A God-Shaped Hole

I got sober as a thirty-year-old mother of two, with a wonderful husband, a big house in the suburbs, a nice new car, a college degree, and no arrest record. No one asked me to. I didn’t lose any jobs or make any scenes. I guess you could say that I had a high bottom. Everyone thought I just loved to drink wine. But I knew that the truth was that I needed to drink wine. No one else knew that I went through a box of Chardonnay every three days. No one knew that I would skip dinner so I wouldn’t ruin my buzz. No one knew that I woke up depressed and full of self-loathing every morning. No one knew how sad I was, and how badly I wanted to be free. But I knew, and that should have been enough, but it took me a decade to find that freedom.