volume fifty-three

I love a good list pt.2

Hello, my friends!

Last week marked volume fifty-two (aka a whole year) of hi, lauren deborah! and I didn’t even realise until after I had hit send. I also know that I skipped unlucky-for-some volume thirteen, so really, this week is our one-year anniversary of being together. THANK YOU for a whole year of reading my brain dumps, my inner monologues, my journeys in my sobriety and loneliness and self-love and finding myself again and writing and my sexuality and dreaded yet exciting crushes that have snuck in over the last year.

I am a work in progress and it is such a pleasure to share that with you all and see where you can relate. I am so grateful for every comment and like and interaction that allows me to get to know you better. Happy anniversary to my favourite relationship yet.

Don’t forget, you can ask me a question (either anonymously or let me know who you are) here and I will answer it in a future post — this gives you the power to choose a future topic of hi, lauren deborah! — pretty neat huh? Maybe you’re curious about my thoughts or feelings around my demisexuality and bisexuality that I had not yet addressed, maybe as I celebrate fifteen months of sobriety this week you want to ask about my experiences or a certain aspect, maybe you want to know who cuts my hair (because my Montreal person was 10/10 and now I have thankfully found a Vancouver person just as fab). The options are (respectfully) endless and I am here to chronically overshare any way you’d like me to.

As mentioned, this week marks fifteen whole months of sobriety. I am grateful every day for the last fifteen months and for each and every person who has supported and helped guide this journey. Without people encouraging me to talk about it, I might not have stayed sober. Without recognising and leaning on my greatest allies, I might not have stayed sober. Without your messages and texts — especially from those who are also on a similar journey — I might not have stayed sober this long. One thing is for sure I wouldn’t have felt carried through and the hard days would have been much, much harder.

This week, as I continue to reflect and adjust to being in a city where I did a chunk of my drinking, I have been thinking about some things that unfortunately surprised me about my sobriety, things I might tell me fifteen months ago. But also I might not because it is all part of the journey. Perhaps it is naive of me to be surprised by these things, perhaps some of these are listed as a surprise with an air of sarcasm because they are so obvious it is silly that I was surprised. It has been a minute since I wrote you a listicle and I love a good list.

1. People will say “I didn’t think you needed to get sober” a lot or something to that effect and despite their intentions, it will make you feel like shit.

2. You can serve in a bar and upsell drinks and shots and describe the taste of a particular beer from memory and pour and shake cocktails without feeling anything but then one peaceful Monday morning, you will open the freezer and see an ice-cold vodka bottle that belongs to a roommate and crumble — ultimately having to hide it behind the frozen peas.

3. Zoom meetings are good when it’s all you’ve got, but only work if you go. When work emails pile in and you think “okay I will miss today and go tomorrow” for two weeks straight, that does nothing. In-person meetings are better. Human connection, chats before and after, maybe a dog. No hiding behind a camera turned off — showing up as your whole self who will be welcomed and loved. The bonus part of an in-person meeting is your walk there and back through summer evening heat and blue and pink skies, taking in the gorgeous neighbourhood and breathing fresh air with stretched legs.

4. You will voluntarily wake up at 4:30am every week morning to write and will trade 2pm for 8am on weekends.

5. It is a struggle to keep up with catch-ups now that you spend most of your nights resting, reading, writing, sleeping and not hitting up places you will bump into a dozen people you know so that you never actually have to make a plan to meet. They’ll wonder where you are and still try to make a plan and you will try to keep up and still not know the balance fifteen months in, of your social limit (or how to say no so you don’t say yes just to say no later).

6. Vacations are solo writing retreats now and not pub crawls. You will chase tranquillity and not [insert town or city]’s best margarita when you are away. You will crave getting away to somewhere quiet.

7. You don’t think you like cities anymore, certainly not to live in.

8. You are a way better listener.

9. You are becoming a way better dancer.

10. You sing at karaoke while on shift as a server and you love it even more now than when you were a few drinks in (at least) to even think about getting up there.

