Back in 2021 or 2022 I read Holly Whitaker's book Quit Like A Woman which is about her journey quitting alcohol and what she learned on it and how other people can do this too but not because it’s easy – it’s really fucking hard – but because they are powerful and if they have a goal they can succeed.
Whitaker makes a lot of great points in this book, which more or less became a roadmap for my future, but she made one that stuck with me the longest and shaped many of my past goals and a few more to come.
The point is a connection of points, actually. It starts out with the point that Whitaker used alcohol as a way to drown out her life and merges into the point that the first point implies that her life was something she needed to drown out. Healing her relationship with alcohol didn’t just mean pouring bottles down the drain but fixing the plumbing system entirely. How could she craft a life that she could stay afloat in – or, as Whitaker put it, a life she didn’t want or need to “escape” – without the buoyancy of empty bottles?
Whitaker is writing about alcohol, but her message isn’t just about alcohol. It is about everything.
When I read Quit Like A Woman, I wanted or needed to run away from most things in my life – the health things, the family things, the financial things, the pandemic things, the depression things, the everythings – and couldn’t quite go fast enough. Even once I finished reading, I kept trying to run. Because the only way I knew (or assumed I knew) how to get to a life I didn’t want or need to escape from, was to first escape the one I had.
And maybe running away was part of it. Maybe it has to be. Maybe that’s how we find a plot of ground to build our desired life – or, how I found mine. But if that’s all the running away is for – getting to that empty plot – I suppose you could take a bike or car or bus or train instead. Because once you get there, you still have to fucking build it. And depending on what you brought with you – which if you were running, probably isn’t much – you’re starting from scratch.
I didn’t fully comprehend this in 2021 or 2022, and dwelling in my empty plot has at times felt exhausting and unrewarding. I've realized I’m good at running, escaping situations that don’t serve me. I’m not so great at holding things together; staying put. And honestly, after the cardio it took to get to a new place, I didn’t want to do any heavy lifting. I wanted a glass of water and maybe a snack.
I have been, though, holding it together. And while I was at times disappointed that my unescapable life didn’t magically appear before me, I now see the building process – it’s a process – as fulfilling. It requires me to take inventory of what I have and find ways to hoist these things up, support them, reinforce them.
The things I have are the people I love. Activities I pursue. Qualities of myself that I’ve grown to accept – or am trying to. Some of these things are meaningless on their own and some mean so much that they would crumble without one another. But they're all part of this life that I don’t want or need to escape.
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