The Other Side of Wanting

What sobriety taught me about heartbreak, surrender, and finally being free

First: ICYMI, I started a new company called Alma Joe with my brother, and we launched with a series of archetype candles that are, I must say, so lovely. Shop here. Use WELCOME15 for 15% off your first purchase.

Second: If you’re new to sobriety or already sober and need more structure and support, The Sober 90 begins July 1.

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Photo by Pete Longworth

I remember going on a walk last summer with my friend Katie and asking her to tell me the story of how she and her daughter’s father broke up, and what happened afterward, and how she got through it, and to explicitly tell me that she wasn’t sad about it anymore. It’s been over a decade, she’s married to a wonderful guy, and I still needed to hear her say it.

Just as I’d hunted for answers in other people’s divorce stories in the later years of my marriage, when I was consumed by the dilemma of staying or going, last year, in every conversation I had or overheard, I scanned for signs of okayness after a breakup.

I read Nora Ephron’s Heartburn and Really Good, Actually by Monica Heisley and Heartbreak by Florence Williams and Bitter Sweet by

Hattie Williams

and Happens Every Day by Isabel Gillies and The Wound Makes The Medicine by Pixie Lighthorse.

I re-read You Could Make This Place Beautiful by

Maggie Smith

and The Wisdom of a Broken Heart by Susan Piver and parts of Tiny Beautiful Things by

Cheryl Strayed

and Broken Open by Elizabeth Lesser and listened to hundreds of hours of Pema Chödrön and Frank Ostaseski and Joseph Goldstein.

I asked you to tell me stories of surviving heartbreak, and you did.

Each of these things helped in different ways, some more than others, but none took the pain away completely, of course. Still, each story or phrase or telling became some small part of the bridge that would eventually allow me to cross the river.

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When I got sober, all I wanted to know was when. When would I stop noticing I wasn’t drinking? When would dinner out, or an airport terminal, feel normal again? When would I simply be, without the technicolor awareness of alcohol?

Last year, I wanted the same. When would I breathe again? Sleep? Stop ruminating? Feel the desire to cook? Work? Make plans?

It was relentless, the pain. Unlike anything I’d experienced before. I wanted to claw my skin off. I slept at all hours. I took four showers a day and got as many Thai massages each week for many months, just to keep myself in my body. I cried everywhere, all the time. I often couldn’t feel my hands. I walked and walked and walked and walked: by the ocean, through the woods, up steep hills, and in circles on the streets around my town, aimlessly. I jumped in the ocean unless I couldn’t because there was already too much adrenaline in my veins. I survived however my body told me to survive, from one minute to the next, even when I didn’t want to be here. It was sharp and cold and scary and consuming almost all of the time.