The Shittest Gift

Notes from an Optimist

Image created by the author in Canva

I drank for forty-one years. From the age of thirteen to fifty-four.

When I look back at those decades of thank-you numbing, of forced extroversion, of because-it-was-there comfort, I can’t remember a day when I loved it.

I remember the times when I was with amazing people and laughed, but with hindsight, I still laugh as hard with the same people as I did when I was thirteen. Alcohol simply served as a mechanism by which I didn’t care how hard I laughed, or flirted, or bawled out some too-feely man.

But alcohol never, ever, felt like a good thing.

It always had the distinct flavour of guilt, shame and secrets. A bad taste in my mouth that I could never rinse away.

Of course, as an adult with a very early childhood marked by the nearly forgotten bad things, it helped. It helped take away the pain of memories shaded by youth, not fully formed or remembered. I was too young. I thank the various gods I have clung to for solace, for being too young. A gift I will always be grateful for.

I can see every bottle of wine pinned on the map of my life to today. There are no dots of Yellow Happy Times, no Garnet Deep Connections, no Sky Blue Peace. They are all black.

Every good day, Christmases with children, birthdays and celebrations, slopped over with alcohol and a deep sense of just, nothing.

It did not stop me from trying to find the pretty pins. From the youngest age, I scrabbled for more and better and best. I wanted my life to be my own. I wanted to choose the pins from a rainbow boxful but no matter how hard I tried, I kept losing myself to poor choices and pretending I was sophisticated.

When I reflect on my drinking days, I never lost all of my optimism. I endlessly planned, crafted and learned. I wanted to be the me I imagined when I read The Secret Garden or Pride and Prejudice. But every mouthful of wine drowned out any hope I had. I had a rope tied around my middle, endlessly pulling me forward, never allowing me to navigate.

Around forty-five, menopause made life hell. I lost all sense of who I was, my body began to live its own life, separate from me. The mind I was so proud of, became unruly and breathtakingly angry. Dragging myself back became a monthly, unwinnable, herculean task.

Optimism became thinly spread.

It was around this time that I began to wonder if alcohol was becoming a bit of a nuisance. Up until this point, it had lived with me like a sort of benign sop. It would sit with me, soothe me, send me to bed. But the combination of wine and the menopause set me on fire.

Every shred of who I was burned down every day. I would wake up in the mornings, a tiny sliver of optimism still lingering, and start out with my best foot forward. By 9.00pm, children in bed and feeling safe, I would take out the matches and start all over again.

I started to long for a rock-bottom that someone, anyone, could save me from. I was never drinking enough for a rock-bottom though. I was just drinking enough to be dead standing up.

The torture of the next nine years is quite hard for me to recall or talk about. I completely lost who I was. Admittedly, I did try and find myself in an ashram in India for three months. I almost succeeded too and I can’t really remember whether it was all the meditation and three hours of yoga a day, or being sent by my swami to a local hospital so I could sit in a bath and have cold jets of water blasted on my spine. Very good for menopause apparently.

By the time I was ready to leave, pushy, optimistic me was back in full force with an enlightened soul and some old lady wisdom.

It didn’t last, of course. My next move to Taiwan, unbeknownst to me, found me in the rampant drinking culture which is thinly disguised as TEFL Teachers. To this day, I still find it hard to think or talk about that time without a deep, deep sense of regret. So many missed opportunities, so much missed optimism. After three-and-a-half years of it, I could only run away. I hated who I had become and somewhere along the way I had also allowed myself to fall in love and got my heart broken, again.

Next stop Spain. Start again Jules, it’s the only way. Teaching in Spain is not going to make you rich, so my weekly budget became a mathematician’s envy as I winkled alcohol into my shopping basket.

I was fifty-four by then and utterly desperate for that rock-bottom I knew would never come. Stubbornly clinging to any sliver of optimism I could find had become my life’s purpose.

Journal it out, girl. Om on it. Manifest it. Buy the new book. This one will work. Just fucking believe. In yourself. In the Universe. In that god. In this god. In unicorns.

The optimist’s toolkit.

Hadn’t I learned enough by now? I was a traveller and yogi — bloody hell — that should have been my passport to bliss.

I can’t see the day I stopped drinking that clearly. I know the date and I knew I was just bored to tears with my own uselessness but it was just another day. How much older did I have to get to be better or happy? How many more books and courses and meditation and, and…before I figured life out? Endless questioning and trying became as dull as life itself.

Until it’s gone, you don’t realise how much of a bestower of shit gifts alcohol is.

It gifted me with a constant mild depression for forty years. Not enough to be clinical but just enough for me to be endlessly miserable. It gave me a veil I could never see beyond that stopped me from crafting a life that I could look back on with pride. Yes, I have achieved much, but the possibilities I could not see are littered behind me, more black dots.

It gave me the shittest gift of all. Negativity. I loathe alcohol for stealing forty-one years of my ability to keep going with one thing and do it well, instead of giving up. I loathe it for forcing me to always expect the worst and be proved right.

Sobriety was not an instant optimism fix. It took a while and it wandered in and out of my life for a long time. Eventually, it came home to stay.

Today my optimism is my shield and my fuel. My childlike optimism that wrote poems about feet is back. The creative part of me that thought the little hippie creatures I drew on the wall behind my bed, thinking it was hilarious, is back. And there is more. More of me living in a way that feels how it should always have felt. Free to think, free to be.

My optimism provided the wave I needed to ride for a whole year while I wrote my book. I am back. Little me before the ick. Little me who had laughter and clarity and fun. She’s back along with the most natural thing in the world — hope.

Today I am finally doing the work I was always meant to do. It found me as late as it needed to and it makes me feel really good about myself.

When I talk about what I’m doing, I hear a lot of “that’s nice”, “I really hope it works out for you,” and “aren’t you tired” comments and I recognise them for what they are. And I don’t care.

They don’t have to believe me.

You don’t have to believe me.

Just watch me.

You would be blinded by the brilliance of my life map now.

Jules Rutherford is the author of *Most Loving Thing* and writes about midlife, alcohol, optimism and becoming who you were always meant to be. She hosts the Most Loving Thing Lounge on Skool, where she helps women change their relationship with alcohol.