: Today marks ten years without alcohol, and while I’ve written before about the love I felt for all my past selves, on this day as I think about the last time I ever drank and the years prior, I’m channeling my love on just one. Love for the reckless one. The one who once felt like wasted potential. It had been the end of a fourteen-day bender when I took stock of where my habits had led me. I couldn’t help but connect the streak of blacked out weekends with everything that was ailing me both physically and mentally. I remember those sixteenth months of a depressive episode that seemed to have no end. My body is still marked with signs of that era: a scar on my face I don’t remember getting, a fractured hip bone from a drunken fall through my apartment’s roof. Countless times before, I’d entertain the thought of giving up drinking, but I couldn’t let go of the euphoria it would bring despite how short it would last. Despite the toll drinking took on my body, despite the shame and anxiety I would feel the mornings after when memories of the embarrassing, violent things I had done would start to piece together, I held onto the delusion that all of this was okay. Every drink became a way to fall deeper into that delusion, but that summer morning, I decided to face the truth head-on. It was scary to admit my recklessness. To recall every stupid thing I had done and said. To feel regret knowing what I could have been had I never drunk. What I’ve learned from these years of sobriety is how scary sincerity can be, especially when it comes to being sincere to oneself. I can think of so many times where I was caught in delusions of denial and insecurity, where it felt easier to run away than to take an honest look at myself. But facing the shame gets easier each time. I’ve chosen the clarity of feeling every emotion that makes me human, even the painful ones, for I’ve seen how they’ve grown into something beautiful. So today I feel humility. I feel grace. I feel love. Love for the reckless one who had the courage to be sincere. For the one who recognized that a life without drinking still contained so much potential.