Sobriety Sucks

“Nature’s the ultimate inspiration.”

The woman speaking was ageless and poised in a way that made me feel homely and naive. Her blowout looked freshly fixed, and her workout clothes looked as though she’d never actually worked out in them—a stark contrast to my faded sweatpants. Her make-up was so natural I wondered if she was wearing make-up at all—but no one could look that good at 6:00 am without make-up, could they? Maybe she just had flawless skin. Maybe it is the giant jar of green juice she’s touting. But a quick glance shows me that the rest of the group looks similar—middle aged white woman with perfect hair, nails, and make-up wearing clothes that look freshly plucked from the rack (plus two lean men who are looking so intently at the Rocky Mountains looming beyond the city that I wonder if the yoga class has already started and I somehow missed the beginning of it).

I silently curse my therapist who’d urged me to come to this stupid yoga class, but, thinking back, I realized she would fit in perfectly with these women—she was calm and graceful and had great clothes and smooth hair with a chic office. Her voice and her questions occasionally made me cry enough to forget who I was: a broke, twenty-something addict charity case from bumfuck America. But here, at this park, surrounded by these pristine people, it was painfully obvious. I felt all eyes on my frumpy, swollen body, my frizzy hair and my fragile mind.

“Relax into a comfortable position and turn your gaze inwards towards your inner landscape.”

That is exactly what I’d been trying to avoid doing over the last few weeks of being clean—my inner landscape was not a happy place: it was more like a dark labyrinth, the sort of place I might get lost in and never find my way out. So while everyone else focused on their “third eye gaze,” I focused on the sun peaking up over the mountains.

I hadn’t seen the sunrise since my last relapse the week before—although I’m struggling to call it a relapse. Part of me wonders if I shouldn’t count it. I was so good for so long—six months of sobriety—does one night really count? But even as I ask myself this question, I know the answer. As if on cue, my other voice retorts:

You got blackout drunk, took enough shots that you decided blowing lines with two of your colleagues from your first “real job” in the back alley was a good idea and then you went home with the dealer and his friends to speedball and woke up in your apartment with no memory of how you got there or how you ended the night? It definitely fucking counts.

“We’ll move into balancing poses. Come into Warrior Two position, feeling the strength in your body and the quiet calm that resides within you.”

Within moments, I have the sweats—and the stinky cat-pee smell that I think must be from years of toxifying my body—my legs are shaking, quivering enough to make the cellulite on my thighs jiggle. The woman next to me stands like a goddess, still and calm and strong. Her focus never waivers, a hair never moves out of place even as we’re instructed to lift our back leg and balance on one leg with the other extended back, “as straight as an arrow slicing through the struggles of life.” Sobriety sucks, I think. I huff and imagine my face slowly turning the color of the beets I saw when I walked through the farmer’s market this morning to get here and—as she prompts us to bend forward and lift our floating leg even higher, “to the sky,” it takes everything in me not to pant, or collapse face first into the grass, rolling like tumbleweed down the side of the hill the park is perched on.

What would happen if I fall and break my neck? I wonder, as we contort our bodies into yet another unimaginable pose (I can no longer hear the yoga teacher speak, I’m just focusing on the woman next to me and feebly trying to impersonate her). I image this scene unfolding: me, fallen down the hill in front of me, and breaking my leg—hell, maybe my neck—in the process. Who would come rescue me? Probably no one in this class. Or, if they did, who would even come to find me in the hospital? My ex-boyfriend whose heart I left in shambles? My best friend who no longer wants to be around me and “the chaos” of my life? My parents who begged me stay in rural America and not to move two thousand miles away to this city when I was at an irrational rock bottom? Would any of them come—would any of them even care?

I suddenly become blissfully aware that people in class are laying down. I collapse in a heap on the grass, not caring that I didn’t have a mat like the other people in the group, not caring the bugs flew around my face and armpits like scavengers—I lay there panting like a dog.

My chest heaving, my exhales a buzzing in my ears.

I close my eyes and see nothing.

I drift in and out, maybe from lack of sleep, maybe from extreme exertion.

I don’t know much time has passed when I hear the sound. A gentle, almost imperceptible humming of a bell that grows louder and louder, slowly coaxing me back into focus. As the bell fades, other sounds heighten: the wind in the trees, birds somewhere nearby, the sound of my breath—which now slows and deepens.

“Slowly come to a seated position and use this moment to find gratitude. Gratitude for this earth, this community, this moment. Gratitude for yourself: for honoring your body and your mind.”

Rising, my legs felt shaky as if I might collapse right there. There’s grass stuck to the creases in my neck and the sun seems brighter than before. I feel a little disoriented, but not in the way I felt when I was on something. It was as if that humming sound I heard had settled in my chest. I think I feel content. I also feel a cautious pride. I had done it, and “it” felt like more than just getting through this class. Maybe “it” was being in this city, despite not fitting in. Maybe “it” was not letting myself continue on a bender after that last relapse. Maybe “it” was recovery. Maybe “it” was the way the mountains rose into that crisp blue sky. Maybe “it” was discovering me.

I realize I don’t care what “it” was—whatever the hell it was, it felt good. And I wanted more of it.

-Aurora Bonner

Aurora Bonner is a writer and yoga teacher. Her work has been published in Under the Gum Tree, Impost: A Journal of Creative and Critical Work, the Colorado Review, Brevity, Assay: Journal of Nonfiction Studies, and elsewhere. Aurora holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Wilkes University.