No Comfort

Early winter is the perfect time to get sober

This time of year in Pittsburgh used to really bother me. It meant that winter was actually going to happen. It meant that we were about to hit the long slow skid in the calendar that brought us into darkness and only reluctantly let us out on the other side.

Winter feels like a game: You freeze in place whenever the first snow falls, and until the last of it has thawed, you’re left suspended in whatever drop of amber you happen to be caught in. If you don’t like your life — your house, your body, the sights and smells — too bad.

I don’t think that’s especially true, actually. Change can and does happen at any time. But there’s a certain claustrophobia to winter. Snow is monotonous, and conditions that drive you inside drive you to experience the machinery of your habits with even fewer mystery inputs than usual.

My sobriety date is November 2 — and I don’t think it’s a coincidence that this occurred just after the last party-based holiday of the calendar year, and just as the rain in Iowa began to freeze. I can’t keep doing this to myself is a pretty standard-issue bit of interior monologue for a drunk, but it’s a lot more panicky when the sun sets at 4pm. Can I really handle another whole winter of this? Can I really let the sun go down on me in this way?

I actually think winter is a perfect time to get sober. You get through all of the family-based holidays right away. You aren’t frequently accosted by people drinking wine on the sidewalk while looking very much like they aren’t about to ruin their lives. It’s acceptable to go to bed early. All very helpful.

But also, that same degree of inwardness makes it possible to detect the minor patterns of thought that can be easily dismissed the rest of the year. At some point, it gets too quiet for you to distract yourself, and you have to listen to whatever is happening under the surface.

When I was drinking, the prospect of listening to underwater thoughts was terrifying: There were so many of them. I had no idea what they wanted of me. I interpreted each one as an implicit criticism, because surely I wouldn’t feel dread unless I had done something wrong. Actually, at the time, I don’t think I knew there was a difference between my thoughts and my feelings, and I had no idea that some of my thoughts were just blatantly untrue. I woke up feeling overwhelmed by my own wrongness, which seemed so inherent to me that I couldn’t do anything with it except turn down the volume.

It’s been eight years since my last drink. And now, when it gets dark early and the first snow falls, I don’t feel like I’m an abductee being driven into darkness. I feel some kind of gratitude (yuck, I know) that the world is interesting enough to present so many tides and changes, so many textures and open-ended questions. When the leaves fall off the locust trees across the street, we’ll be able to see the shape of the branches broken away during the hail storm that dented the roof of my car. We’ll see how the insides of things have changed.

Winter used to worry me because I needed comfort, and it prevented so many challenges to that need. But I don’t crave comfort in the same way, and paradoxically, I find there’s a lot of peace in that.

My insides get quieter and quieter. In one way, that’s a weird thing because small talk carries the expectation of shared miseries. I don’t have much to share in that regard, so what do I say? I’m really enjoying oatmeal lately? I think the latest Sally Rooney novel is about the un-erotics of politeness? Maybe I should say those things. But it seems at least as interesting to listen.