Sarah Hepola recounts her long struggle to quit alcohol, during which she surreptitiously drank wine in her closet:
Friends talk to me about changes they are trying to make, and how they are slipping, and I watch them lash themselves for it. They say things like: I’m never going to change. What I wish I had known when I was drinking in that ridiculous closet is that change requires failure.
It requires screw-ups and a mouthful of grass and shins covered in bruises and I’m sorry, but I don’t know any other way around that. It also requires time and patience, two things I don’t particularly like, because I was raised in the school of epiphany and instant gratification, which is why I loved alcohol, because it was fast, immediate, pummeling.
But change is not a bolt of lightning that arrives with a zap. It is a bridge built brick by brick, every day, with sweat and humility and slips. It is hard work, and slow work, but it can be thrilling to watch it take shape. I believed I could not quit drinking, that people would not like me sober, that life would be drained of its color — but every ounce of that was untrue. Which made me wonder what else I believed that was untrue. What other impossible feats were within my grasp.
(Image by Amelia Fais Harnas. More of her wine stain portraits here.)
The Dish 