It was Sunday morning around 3AM, and I was more than just wide awake. I was awestruck, star-gazing from the balcony of an oceanfront room on the third floor of Turtle Bay Resort, listening to the relentless wind whip through the palms and stir up the Pacific.
Being in Hawaii was like plugging permanently into the “Calm” app, if it had an “intense” setting.
Bliss on steroids…that’s the best way I can describe my return to Oahu, where I soaked up the sun, sand, surf, seafood — and room service! — on my husband’s company dime for four lovely, lazy days. I lounged on the beach in a two-piece bathing suit in the middle of February, when I was supposed to be slaving away at work/school…and, based on the faint rumblings I heard from back home, at shoveling snow.
Intense is how it feels to have a second chance at “once-in-a-lifetime.”
Nine years ago, Hubby and I touched down on this island, part of a surreal, all-expenses-paid group excursion with some of his former coworkers/CrossFit acquaintances. I felt completely out of place, and quickly cemented my misfit status by stumbling and staggering — literally falling-down drunk — through a 14-day “lost weekend” that left me bruised and bloodied, with skinned shins, chipped teeth, and just enough clear space in my booze-fogged brain for embarrassing memories to stick, and haunt me, even to this day.
They all started like this:
Tropical vacays at 4 1/2 years sober are certainly not without their cringe-worthy moments. I mean, you try attending multiple corporate cocktail parties with open bars and a bunch of salespeople you’ve never met before, armed with nothing but a tiny cup of flat, watered-down Diet Coke poured from the mixer can. 😝
You try sitting next to a bunch of jolly travelers downing Bacardi airplane shots for 6 1/2 hours in economy class, or sitting down to dinner at a fancy seaside restaurant, paging through a menu filled with exotic-sounding mai tais and margaritas, then sheepishly asking the waiter if he’s got anything fun that’s non-alcoholic. … 😬
Intense is that anxiety, of being different, “othered,” singled out. Not fun. Living sober means feeling skin-crawlingly uncomfortable at times, with nowhere to run/hide, and trips like this can be a minefield of triggers, if you’re not prepared or in a good place.
Honestly, any place with my husband is a good one, but it definitely doesn’t get any better than this! 😍
I was ready to return here, strong enough in my recovery to stare down temptation and tackle this test. If ever I yearned to chase the old hedonistic highs on our Hawaiian holiday, Hubby’s presence was enough to remind me how far I’ve flown over the past 55 months — with my own wings.
No doubt, he’s been the wind beneath them.
So, why did I deserve to be the plus-one of a newly-promoted manager at his prestigious work retreat, when taking me out in public had proven so risky in the past? My reputation as a loose cannon had been such a liability — an albatross, to use some island imagery — for this loyal, loving guy, and I was too caught up in my own dark, gaping pit of need to even see I was dragging him down with me.
How did I merit the time and space to get my shit together, when the self-centered vicious cycle of my addiction made a decade of his life — and most of our 16-year marriage — a chaotic shitshow? What, in the immortal words of our couples therapist, “made it OK to stay with a drunk all those years?”
I’d been asking myself these questions long before we landed in Honolulu, long before I stood on the sand at Kuilima Cove watching the sun rise after a sweaty, salty morning jog, and long before I stepped into a cozy little private cabana at the resort’s luxury day spa, wearing a special robe and slippers and sipping hibiscus tea as I prepped for a beachside massage.
(That was a scene ripped straight from my favorite meditation podcast — it’s called “Tracks to Relax,” and unlike “Calm,” it’s free! — and the experience was so relaxing that it opened up both my sinuses and my tear ducts. 🤧😭 Leave it to me to catch a cold and a bad case of Imposter Syndrome when I’m supposed to be pampering myself and “getting away from it all.”)
In the years since I quit drinking, I’ve felt like pinching myself — is this [insert positive event or experience] really happening? — and flogging myself — how could I let that [insert past embarrassment] happen?
Living sober is a mixed bag; filled with good and bad, blissful and painful. New triumphs. Old regrets. All that cringey real-life shit! I’m learning to see the whole mess as a gift — and just be grateful, instead of always wondering if I’m “worthy.”
Intense was the gratitude bubbling up inside me as I stared out at the impossibly blue water on our Friday morning hike to Kahuku Point. Hubby snapped the above picture behind my back, so you can’t see the tears rolling down my cheeks, but between the beauty of the place and the significance of the moment — and the lack of sleep and the caffeine from the four cups of coffee in the hotel room at 2AM because Philly is 6 hours ahead — I was overcome with emotion…and then, by a cold wave that jumped up and soaked my lower half while I was spaced out and all up in my feels…😂
Our walk took us to the northern tip of the island, where we stopped to admire the whole amazing scene. Hubby wrapped me up in a hug and shouted — that wind was loud! — in my ear: “Isn’t it cool how I started doing better at work after you got sober?”
Intense is being able to live out a “living amends.” Knowing you’re being redeemed by continuing to “do the next right thing.” Lifting others up by humbling, and working on, yourself.
Putting the “plug in the jug” took stress off his shoulders and set both of us free to soar in our own way. So, Hubby’s words are true. They’re funny, too, though my first instinct at hearing them was definitely not to laugh. 😭
I mean, he and I met at a newspaper, at the bottom of an escalator to nowhere, trying to make a living with the written word, doing jobs that no longer exist. And just look at him now! Helping the sales team at his company close multi-million-dollar deals. Working his way up the org chart, en route to earning what he’s worth. Supporting our little family of two while I circle the wagons and start over, back at the bottom — this time, with some sense of direction and purpose to go with my passion.
We’ve both come a long way in our time together — definitely since our last trip here — and it all boils down to the simple (not easy) one-day-at-a-time work of recovery.
There are moments when I’m forced to sit and think, and the old regrets come seeping out from the sewers of my alcoholism, and I do wonder whether I deserve to be along for this ride.
But then, there are those moments in the sun, on the beach, when I feel like everything I could ever need is right there, around and within me, and all I have to do to grasp it is open my heart. I feel like the universe is full of so much love, and it really can conquer all, if we self-centered a-holes just get the f*ck out of the way and let it flow.
Returning to Hawaii was a tremendous privilege. To have the maturity and good sense to fully experience, appreciate, and remember it was a great blessing.
To just be in this lovely little sober life with the best person I’ve ever known…well, my apologies to Oahu, but that is what I call paradise. This is a dream life that we’ve made our reality, and to describe what that feels like? I can’t imagine a more intense high.
Jen Wielgus Journalism 