sober lifestyle

Surrender

Are you gonna wait for a sign, your miracle?
Stand up and fight!

This is it…Make no mistake where you are
This is it…Your back’s to the corner
This is it…Don’t be a fool anymore
This is it…The waiting is over

Kenny Loggins, “This Is It”

I’m one of those people who really hears lyrics when I listen to music. I think it goes with the territory of being a Highly Sensitive Person. And like most aspects of the HSP experience in a TMI world, this “gift” often seems like a curse/weakness/sick joke.

Once you find deep personal meaning in a piece of art — whether you were looking for it or not — it has a way of hitting you hard in the feels whenever you encounter it. That gets dangerous when the art is readily accessible on any random day of the week via satellite radio. I mean, you’re rarely prepared to weather a visceral attack of emotion on your way to work or school, and ill-equipped to explain to your spouse why you’re performing household chores with tears streaming down your face.

So it went this past weekend, when I decided to get in the spirit of Father’s Day by tuning in to Amazon’s “Yacht Rock” station. This is akin to raiding my dad’s old tape drawer and spinning the soundtrack of my childhood, the strains of “Sailing,” “Africa,” “Steal Away,” “What a Fool Believes,” “Love Will Conquer All,” and basically the entire Kenny Loggins discography tapping into my tenderest places, where I typically dare not go because I can’t afford to break down.

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sober lifestyle

Protection

Caption: 300 days without alcohol and I’m (cough) still alive.

It would be a smidge overdramatic, and not quite accurate, to refer to my sobriety date as “The Day The Music Died,” but it seems I unintentionally gave up more than one of my old favorite things on July 7, 2019.

That was 10 (get it? Ten?) months ago today, by the way. I still vividly remember every moment of no fun I had at a family get-together the first alcohol-free afternoon of my new life, without any substance available to blast through my ironclad inhibitions.

Loosening up used to come naturally to me, back when I was a little kid who spent hours spinning, and spinning, (*Pee Wee Herman voice*) aaaand spinning around the family room carpet singing along to “Steal Away,” “What A Fool Believes” and other 70s pop hits playing on my dad’s reel-to-reel stereo system. My parents have this on video (viewer beware: may cause dizziness). Isn’t it cute how oblivious kids are to embarrassment?

…she says, at age 42, while relating the gory details of a 20-year drunkalog on the World Wide Web…😳

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