Two Years Awake: What sobriety taught me about power, identity, and starting over

I didn’t plan on getting sober.

If anything, I thought I was still in control.

I had a very specific image of what an alcoholic looked like—and I didn’t fit it. I was working. I was teaching. I was in grad school. I was building a life.

So in my mind, I was fine.

I wasn’t.

Alcohol had been in my life longer than I wanted to admit.

My father was an alcoholic. Growing up, I watched how alcohol shaped his relationships, his behavior, his life. I told myself I would never be like that.

My first drink was at 13. Gin and juice. I remember thinking it was disgusting.

It didn’t stick.

In undergrad, I drank again. A mojito with a friend. Nights out. At that stage, it felt controlled. Two drinks. Maybe three. It felt manageable.

And for a while, it was.

But over time, two became three. Three became more. And what started as something occasional slowly became something I relied on.

When things started to collapse

Around 2020, everything intensified.

I was in therapy, dealing with some of the hardest things I’ve ever had to face—legal issues, telling my story as a survivor of sexual assault, trying to understand my identity, and navigating grad school at the same time.

Everything hit at once.

And I didn’t want to be here anymore.

That’s the part people don’t always say out loud, but it’s real.

So I started drinking more.

At first it was gradual. Then it became daily. COVID made it easier to hide. Bars closed, so I drank at home.

What started as mid-shelf liquor slowly turned into whatever was cheapest.

By the end, I was drinking the same thing my father drank.

That realization didn’t hit me at the time.

But it should have.

When control disappears quietly

Around the same time, I started using edibles.

At first, they “took the edge off.”

Then I started combining them with alcohol.

Most nights looked the same—curled up, drinking, high, listening to sad music, watching TV until 2 or 3 in the morning.

Alone.

And the strange part is—I was still going to therapy.

Still talking about healing.

Still trying to “work on myself.”

The moment I couldn’t ignore

Eventually, my therapist said something I didn’t want to hear.

She told me I was an alcoholic.

I pushed back immediately.

In my mind, alcoholics were people whose lives had completely fallen apart. I didn’t see myself that way.

So she said something simple:

“If you’re not, give it up for a year.”

A year felt insane.

But I’m competitive. So I tried.

And my body broke.

I got violently sick—shaking, vomiting. In hindsight, I probably should have gone to the hospital. I now understand that alcohol withdrawal can be dangerous.

I made it about 30 days.

Then I relapsed.

I repeated that cycle seven times.

The beginning of something different

The turning point didn’t come from some dramatic realization.

It came from a drunk text.

One night, I was deep in it—drinking, scrolling, reaching out for help in random ways. I had been watching a comedy special by Rosebud Baker, where she mentioned being sober.

So I found her on Instagram and sent a message:

“I can’t stop drinking. What do I do?”

I didn’t expect a response.

She replied.

She sent me the location of an AA meeting.

That was the first seed.

The second came from people in my life who got sober before me—people I thought were worse than me. Seeing them change forced me to confront something uncomfortable:

If they could do it, why couldn’t I?

Eventually, I walked into an AA meeting.

Learning a different way to live

My first meeting didn’t land.

I saw a group of men talking about surrender, and at the time, surrender felt like losing.

So I left.

But something had shifted.

The next time I went, something was different.

I wasn’t trying to do it alone anymore.

That was the first real change.

The second was realizing that help was everywhere. No matter where I went, there was a meeting. There were people who understood.

The third was time.

Counting days. Celebrating milestones. Thirty days. Sixty. Ninety. A year.

For the first time in a long time, I was building something real.

What sobriety actually gave me

I used to think sobriety was just about not drinking.

It’s not.

Sobriety is about sovereignty.

It’s about understanding where your power actually is.

I can’t control the world.

I can’t control what people think about me.

I can’t win life.

But I can control how I show up today.

I can control my choices.

I can keep my side of the street clean.

That shift changed everything.

Letting go of trying to win

Before sobriety, I was trying to win.

I was trying to prove something—to teachers, to peers, to the dance world, to anyone who doubted me.

Even when I started getting success, it didn’t fix anything.

I couldn’t out-achieve emptiness.

I couldn’t out-dance insecurity.

I couldn’t out-perform the noise in my own head.

Sobriety forced me to stop trying to win…

and start trying to live.

Waking up

I once heard someone describe addiction like this:

It’s like being asleep in a dirty room.

When you wake up, the room doesn’t magically become clean.

You just see it clearly for the first time.

That’s what sobriety has felt like.

Two years in, my room isn’t perfect.

But it’s cleaner than it was.

And more importantly—

I’m awake.

The real work

Sobriety didn’t solve my life.

It gave me the chance to actually work on it.

There are things I still have to accept.

My past. Parts of the world I don’t like. Uncertainty about the future.

But I’ve learned something simple:

I can accept what I can’t change. Or I can change what I can.

If I’m not doing one of those two things, I’m avoiding.

And avoidance is what kept me stuck for so long.

Two years later

Two years sober doesn’t mean I have everything figured out.

It means I’ve stopped running.

It means I’m learning how to live without numbing myself.

It means I’m building a life based on reality, not escape.

And maybe most importantly—

it means I understand where my power actually is.

Not in controlling the world. Not in winning.

But in showing up—clear, present, and responsible for my own life.

One day at a time.