One Year

One year ago

I put the glass down

and it felt like

putting down a weapon

I had mistaken for comfort.

I thought I was losing something.

A ritual.

A shield.

A way to blur the sharp edges

of my own mind.

I didn’t know

I was getting myself back.

One year

of raw evenings.

Of sitting in rooms

with nothing to soften them.

Of learning that feelings

don’t kill you

even when they feel like they might.

There were nights

I counted minutes.

Mornings I counted breaths.

Days I counted reasons

not to give in.

No one saw

how loud the quiet was.

How heavy the air felt

without the fog I used to live in.

But I stayed.

I stayed when cravings

came dressed as nostalgia.

When they whispered

just one won’t matter.

When they tried to rewrite history

into something sweeter than it was.

I remembered the truth instead.

The shaking hands.

The apologies.

The pieces of myself

I kept trading away

for temporary silence.

One year sober

means I feel everything.

The grief.

The joy.

The boredom.

The beauty.

It means my laughter

is mine.

My tears

are honest.

My mornings

belong to me.

I am not the wreckage

I once was.

I am not the hunger

that used to run my life.

I am a year of choosing

clarity over chaos.

Breath over blur.

Staying over slipping.

One year.

And I am still here—

not numbed,

not hiding,

not gone.

Still here.