Lost Evenings

by 3733, Moderation Management Forum Member

A few scenes stand out in my mind. I have a room in my house that I love so much. When I bought the house, a very long time ago now, this room was one of the reasons why. It’s small and square, positioned off the dining room, separated by a glass-paned door. There’s a window on the west wall that opens out onto the trees into the backyard. The light falls just so. As I toured the house, I glanced into the room and saw exactly what belonged there: a rocking chair with a footstool and a big, cozy afghan. Bookshelves, floor to ceiling, filled with books. Me, in the rocker, sipping tea, paging through those books, under a lamp, in the evening, taking notes on meals for dinner parties, a garden… 

I bought the house. A cheap rocker, some bookshelves, and a lamp were among its first furnishings. I moved all my cookbooks onto the shelves, and I browsed used bookstores for volumes on designing, planting, and maintaining a garden. That piece of the vision remains aspirational, to this day. I couldn’t quite make time for gardening, with everything else I have going on. But I spent many happy weekend afternoons reading and plotting with my tea. I didn’t spend evenings in my reading room because by the evening, I was too drowsy from wine. 

There’s also an evening pretty far along in my drinking life, maybe ten years or so after I bought the house. I remember coming home from work, unloading the groceries, turning on some show, pouring a glass of wine, and getting ready to cook. Out of nowhere, a message popped up in my mind: “Once you pour that first glass, the day is over.” Suddenly, I had one of those time-lapse visions of my days, as if I were watching them on film: get up, get some exercise, work hard at my job, all day and late into the evening…but in my office, because when I got home and poured that wine, the rest of the day would disappear. Coming home meant pouring wine.

Is that what you want? I asked myself. To lose every single evening in this same, mind-numbing way? 

And that’s how I thought of it, suddenly. The word for my evenings was “lose.” 

I’m a pretty resourceful person. Most people would describe me as creative and smart, and I usually have a lot of projects in mind. I am also happy, happy being on my own. I loved living solo in that house, with my books and my cooking and my music. And I loved not having to answer to anyone, or accommodate anyone, as soon as I was home. My job is public-facing and demanding, and when I’m on duty, I am really on. I listen, teach, accommodate, change tack, try again, and what have you until I’m completely drained. Standing there in my kitchen, I saw that my solution “drained” was… continuing to drain…pouring my evenings away, via one rich, tasty, glass of garnets after another, until I nodded out. 

Yuk.

Why didn’t I drink tea in the evenings? Why didn’t I sit in my reading room, rocking and reading under the lamp, figuring out a garden? 

That evening, I had a sad thought: “Some women drink herbal tea in the evenings, 3733. But you are not one of those people.” I felt wistful but sure: that other kind of life was closed to me. 

I held onto that belief for a long time. If you asked me then, I’d have said, “Well, this is just the kind of person I am. I leave it all on the field each day, and at night I drink red wine.”  With some hindsight, obviously, I just wasn’t ready to make the choice to give up the wine. To say “I’m not that kind of person” was to avoid thinking about that. 

But a year or so later, I read a piece in the newspaper about moderation. It turned out that a lot of people were uncomfortable with how much they were drinking. And a lot of women, in particular, were puzzling over their relationships to wine. Moderation curious. Harm reduction. These ideas sounded pretty appealing to me. Maybe they would get me a few steps closer to that tea-drinking woman I wanted to be. 

I joined Moderation Management in 2017, and I never looked back. It has taken time and a fair amount of work. But with some intentionality, with some friendly self-coaching, and with the support of the amazing, true-blue community we have in the MM Forum, I’ve been able to build that evening-tea-drinking, rocking-chair-reading woman into my personality. Bringing her in means cutting back, a little or a lot, at work. Instead of giving every ounce of what I have to my job, and then pouring in new ounces, each night, from a bottle, I save attention, energy, and time for me. I’ll duck out early and take the dog out on a hike, or head someplace to watch the sun set, or I’ll meet a friend for coffee. 

I worked a lot of this new kind of life out with the help of fellow moderation-minded folks in the MM Forum. MM changed my life, not just my evenings. I’m hoping we can be there for you, too.

–3733