11. Non-alcoholic beers were an excellent security blanket and a way to break cravings in the early months, now you don’t even think about them and crave flavoured sparkly water. You will drink soda water for an entire wedding around merry people and not mind or notice one bit because you are a badass. Then when they hand out the champagne, a friend will gently tap your shoulder and ask if you want them to move yours and you will be so grateful they thought of that.

12. You are still so bad with money, just a different kind of bad.

13. You will get sassy with drunk customers, and not in a playful way. The shame of your past self will lead you to have zero patience with them. But also, you just have no time for their bullshit anymore.

14. You are an excellent communicator in sexy scenarios (in spite of the demisexuality factor) and have had delightful experiences as a result of using your voice, something new and different for you, and you deserve it. The more you communicate, the sexier you feel and the more confident you become and it's like a beautiful loop of loveliness in a situation that could quite often bring you dread before, at least the parts you recall.

15. As a demisexual, maybe your first sexual experiences after getting sober will end up being familiar ones to you and that is more than okay and honestly, makes perfect sense.

16. Your Spotify playlist that used to be called “songs to drink and party to” got renamed to “songs to walk to” (you haven’t changed the picture yet) but never gets played anymore. Your “isn’t it romantic?” playlist gets played a lot — solo — because you are the love of your life.

17. You’ve become someone that takes forever to reply to texts because it's just too much.

18. On the other hand, you will have so much energy you will be able to volunteer with organisations you want to. Before, when you lost so much time to sleeping in or blacking out, you really struggled to find the time despite the desire.

19. You love doing things solo and you don't just say you love doing things solo to sound like you’re okay: the cinema, coffee dates, errands, brunch, travel.

20. You’ll want way more alone time than you could have ever imagined, craving being in your own, wonderful head now you are happy in there.

21. You eat eggs on the weekend — the only reason you cannot call yourself a vegan. You make your own brunch because you are awake (and spritely bopping around to a good playlist) to do so.

22. Despite the hard days being harder in your early sobriety days, and still sometimes now of course, the good days continue to be completely and utterly delightful without any ounce of glee being numbed — a high that lasts until the next.

23. You will (despite stereotypes of people who get sober) get less fit. Your body will be without a doubt healthier as you decide better what you feed yourself, but you will stop working out for an hour every morning and trade that for writing — and if the crows are behaving, a gentle walk. The only explanation you can think of is that you don’t think you need to make up for the night before. When you spent your mornings ferociously exercising — even if it meant holding puke in the back of your mouth or sweating out every bit of ick from the night before — you were subconsciously saying “I can’t have a drinking problem because I am perfectly capable of waking up and aggressively working out every morning”. You just listen to your body now.

24. You will never have been so secure in your demisexuality and bisexuality, with no clouded judgement or numbed or squashed feelings. You will be more sure than ever but with absolutely no pressure to behave any which way or fit any kind of mould.

25. You read a lot more, but you still barely read.

26. You will grow to hate your phone — the one thing that was your best and most loyal companion for almost two decades — and a lot of the apps on it. Especially the ones with endless scrolls, because you will discover that drinking isn’t the only thing you cannot do in moderation.

27. Naps will not feel guilty and wasteful, they will feel like self-care and quite frankly, necessary.

28. Maybe you’ll be celebrating your 15-month anniversary, writing this list feeling great, then go to work at the restaurant that night and someone will order a Jack and Coke and when you pour it, the smell makes you want to cry which makes you feel weak and foolish. You remember how much you miss it, how Jim and Jack were the main men in your life, and so you take a deep breath and you press on and deliver it with a smile. Then the customer comes back to complain that it’s rum, not JD and you try to tell them it can’t be. There is no way. You wish you could say that the bottle is still on the bar from where you poured it and the lump is still in your throat from where you got a whiff. But you can’t tell them how you know that, you can’t let your tears bubbling up, out. You can’t tell them how hard it was to pour it and how it made you think of Friday nights and Sunday afternoons and barefoot dancing on soft grass and BBQs and late sunsets and beach picnics and happy hours with shared nachos and your first watch of a SuperBowl in a pub and a seven-piece funk band and stumbling outside to see your first snow storm and shared cigarettes and first kisses. So you pour them another through gritted teeth as you pour the first down the drain. You hate the smell of rum, it makes you think of puking in buckets, and as the drink trickles down the pipes, it smells like every kind of nostalgia — but the customer is always right.

