The fall

When I stopped running away, I found myself.

That was the hardest moment… and the most necessary.

The day I stopped running, I came face to face with myself.

And it was devastating.

In my late forties, I wasn't living anymore: I was just surviving. Alcohol wasn't a habit or a bad phase. It was the center around which everything revolved: work, the night, the silence of my house, the pain of not knowing who I was without the noise in my head. And the most twisted thing is that from the outside, everything seemed fine. I had a stable job, I provided for my son, I paid my bills, I smiled when it was appropriate.

I was a functioning alcoholic.

Perfectly functioning.

Until I closed the front door.

As soon as I was alone, the daily descent began. That solitude had a price, which I paid in liters. Every morning I'd tell myself, "I'm not buying today," and every afternoon I'd show up with bags full or ordering beer delivery to avoid running into anyone. I faded away from the inside out. I stopped socializing, I stopped answering the phone, I stopped being. The house became an emotional basement without windows. Life felt so heavy that all I wanted was to feel nothing.

One early morning, I drank more than thirty cans. I don't know exactly how many. I know I woke up sprawled on the bathroom floor, my head throbbing, and that dry silence that only comes when you've crossed a line you can no longer pretend doesn't exist. That morning wasn't like the others. I didn't have the typical false promise of "I'll start tomorrow." It was fear. It was clarity. It was understanding that I had reached the point where my body could no longer sustain my way of life.

And right there, on that edge, I encountered something I hadn't expected.

I got up staggering and sat down in the living room, dizzy, with a churning stomach and trembling hands. I looked at a photo that had been there for years and until then had only been decoration: Lobo, tiny, perched on my shoulders, laughing on a beach. That image—his laughter—pierced me like nothing ever had. Everything I wasn't at that moment was there: the light, the innocence, the absolute trust in myself. And I understood that he needed me. That I was his home, his support, his anchor. That he had no one but me.

And that I couldn't disappear.

Not that day.

Not like that.

I grabbed my phone. I typed "Alcoholics Anonymous Usera." I didn't think about it too much. It wasn't bravery. It was survival.

The next day, a Sunday in July, I walked into that room without dignity, without strength, without anything. Only with the newly discovered fear of losing everything. Three and a half years have passed since then, without a drink. Over time, I also quit smoking, forced by my COPD and by a phrase from my pulmonologist that still echoes in my mind:

"Either you quit, or you die."

But abstinence didn't bring peace.

It brought the truth.

And the truth was, it was my BPD, which surfaced with all the violence of decades of silence.

The extreme emotions, the emptiness, the rage, the impulsiveness, the fear of abandonment. Everything I had always dragged along without a name. Everything I had tried to cover up with noise, substance abuse, escapes, and sleepless nights.

That was the true beginning of my recovery: to stop running from myself.

Since then, it's been therapy, psychiatry, support groups, breathing exercises, self-control, learning to be comfortable in my own skin without breaking anything, without breaking myself. This path hasn't been linear or easy, but it has been real. It has taught me that life isn't fixed all at once, it's sustained little by little. That strength isn't in not falling, but in not giving up the effort.

And I've done it for myself, yes.

But above all, for him.

Because Lobo is the only reason that has never moved, even when everything else was crumbling. He's the one who held me up without even knowing it. He taught me, without intending to, that the only way to truly love is to love without retreating. That I couldn't run from him, as I ran from everything else.

He needed me alive.

Present.

Aware.

Pure.

Honest.

And willing to be the example I never had.

And I am being that example.

The fall wasn't the end.

It was the first day of my life without anesthesia.

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