Mirror, Mirror On the Wall

Why Do You Show Everyone Else’s Flaws?

Sometimes it’s tough being a mirror.

No one warned me that when I made the decision to go sober I would be a mirror to everyone else’s habits. That telling folks I don’t drink anymore would illicit so many inquiries and anecdotes. When people ask me about my experience or reasoning for going sober, I am often met with their stories, or more their justifications, of why they still drink - but not that much, of course, because they too are cutting back…

…but they still had that hangover in the morning because of hanging out with certain people who, you know, you just get in their zone and then there’s shots and you can’t say no…

…right?

I don’t mind the stories. More often than not, I actually welcome them and am happy that there are still people who are comfortable with me and are open to sharing our lives with each other. It’s that inherent need to fit in, though, that I think people often get themselves tripped up. Some try to make you feel comfortable that not drinking is ok (which it is – there’s nothing to justify there) or they themselves don’t want to feel like they are the odd one out by continuing to drink and do so, often, in excess. I didn’t go sober to try to fit in. To be frank, I decided to stop drinking because I didn’t want to die like my friends recently did. I saw this path of darkness that if I had stayed on it, it would not have ended well for me… and I was REALLY good at hiding it from everyone.

Including myself.

It took my friends dying (yes plural), and a community’s reaction before their passings, to make me take a good, long, hard look at myself and my life. That the fact that I couldn’t just have one drink, I had to have 3 or 5, wasn’t said jokingly anymore - it was a sad fact. What was sadder is that I was actually excommunicated from certain communities in a way because I stopped drinking. The activity of it is so ingrained that when someone steps away from it or even calls it out, people don’t know what to do with that so they retreat.

If we’re being honest, if popularity and the need to be liked were important to me and I wanted to stay with the “in crowd” I would still be going to that same bar every night, doing shots, drinking straight bourbon, and numbing myself from the pains of that day. Instead, I took myself out of that environment because, as someone much wiser than me put it, I “couldn’t heal in the same environment that had harmed me.”

I was getting ready to type out this whole thing about how I just left one day, really without any warning, giving those people a pass for treating me how they have been these past couple years, but I had to stop myself because, as I am sitting here typing this, I remember that I actually did give them fair warning. Looking back on it, I don’t think a lot of them took me seriously. I think most thought I was just another person cutting back, or doing something like dry-January, and I would come back around eventually. I think that was because I didn’t just decide one day to completely stop drinking and change my social habits. It was a slow withdrawal that started the previous year because I was starting to see that community’s true colors where, after a few major events in my own life, I started to see that the only real connection that existed was the booze. Take that away and there wasn’t much there that was of substance. To be fair, I am making a generalization of that community as a whole. There are individuals from that community that I am still in contact with and remain close friends with to this day. It’s the ones that stopped reaching out to me because I no longer showed up in those spaces that I am really referring to here. These same folks that preached “Family first” and yet were the first to turn their back on me in those moments I asked them for help. At the end of the day, my initial withdrawal wasn’t just about me working on my sobriety, it was also about not giving my energy to people who didn’t offer theirs back. The ones that I was there to help when they asked, but didn’t when I had asked. I constantly listened to their stories and offered my shoulder for them to lean on, but when I asked them for the same, they turned away – physically and metaphorically.

Brotherhood and Sisterhood ended at the bottom of an empty bottle.

I was warned that sobriety could be lonely or even isolating at times. I think most people think that would be the case because you are no longer involved in an activity that was so ingrained in your personal culture. It goes much deeper than that, though. Part of it is the unfortunate realization that, when you take the booze out of the equation, sometimes those things are no longer as much fun as you had remembered. That the glitter and gold was actually just the sheen of liquor that coated the experience. Those activities that you once thought of as “the best time ever” are actually vapid and unfulfilling. Let’s not forget, too, that your patience for the inebriated is far more thin than before and you’ve become a sort of mirror to everyone and suddenly you are no longer “fun.”

That now your very presence could be a reminder of what people really shouldn’t be doing.

I think that’s one of the many reasons why I am grateful for the spaces that do make not drinking alcohol easier not only with the choices that they offer but also the environment that they cultivate. I was once told by a bar owner that they didn’t serve a lot of NA beers because they were a bar and people came to drink alcohol so that’s what he was focusing on. That having those options were a waste of time and money. He wasn’t wrong. It was disappointing to hear, yes, but he wasn’t wrong. But his message was made clear to me so, for that and other reasons, I choose not to go there anymore. I don’t think that bar and venue owners really understand the value of having those NA options available sometimes. Those of us who don’t drink alcohol appreciate a small variety of options not because we want to replicate the experience but because we want to contribute to their business and not feel like a burden for being the sober person in a bar. To be treated like just another patron and not the sober person who will only drink water because there is nothing else available that doesn’t have sugar or caffeine in it. That we still want to be a part of a community because of who we are. Not because of an altered state of mind.

When I look in the mirror now, I see a future filled with adventure and love. Love for myself and those that are along for the ride. It is not my responsibility to hold up the mirror to others, but if they see one when they look at me I hope they see their own potential rather than their shortcomings. I hope that they see where they can improve in their lives because they want to, not because they are trying to fit into some bubble they have to feel like they are in when they are around me. At the end of the day, while I appreciate that my friends care enough about me to ask if they need to alter their behavior around me, I love them enough to not feel like they need to. That they are perfect the way that they are. That when they look in the mirror, they don’t see things they feel like they have to make excuses for. That they see themselves as simply good humans trying their best in this crazy world.