How A Breakup Was The Catalyst For My Sobriety

The moment our worlds collided, time stood still. For a moment, it felt like everything finally made sense- the heartbreaks, the tears, life. They all led to the person looking back at me.

My intuition warned me not to pursue anything romantically with him. And in true fashion, I acted in defiance.

How could I not? For the first time in my life, I felt alive. And even though I knew it was only meant to be a wrinkle in time, I threw caution to the wind. But I didn’t care. I needed to keep feeling what I felt for as long as time would allow.

That was where I went wrong. And now that enough time has passed, I also wouldn’t change the way things transpired.

It was such a pivotal moment in my life, I just didn’t realize how profound it was until the storm cleared. The way everything happened was kismet- from the relationship to the breakup to getting sober.

It wasn’t long before he broke up with me. About six months. And yes, my intuition told me this was exactly how it was going to end.

All of the childhood abuse- physical, psychological, emotional, the violently abusive relationships, the mental illnesses, the sexual assaults, the pain of living- all of that combined, pales in comparison to what I felt from that break up.

It rocked me to my core and changed me on a cellular level. To this day, I struggle with finding the words to describe it. Because there are none.

It was like I woke up every morning just to feel myself die all over again. And no matter how hard I tried to keep myself busy to not feel the pain, I couldn’t escape it. It was everywhere I went, standing right beside me, waiting for me.

But it didn’t want to be acknowledged either. The times I tried to tend to it, it pushed me away, refusing any type of comfort.

So, I drank. Every night, I drank until I passed out, so I didn’t have to feel anything. It was something I had no idea how to process because I had never felt a pain this sharp.

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Drinking had been my crutch for the past 11 years so this time wasn’t any different. It helped me to escape myself, it was the only constant that I could ever depend on. But, I also knew I needed to stop. And I tried for years to stop, never finding a modality of sobriety that resonated with me. I also didn’t know how to sit with myself in the stillness, in the suffering, in the unhealed wounds.

It was a few weeks after the breakup when a sudden thought popped in my mind, “I need to quit drinking if I want to be in a healthy relationship with a man.”

The second I had that thought, my intuition silently screamed, “You need to quit drinking to have a healthy relationship with yourself.”

That’s when it hit me- my heart centered motivation to quit drinking. It was there all along waiting for me to feel it.

I can’t recall a time in my life when I’ve ever done anything for myself, that wasn’t how I was raised. So, it was surprising, in a pleasant way, that this was for me.

I’d also like to say the epiphany was the day I quit drinking. But the truth is, I wasn’t done wallowing yet. So I continued drinking for another few weeks before fate intervened. And that took me here, writing this as the sober version of myself, the version I once daydreamed about, hoping I would have the opportunity to be her.

When I reflect on that relationship, there’s a bittersweet fondness. As painful as the ending was, and at times, it was painful being in the relationship, it was divinely orchestrated to alter the trajectory of my life. Everything happened exactly the way it was supposed to.

I’ll see you soon…in the meantime, love yourself so much that even a Hallmark Christmas movie would be jealous.