’t really know what I’m going to write about here, so I’m just going to be honest about the last few days of trying to go sober again. And fair warning, this isn't going to be one of those transformation stories where everything suddenly falls into place and life becomes calm and sorted overnight. Come on, this is me we’re talking about here. I didn’t even make it past day three.

Sunday night I barely slept. I vaguely remember the last time I stopped drinking feeling similar, although honestly I don’t even know if that’s connected or whether my brain has just been permanently noisy lately. I think the boys starting their SATs on Monday was sitting in the back of my mind. Not because I particularly care what results they get, I don’t even think they should have SATs. But when you’re that age, your whole little world feels like it revolves around things like that. I just didn’t want them feeling stressed or upset about it. Anyway, they were completely fine, which of course meant I spent a lot of time worrying for absolutely no reason whatsoever.

On Monday I went for coffee with a business development manager from a new platform I’m going to start using, and it was actually really good. We ended up chatting for nearly two hours and afterwards I wandered round town for a bit instead of going straight back into work mode. It sounds ridiculously simple, but just doing something different genuinely helped.

I think I get really sick of routine sometimes. I’ll start something with full intensity, like deciding I’m going to the gym every morning, then two weeks later I’m suddenly convincing myself evenings work better, then after that I’m changing it all again. I never seem to stick to one structure for long. But maybe that’s the point. I don't really understand why we all act like there’s one perfect routine everyone’s supposed to follow. What works for one person might make someone else miserable. Sometimes I think we spend too much time trying to force ourselves into systems that just don't fit who we are.

Monday afternoon I needed to finish a report and somehow managed to do literally everything except the report itself. By the evening I finally thought, right, enough now, just start. So naturally I drank about three coffees, put my headphones on, opened my laptop… and then decided to go to spin instead. Avoidance at its finest.

Then after spin, something genuinely ridiculous happened. I walked back to my car and found what can only be described as the biggest bird poo I have ever seen in my life splattered across my windscreen. I’m not exaggerating. There is absolutely no way a normal sized bird produced that thing. It looked personal.

So while I was driving home, I tried to clean it off by turning the windscreen wipers on. Not my best idea. It just smeared it across the entire windscreen until I could barely see through it. Brilliant. Anyway, I got home, cleaned the car off, stood in the kitchen for a minute… and then went to the shop and bought a drink.

Hey, I know. Believe me, nobody is more annoyed at me than I am. But that’s half the problem really. The shop is literally a minute away from my house. There’s barely any space between the thought and the action. One minute you’re telling yourself not to be stupid, and the next you’re standing at self checkout convincing yourself it doesn’t really count because it’s “just one”. And yeah, I wasn’t thinking about future me or tomorrow, just that moment. So yeah, technically I didn’t even make it three full days.

Look, I’m just going to be really honest here. Those first few sips felt amazing. I was exhausted. My brain had spent the entire day replaying the same annoying thoughts over and over, then I’d fuelled the whole thing with coffee like an absolute idiot. So when I finally had that drink, my whole body relaxed almost instantly. My mind quietened down. Everything softened for a moment. My god, it felt so good.

Now obviously I’m not romanticising it. Long term it makes everything worse. The anxiety the next day is horrible and I know that. But in that exact moment, I understood it. I understood why people reach for things to escape. Because sometimes you just want your brain to stop shouting at you for five minutes.

Sometimes I wonder whether other people’s minds feel like this too. Not all the time, but when it happens it feels like constant noise. Overthinking. Endless loops that don’t switch off. And the frustrating part is it all comes from me. My own thoughts. My own mind. Nothing external is really happening. It’s just thought after thought after thought, firing away all day long, building their own momentum until everything feels heavier than it actually is.

I don’t know. I guess growth isn’t a straight line, right. It never has been and it never will be. Everything meaningful in life seems to move in expansions and contractions. You move forwards, then backwards, then sideways for a while, and then suddenly something clicks again.

But even when you know that logically, it still hurts when you’re in it. It still really sucks. When you feel like you’ve slipped backwards mentally, it knocks you. I don’t like it at all. I know life isn’t supposed to feel great every second of every day, but sometimes I still sit there thinking: does my head seriously have to be like this right now? Because overthinking can genuinely make you feel broken.

I think that’s what alcohol gives you sometimes. Not happiness. Not peace. Just silence. Temporary silence. A brief moment where the volume in your own head finally drops and your body unclenches for a while. But it never really solves anything. It just delays it. And the next morning, it’s still there, usually louder than before. 

I guess when you’re trying to sort yourself out, you imagine growth will look clean, right. Disciplined. Motivational. Like one day you’ll wake up and suddenly become the kind of person who journals at 6am, runs 10k, drinks green juice, and has it all figured out. But real growth is nothing like that. I wish it was. But it really isn’t.

Real growth is messy. God, it’s messy. It’s two good days followed by one bad one. It’s progress mixed with setbacks. It’s clarity followed by confusion. It’s the days where you suddenly start questioning yourself again, even though a few weeks ago you genuinely felt solid in who you were and what you were doing. It’s trying to get through moments where you feel broken, where you feel like something is wrong with you, even when nothing actually is. And learning, slowly, that those moments don’t mean you’re going backwards. They just mean you’re in it. Properly in it.

 And somehow… you keep going anyway. 🩷