Chapter 19
Dear Rosie,
It’s day thirty-seven now. I’m counting things in strange ways. Not just the days since my last drink, but the days since I started writing to you. Since I stopped pretending thinking about you was the same thing as talking to you. There’s a difference, I’m learning.
Sobriety is harder than I expected. Every day brings a different challenge.
The first thirty days felt like a physical battle, my body versus the absence of alcohol.
I fought against the headaches, the sweats, shaking hands, and insomnia that made the nights stretch endlessly.
Now, my body has mostly settled, and I sleep through the night more often than not.
I can hold a coffee cup without worrying the tremble of my hand will spill it, and I can sit through a meal without my stomach twisting itself into knots.
But emotionally?
It suddenly feels like someone has turned the volume all the way up.
There’s no buffer anymore or warm haze to dull the sharp edges.
Waking up every day is a new reminder that you’re no longer here, with me.
It’s not a thought but more of a sensation.
An emptiness in the space that my body still expects to be filled.
Sometimes, I reach out before I’m fully awake, and my hand meets cool sheets instead of your warmth.
That split second before reality settles in is the cruelest moment of my day.
For just a breath, I forget. For just a breath, I think maybe this has all been a long, terrible dream.
Then I remember.
Group sessions have gotten deeper lately.
We’re not just talking about cravings anymore.
We’re talking about the reasons underneath them.
The shame, the fear, and the guilt. I talked about that day.
How what was supposed to be one of our happiest days became the one that erased my future in one clean swipe.
And then I told them about the motel room and the empty bottle of whiskey on the floor.
And how that was the moment I realized I didn’t care if I drank too much and never woke up.
There was silence when I finished. It wasn’t uncomfortable, but heavy with understanding. A room full of men staring back at me who actually got it. Like they knew what rock bottom felt like. I didn’t expect that. I didn’t expect other people to understand the depths of my grief.
Dr. Patel says this is what I’ve been avoiding, not just the sadness, but the vulnerability. I was afraid to admit that I’m not okay, and that I wasn’t strong enough to carry this burden alone.
I still miss you so bad it hurts, but I’ve started reading your journal entries at night after I write to you.
I trace the letters with my finger, like it might magically let me hear the sweet sound of your voice again.
But I’m also absolutely terrified that if I let myself fully feel what missing you is like, it will swallow me.
That I’ll drown in its depths without the whiskey to float me through it.
But so far, I haven’t. I cry more than I ever have in my life, feeling every ounce of this ache instead of running from it. And yet, somehow, I’m still here.
I don’t know if that’s impressive or just necessary, but I’m doing it. For me, I guess. And definitely for you.
I wish you could see that I’m trying.
Dear Rosie,
Day forty-nine!
I didn’t think I would ever get to a place where the days would stop feeling like obstacles and start feeling like steps. Small, uneven ones, but forward movement all the same.
I still miss you something fierce, and the cravings still come, but they’re quieter now.
More like background noise than a blaring siren I can’t ignore.
When it gets loud, I pause, breathe, and remind myself that it will pass.
And it does. Not instantly or magically, but it rises and falls like a tide instead of a wave crashing over me.
The hardest part is the grief and missing you, but even that feels, or is beginning to feel, different.
My first thought each morning is still you—I don’t think that will ever change—but it’s softer, less like being punched in the gut, and more like a steady ache.
It still hurts, but the pain is no longer blinding.
I’ve been going on walks around the property after dinner.
There is a trail that curves behind the building, lined with tall trees that rustle in the wind.
The air back there smells of pine and damp earth, and I love the simplicity of it.
Sometimes, I close my eyes and imagine you walking beside me, your hand brushing against mine while I tell you about my day.
I can almost see your warm smile, beaming with pride about the progress I have been making.
I want to make you proud, dreamer. The only thing I want more is you… I came here fearful of the man I was becoming, but I want to be sober because I want to be the man you knew. Someone you would still love.
I started playing my guitar again. Just a little late at night when the common room is empty.
My fingers were stiff at first, the strings biting into my skin that has gotten soft, but the music came.
Slowly. I can’t make it through more than a few verses of any songs about you or us, which is most of them.
But I keep trying. Apparently, I haven’t completely hung up my guitar, and that feels like something.
Dr. Patel asked me who I am without alcohol or you in our session today.
I hated the question the first time she asked a few weeks ago.
It felt like she was trying to erase you, like I’m trying to erase the booze.
But that’s not what she meant. Loving you can still be a huge part of who I am.
It just can’t be the only thing I live for, and I’m starting to understand that.
You were my partner, my best friend, and the person I planned out my entire life with. Losing you and our future shattered me, but it didn’t erase me. I am still here. I am still breathing. And I am capable of something other than self-destruction.
She’s pushing me to imagine a new future for myself. Not a replacement for the one we wanted. Never that. Just… different.
Dear Rosie,
Tomorrow makes day fifty-five. Even as I write this, it feels surreal. It’s almost time to leave.
For weeks, this place felt like a cage. Structured days.
Scheduled meals and counseling. Therapy sessions that peeled me open.
Now it feels like support beams holding me upright while I’m still under construction.
And I’m about to walk out of here without them, suddenly being forced to stand on my own two feet.
I’m not sure where I’m going or what I’m going to do.
All I know is I can’t go back to our home.
It’s a museum now, nothing more than a shrine for a life that doesn’t exist anymore.
If I try to live there, I’m going to freeze myself in time.
I’ll sit on the edge of our bed and drink myself to death, waiting for a future I know isn’t coming.
I’ve been talking with the discharge planner. There are options… A sober-living house for a few months, an apartment in the city, or moving in with a friend, like Mason, until I find my way. None of them feels right. Not that any of them feel wrong, either.
I can’t return to our life, Rosie. Not because I don’t want to. Fuck, I want to more than anything. I want to rewind to a random Sunday, with you humming on the back patio. I want the mundane back. Give me the ordinary and the safe. But that life ended the day you died.
What I’m starting to understand—slowly and very reluctantly—is that staying frozen in time won’t bring you back. It will only bury me beside you.
Fifty-five days ago, I thought strength meant not falling apart.
I thought to prove I love you meant I needed to hold it together at all costs.
Now, I’m starting to think that strength might be finding the courage to build something new from our wreckage, carrying you with me, instead of trying to crawl back to what we were.
I’m hopeful. That word feels scary to say out loud, but I am. Hopeful that I can stay sober one day at a time. Hopeful that I can still love you fiercely without it completely tearing me apart.
In a couple of days, when they hand me my sixty-day chip, I’m going to remember that, as much as it hurts sometimes, I survived. And I’m choosing to keep surviving every day.
I don’t know where I’m going after here, I just know that I’m headed there sober, and I’m taking you with me. Not as a weight pulling me under with grief, but as a compass, pointing me in the direction of the man you believed I could be.