There are two things I have wanted for as long as I can remember. The first is to live in New York City. I was a precocious (if self-conscious) preadolescent who loved pop culture, music, and magazines and was enchanted by the allure of what seemed to be the most exciting place on earth. Who doesn't want to be Holly Golightly?
I absorbed and memorized every single detail of the city's nightlife, despite living 3,000 miles away in San Francisco. The world of swanky Manhattan soirees, expensive dinners, and endless men to date was a glamorous universe away from my bespectacled, tennis-ball-short-haired 14-year-old self and the nights I spent at home.
The second was my desire to work in fashion. I never seriously considered any other career. As earnest as it may sound, through perseverance, careful study, and some well-timed breaks, by my mid-20s I was on the path to living both dreams. I was a busy fashion publicist living in the West Village. It seemed serendipitous that the career I pursued is full of opportunities to have fun. The fashion industry is hard work, but there are many chances to celebrate that hard work. We stage events to fête everything from designers to store openings. We find any excuse to party, dine, toast, bond, let off steam. And with this come a lot of drinks. As my career surged, so did the invitations, demands to entertain clients, and requirements to make appearances in support of this or that. More drinks. This reality barely registered with me at the time. Though a few dark, little-discussed alcoves of my family history housed a few alcoholics, I drank moderately through college and negligibly compared with my peers.
Also, I was equipped with very specific and deeply held ideas about what constituted alcoholic-level drinking, and that checklist acted as my compass for many years. Keeping alcohol in my apartment? Never. Drinking while depressed or angry, to elate, fortify, or black out? Of course not. I thought that at 28, I had evolved into a high-functioning, pretty glamorous sort of drinker; I never claimed a hangover, called in sick, picked fights, fell down, or lost things. And in the event that I was overserved, I believed that my personality and sense of self were too well-defined for me to harm myself or others. I was perhaps a high-octane, ebullient — if ever-so-slightly-reckless — version of myself but by most accounts still great fun. Furthermore, I didn't need any excuse for rigorous nighttime itineraries. Others were eager to do it for me, blithely citing our professional "obligation" to be out nearly every night well past midnight and sometimes well past two (okay, four) in the morning. These people also agreed that such exploits would be nearly impossible without several drinks.
It was a life in which I went to every new club and restaurant and in many cases knew most other guests. I confided to my companions that during those evening hours we cultivated relationships that probably would have taken months or even years to develop in the other nine to five. I worked hard and played hard, and when people remarked (as they often did), "I have no idea how you do it," I was proud. Twenty-eight to 31 was a brilliant, freewheeling era.
When I look back, there were some red flags, or at least yellow ones. I was exhausted all the time, which I attributed to life in the 21st century. Doesn't everyone complain of fatigue? My body chemistry seemed slightly out of tune, with seesawing hormones and constant allergy-like symptoms, but I diagnosed those as stress related. My body recovered more slowly from exercise or the rare hangover, which I presumed was a function of age.
By 32, though, there were nothing but red flags. Some nights out, I would be greeted effusively by people I did not remember. At times I would experience a frightening inability to express myself, made all the more serious by the fact that my job as a PR director required I spend nearly all day every day on the phone. When I recalled things I had done while intoxicated, I was seized with paralyzing panic. These episodes would appear unbidden, fleetingly sometimes, but their force was terrifying. Most disturbing was that a night of extremely hard drinking would be followed by an altogether different kind of wake-up call: a slight tremor in my ring finger. Friends who raged as fervently as I did claimed it was a common symptom of dehydration. I wasn't convinced. What a terrifying cycle. Is this how alcoholism starts, I wondered?
Drinking to commemorate a rite of passage — a birth, a death, a marriage, a thing lost or gained — can have its place, as it helps to bond and encourage us. But alcohol is not meant to be a constant companion, no matter how well you think you understand yourself or the idea of addiction. As time goes on, alcohol's power to numb, release, or uninhibit ultimately means that doing it too frequently and trying to function becomes like routinely going to the movies without your glasses or trying to wash your whites with a red sock buried in the laundry pile: You'll never get things quite right, which means you'll never get exactly what you want.
But what did I want? I'd never been able to put my finger on it, and that was part of the problem. It's not surprising that it was so much of a mystery; spending all of my time with other people meant that after a while, they defined me more than I defined myself.
Furthermore, I had diligently pursued life in a city where you are often measured by what you have or do and not who you are. New York is many wonderful things, but it is also a place where you always have your senses trained on the possibility of better and more. Many of us talk endlessly about holding out for the one thing that will pull it all together, make life perfect at long last, be it a job, an apartment, or 10 pounds lost. We are motivated by a need to improve. So while I embraced my party-girl persona, I simply hoped that at some point some miracle would sort out whatever collateral damage there happened to be and restore me to something dignified and normal.
This moment of clarity happened in a way that was so simple, it still takes my breath away to think about it. I had not cared about relationships in all that time and had in fact pursued (or been pursued by) scores of totally unsuitable, harder-partying men. I used to regale my office mates with madcap stories of boys. I kept emotional intimacy at a distance and was fine with — nay, proud of — it. And then, in fall 2007, I was asked out on a proper date by a suitable man: well-to-do, erudite, unmarried. This was my chance to finally improve, and by the best transformer of all: love. We went on two chic, fabulous dates. And then he never called again.
Every single day, men don't call women back. But to say that I was utterly devastated by it does not properly describe the deep pain this rejection unleashed in me or how clearly it brought into focus my chaotic, disordered life. I believed I had lost the prince to grant all my deeply buried wishes. After years of convincing myself how complex I was, how far above average, how evolved, I realized all I wanted was to stop running. I wanted to rest, to talk or not talk, to be cared for by another person, someone who noticed if I came home at 6:00 p.m. or 6:00 a.m. Suddenly, New York was just a place to live and fashion was just my job. Neither was a substitute for anything. Wish fulfillment is not the same as happiness. After all, Holly Golightly is only Lulamae Barnes and always has been. Being cast aside by someone who was essentially a stranger was all it took to show how tenuous my grip on my identity really was. My whole self would have to be rebuilt brick by brick, and I knew it would require steady hands. I needed one thing I could control completely. On November 24, 2007, I began life without alcohol.
In the months that followed, I realized that while I had felt totally at home in my beloved city, I hadn't known how to create a home for myself. And while I loved to solve problems at work, I was terrified of them in my personal life. My relentless pursuit of amusement had become the perfect distraction, creating enough noise to drown out my greatest fear, ending up alone. I had developed into a person who was living for the future while never making any explicit plans for it. It's hard to know where you're going if you're afraid to look up. So I started looking up and around and in the mirror. And I honestly didn't have the urge to knock back a cocktail, or five, in social situations. Not being bound by the shame of things I did while drinking made it easier. And with the help of reading (Drinking: A Love Story, by Caroline Knapp, is a favorite), 12-step meetings, and talking with many friends, life improved.
At first, I presumed it would be better things: better job, better stuff, and all those material "improvements" I had chased for so many years. I thought I would get a boyfriend (I didn't) or a better apartment. (I've been in the same place since 2002.) But life got better because I was better. I was a better listener, daughter, friend. In the two years I have been drink free, I have faced two career changes — I left my job in PR to become an editor at a fashion magazine, then I was laid off (said magazine folded) — the hospitalization of my beloved mother, and the sudden deaths of two childhood friends. I don't list these events to prove how tough I am or how well-defined my sobriety is; in the time since I stopped drinking, I have been through more than some but also less than some. I now navigate through my problems and not around them. That, incidentally, is the true business of living your life.
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