Choices and Change

It was two days before Christmas and I was almost two months sober, when I came home from work one day, opened the pantry door to get some potatoes, and found instead a fifth of gin--my drink of choice. It hadn't grown out of the potato bin overnight. It had been placed there by my still active alcoholic husband with the intent of getting his drinking buddy back. I froze. This was a turning point. I could pick up that bottle, throw in a little tonic and lime, and join my spouse in the sitting room as I'd done for the past ten years. Or I could shut the pantry door and walk away from my marriage and go forward into a life of sobriety.