I have a confession to make.

I’m actually quite scared to divulge this really quite petite fact that holds little significance in the grand scheme of things.

But I need to make it less powerful, to reduce the imaginary pull that seems to reel me in to the hold it has on me.

Under my desk is a bag, and inside the bag is a can of lager. The bag is covered with my blanket. It’s a safe space, one nobody in the house would dare to go near or touch, and I know this. The place was chosen to keep it safe, hidden by choice. If I had wanted it to be found, if I had wanted sanctuary from the mental battle currently engulfing me, I’d have put it in the fridge where everyone would see it.

The deviousness of hiding it somewhere nobody goes is a choice. There is always a choice.

That solitary can is my get out of jail free card. For me, it’s how I move around the board when everything becomes too impossible to handle or cope with. I’m still trying to decipher whether I’ve kept it as a deterrent, a safety net, perhaps; a reminder that the choice is there but I choose not to take it.

Or whether it’s actually there as an emergency, like a defibrillator placed perfectly.  Just in case.

Alcohol has become my “just in case.”

It was my crutch. My reliance. But I’m tired of the monotony of drinking to excess and the downward regression into anxiety, pain, dread, and shame. Yet I’m also painfully aware of my inner need to survive, to survive to raise my children, to survive to simply exist. Alcohol, in a twisted way, allows me to survive.

It destroys me, I know. My drinking crushes me. Mentally, it pulls me under. I isolate, I hide, I retract from a world that feels too loud and demanding.

But the noise. The endless noise; it stops me from seeing clearly. Everything becomes blurry when I’m sober. I hear too much, feel too much, and my brain can’t keep up with the incessant waves of fear, panic, and expectation. Alcohol dulls it down.

Because the withdrawal from society in active drinking gives me peace; but the withdrawal from alcohol in sobriety terrifies me.

To others, it might look like oversensitivity.

To me, it’s survival.

I know alcohol won’t solve anything. I know it doesn’t fix the pain, but do they see me? Do they feel the ache that floods every nerve? Living hurts, and there’s no softer way to say it. The pain may change form, but it still exists. And it can be utterly debilitating.

So this can of lager, this confession, I need to take the power out of it.

Perhaps binning it would solve everything. But it would also take away my safety card, and sometimes, holding onto something, even the wrong thing, feels safer than letting go completely.

I know my thinking is flawed.

I know that the problem isn’t the can of lager. It’s me. My inability to cope without something that helps me to breathe through the pain.

Because right now, I feel like I’m sinking, and there is no anchor.

If this were anyone else, I’d know exactly what to say.

I’d tell them tenderly that alcohol doesn’t heal pain; it only mutes it until it comes back screaming. I’d remind them that what they’re really reaching for isn’t the drink; it’s peace.

But when it’s me, everything changes.

Logic becomes fog. My own advice turns to whispers I can’t quite hear over the noise.

Because I know what it’s like to sit in the dark, heart racing, eyes burning, wanting the world to stop spinning for just a moment. I know the exhaustion of surviving when every breath feels heavy.

I know I’m damaged. I know I’m broken in ways that words can’t capture. I see it in my shaking hands, in the silence that follows my tears, in the way I pretend strength to protect those I love. Some days it feels like I’m hanging on by my fingernails  and they’re bleeding.

That can under my desk isn’t just alcohol.

It’s a symbol. A promise of escape. A threat dressed as comfort. A reminder that control is both my safety and my prison.

I tell myself I keep it as a choice, that as long as it stays there, I hold the power. But maybe the truth is this; the real power lies in not reaching for it.

Maybe one day I’ll throw it away. Maybe one day the pull will fade.

But tonight, this confession, these words, are my first step.

Because saying it out loud, admitting that it exists, that I exist like this, is me taking the power back, even if just for a moment.