Day Eighty Five

Honesty means that I have to see myself exactly as I am. As it happens I’m not a cute, quirky, tortured artist. My favourite line in the British sitcom Black Books is when the misanthropic Book Shop owner gets caught in a lie and says: “I have to go along with all this "reclusive genius" stuff... she's going to be very upset when she finds out I'm a reclusive wanker.” The mythology I held about myself wasn’t in line with the facts.

While I wouldn’t go as hard as the character in Black Books and call myself a wanker, I still wasn’t the greatest rock star of my generation waiting to be discovered. Nor was I a renegade poet pushing back against the norms of society, I was using that as a smoke screen to hide, well, everything I’ve talked about in the past 84 days.

This was one of the final things I had to realise when I completely divorced my identity from that of someone who had consuming alcohol as a non-negotiable fact about themselves. I was left with me, the person I had been all along and lost along the way. There were some surprises, I was surprised at my strength, my commitment to my ideals, and what I was actually capable of. There were some not-so-pleasant discoveries as well, like the realisation I actually did feel anger, but I get to work on them too. It’s all you, and it’s all loveable.