Not For Me, Thanks

Hey, hey.
Been a moment, hasn’t it. And now here we are in 2026. Nice to see you. You’re looking well. You always do, from a distance.
How have you been? What have you been doing?

Me? Oh, you know. This and that. Finished another house project. Started a new one. I can’t ever seem to get fully off that treadmill — though I’m not entirely sure anymore whether it’s momentum or just habit keeping me there.

Still sober?
Yeah. You?
Oh, that’s good. I’m really glad.

Mad it’s coming up to a couple of years now. Time does that strange stretching thing, doesn’t it. Some days it feels like no time has passed at all. Other days it feels like a whole different life, lived by someone else.

So… where did you go?

Hmm. OK. Yeah — more than a few things happened then.
Only went and got Married. As someone said to me upon hearing this “It’s about bloody time!”. Finally made it abroad again. Big things. Proper milestones. The sort of moments people announce.

I did a lot of sorting. Clearing. Nesting? (not sure really if I ever did this beyond when I had my son but feels eerily right to include here). Rooms first. Then routines. Then the quieter internal cupboards you don’t really open unless something nudges you to. Not in a dramatic way. Just steadily. A bit at a time.

I think I expected things to get quieter when I stopped drinking. In some ways they did — but mostly the noise just changed. Lower volume. Sharper edges. Easier to hear. Harder to pretend it wasn’t saying anything useful.

Some days felt solid. Calm, even. Other days I couldn’t quite tell whether I was resting or stalling. Whether stillness was healing or just very polite avoidance. It’s hard to know the difference sometimes.

But I kept going. Not heroically. Just consistently.
Which might be the most honest way I can put it.

Still sober, yeah. Still choosing it. It doesn’t feel shiny anymore. There’s no sense of achievement attached most days. It’s more familiar than that now. More lived-in. Like something that belongs to me rather than something I’m holding up for inspection.

I’m not sure when it happened, but I stopped narrating my progress. It didn’t feel like a decision — more like something easing off. The work didn’t stop. Just the need to explain it.

And you — you look lighter somehow. Which feels strange to say, considering the year we’ve both just lived through. Loss, fallout, endings that weren’t exactly chosen. But maybe that’s the thing. When the weight finally gets put down, even briefly, it shows.

Funny how we do this. Drift. Circle back. Pick things up halfway through, like no time passed at all.
Anyway. It’s good to see you. Really.