2012 was my first full calendar year without a drink.

That is, if I make it the next 35 minutes.

(Who am I kidding, I write so slowly, it’ll be 2 AM before I hit publish.)

I’ve been sort of hiding in my apartment the last couple days.  After a wonderful week with my family I need major decompression when I got back to Maryland.  And so I slept, read trashy novels, ate a HUGE pizza and finally today got around to showering, going to the grocery store and attacking my grading.

At no point did I make any plans to celebrate New Year’s Eve.  I’m sure if I told anyone that I was back in town an invitation would be scrounged up for a house party or some such revelry.  But I didn’t.  Going out on New Year’s Eve was always always about drinking away the shame of how I’d spent another year screwing up and how I didn’t really believe in my heart that the next year was going to be any different, despite what I tried to tell myself.  Slathered in enough makeup to make me look like a demented drag queen, tugging on an ill-fitting dress and standing around with nothing to say I would drink and smoke as much as I possibly could  simply so that I could pretend I was somewhere else.  So that I could pretend that I was someone else.  Even the years that I stayed in, to “keep myself from social anxiety and mild depression” I would stock up on cheep champagne and as the minutes ticked towards midnight the sips became slops and the next year started the same way the last had: tear stained and puke flavored.

But there aren’t any tears for 2012.  There were plenty of tears in 2012, but I have none as I look back.  No matter what happened this year, no matter what I did, I was sober the whole time.  There was no alcohol in me in 2012.  For good or for bad every second of 2012 was my own in a way that no year has been since I was 12.  And the best way I can celebrate that is to be as I intend to continue on: to plug away at my work, to try new recipes (lentil chili is cooling on my stove, waiting to go into the fridge), to call to mind my blessings rather than invent my slights, to say no to another cup of tea at 11:45 PM, and be all of myself (good and bad) without flinching.

So I wish all the fun in the world to all my friends who are out there living it up tonight. Be merry and be safe.  I hope that everyone had a pretty descent 2012.

I did.

(1 Year, 3 Months, and 11 Days Sober)