Remembering Rehab

Tomorrow will be the sixteenth year anniversary of the date I entered rehab for treatment of alcoholism. 

O. M. G 

I was so apprehensive. Anxious. Scared.

I had to stay overnight in Detox, even though I hadn't had a drink for nearly a month. (I count April 10, 2007 as my Sobriety Date, not May 7th as Hanley tried to insist).

I remember the fear.

Fear it wouldn't work.

Fear I'd fall.

Fear I'd succeed and hate my boring, insufferable life, which seemed to stretch out interminably before me (ah, the wonderful naivety of being 50!).

Fear it would all be for naught, and my husband would leave me anyway, that this was his way of beginning the legal process of separating himself from the hell he had endured for so many years, with me conveniently locked away for 28 days.

He was the reason I agreed to go to treatment. 

He'd given me an ultimatum.

Get treatment or he was DONE.

I didn't want that. Him leaving me, that is.

Not because he is a saint and the love of my life.

No.

Because by this point, I hated our marriage, the ways we avoided the elephant in the room, the complete destruction of any semblance of a healthy relationship.

I was just flat-out SCARED.

Scared I couldn't function without him, without someone who tolerated my rages, my major depressive episodes, and most of all, my coping mechanism: ALCOHOL.

Long story short, rehab worked.

It was hard, but I embraced it fully, and I LOVED it.

So much so that I stayed for 4½ months.

I knew within the first 2 weeks, long-term sobriety was possible, but only if I could identify, confront, and begin to work through the underlying issues that prompted me to turn to alcohol in the first place.

So, I stayed.

I worked.

Hard.

And when I was ready, I went home.

Home.

Where the heart is.