29. And so you could be feeling so sorry for yourself. On the edge of texting an ex or crush because you need to feel as if someone cares for you, craving someone on your side, even though you know you won't find it there, it is inside you. Damn it. Then you walk out of work, thinking of texting one of your few sober friends, hoping they are still awake, and there, waiting for the bus is a sober pal to who you tell the whole story. And the whole thing, it’s nothing anymore. The weight is lifted and you both share a laugh. You make a plan to hang out with him for sober fun things. 

30. You will stop one day on a walk with a friend when she asks how you are and instead of your autopilot “good thank you, how are you?” you will honestly say “I think this might be the first time in my life I have ever truly loved myself”.

What has surprised you, lately?

Thanks for being on this journey with me, friends.

I love you, and I am so grateful for you,

Lauren xoxo

Three things I struggled with this week:

🤠 The good news is that after over two years unable to access healthcare due to a pandemimoore and living in a province that has a wild healthcare system — my healthcare here has kicked in and I was able to see a doctor — attending to lots of self-care things that had to be put off. The bad news is that the medication I have finally and thankfully been able to get for my acne requires extreme sun protection and I look weird in hats.

🤹 Taking one day at a time is hard at the moment while juggling so many balls in the air.

❤️ I have mentioned in the last few editions that I am homesick and missing my Nan and Pop. A lot of long-time readers who followed along with my ventures back home know how special they are to me and how much I cannot wait to be living with them. They’re both unwell right now and it's ongoing and it sucks to be so far away. Every day I am torn between going to be with them right now and sticking to my plan for October as I am also so happy here and there are things I need to get done before I go. I miss my weekly phone calls with them so much and I can’t even get those right now as they are not at home, so Mondays are not the same. I miss my home with them. If it’s your thing, I would love for you to say a little prayer for them.

Three blessings from this week:

✍️ This week was the first of six where I was asked to lead a comedy writing workshop with my writing community. I feel so honoured to be asked and felt so out of depth — until the first class. I was smiling ear to ear and felt so in my element. Wow, I am super knowledgeable? It helped that everyone taking the course are delights. What a joy to share my fun wisdom with such bright beams!

💌 I burst into happy tears in front of my roommate when I got the thank you card from the bride and groom from the wedding I attended a few weeks ago. Not only was the message just gorgeous and personal, but I couldn’t contain how much I love my friend, and how happy it makes me they are so happy.

💒 I may be off social media but I am still subscribed to JLo’s newsletter so you better believe I have spent the week thrilled about a vegas drive-thru wedding (my dream wedding please — despite my constant need for attention a big wedding isn’t for me. I think I would prefer to give the shock factor to anyone who knows me and a romantic thrill to myself via eloping instead). THE PICS ARE SO CUTE AND THE WORLD SUCKS IN SO MANY WAYS I WILL NOT APOLOGISE FOR MY JOY FOR THEM.

Three goals for the coming week:

🚴 Get lots of outdoor time and fresh air. My to-do list is feeling caught up on (for now) and as I add to it, I will ask “is this necessary?” and “can I say no?”

☑️ Deliver on a commitment I made long ago, and want to keep, but has just been stopped so much due to the busy work I was doing (and not loving, you’ve heard about it if you’ve read this before or met me just once). Give what I promised I would, not just because I should, but because I really want to.

☀️ Schedule this substack on Wednesday and see you all next week as I have a wonderful friend visiting me all week and I am off to enjoy Vancouver sunshine with her.

What I am enjoying this week: 

Podcasters (or aspiring ones) of all marginalized genders come and join this FREE community created by The Wave. You might just spot yours truly there, too 🧡

A place for resources, support, collabs, co-working, educational events and more!

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hi, lauren deborah! is free for subscribers every week. feel I am not sharing enough? ask me a question and I will answer it in a future post.

if you would like to say thanks for this love letter, please like or comment (it means so much to me to hear from you 🧡), forward it to a friend who might enjoy it or if you’d like to, you can buy me a slice 🍕