Mea Culpa
I've been lying to you (and to myself) for years.
Author’s note: If you think you may have an issue with alcohol or another substance, help is available. If you’d like personal help finding resources or meetings in your area you can always DM or email me. I will do whatever I can. I will never share your identity or judge you. It is my sincere belief that recovery is a community effort and if you are reading this, I am in your community.
It’s difficult, even for me, to know exactly when I stopped being honest. For a very long time, I suspected something about myself that was, in some senses, unknowable. I asked friends, exes, boyfriends, and my family. Occasionally, I floated the topic to strangers in bars and restaurants. Universally, people told me I worry too much. That I was fine. Hannah, I don’t think I’ve ever even seen you drunk. But I was often drunk. Not all the time, of course. Not even most of the time. I was never a day drinker, never drunk while I was working, never on the rare occasion I felt it would be seriously inappropriate to drink. I never lied about my drinking, I always drank openly and heavily. I never had more than a half glass of wine while getting ready before dates or events, I always showed up to dinner sober. I was, to those around me, a heavy social drinker. I was also very social.
I have not been entirely honest with you, my girls. I have been keeping a secret from you for at the very least several weeks. Using the most illiberal of calculations, I’ve been keeping a secret from you for several years. I have been– for the last several months– writing and walking and working out and contemplating the triumphs and messes that have defined the last decade and a half of my life. Everything I have thought and done and said has been, on some level, about trying to determine the answer to a question that I have been asking myself since at least 2019. Do I have a drinking problem?
That was also dishonest.
