As our 5-year-old daughter cried at 6:30 a.m. and screamed, “I don’t get to go to the Olympics!” I realized we had made a huge mistake. My husband, Evan, and I are trying our best to raise Marcelline like all the books (and Instagram Reels) have taught us, but bribery has become our go-to tactic.
Lately, Marcelline has been trying to learn how to stay dry through the night, without a pee accident in her bed, so I struck a deal with her: “If you can stay dry through the night for a whole week,” I said, “we’ll take you to the place Charlotte had her birthday party.”
“I get to go to the Olympics?” she said.
Last summer, Marcelline went to a birthday party at a local gymnastics facility while the Olympics were happening. Since then, she has called this gym “the Olympics.”
I thought this was a foolproof plan. Marcelline was almost potty trained and just needed a little nudge. I pictured Evan and me on the sidelines of this gym, high-fiving each other as Marcelline jumped into the foam pit.
Instead, it has been months of a weeping 5-year-old at the foot of our bed at ungodly hours, with pee-soaked pajama pants, screaming, “I’m not going to the Olympics!”
We live in an apartment complex with paper-thin walls in Jackson, Wyo., a ski town that is home to many actual Olympic aspirants, so I can only imagine what kind of aggressive athletic training program our neighbors think we’re putting our child through.
Last week, a few days after I turned 40, I woke up soaking wet. I’d had chills through the night and then sweats that shook me. In the morning, I had no fever and didn’t feel sick, but my T-shirt was sopping wet. I made Evan feel it.
“Whoa!” he said.
Nothing like this had ever happened to me. I turned to Google, which suggested my night sweats were likely caused by one of three things: anxiety, perimenopause or withdrawal from alcohol.
While depression has historically been my visitor, anxiety keeps showing up at my door. But enough anxiety that I’m getting night sweats?
I knew about perimenopause because if Instagram influencers want me to know about one thing, it’s that. I just thought, as a sprightly 40-year-old, I had a few more years before the next phase of the physical horrors of being a woman.
Withdrawal from alcohol, though, felt like a direct hit. I looked to my bedside table and saw the glass of “bed wine” from the night before.
“Bed wine” is something I promised myself I would quit this year. It’s the last glass of wine I bring with me as I climb into bed and to watch TV or do the crossword puzzle.
I tell people that my relationship with alcohol is “complicated,” but it’s not. I love drinking wine and a good cocktail, but booze is horrible to me. In my world, there’s always an excuse to drink: celebration, disappointment, stress. Eating Italian food needs wine; eating Mexican food needs a margarita. The list is endless and sloppy.
I keep telling myself that I will stay dry — sober — through the night. But then I make a concession, and once I have one drink, I want to have more. I don’t think about how I’ll feel the next day. I just think, “One more glass of wine, and I’ll watch one of my favorite shows in bed.”
There have been probably four or five instances in my life where I fell asleep in bed, upright, with a glass of red wine in hand. The worst was recently when I awoke in Hawaii after my friend’s 40th birthday and had spilled red wine all over the pristine white sheets of her friend’s bed. Thanks to marvels of stain removers, the wine came out, but I was mortified that I couldn’t stay dry through the night.
There are hundreds of instances from the last two decades that should have influenced me to stop drinking altogether, but I haven’t yet. I went through bouts of sobriety — my longest being my pregnancy with Marcelline. Beyond that, I willed myself to give up drinking with goals like Dry January. But I always found an excuse to come back to the bottle.
Three years ago, I was sober for 109 days straight. It was so hard at first, but then I started to love who I saw in the mirror. I felt like the depression that I had been self-medicating with booze was getting so much better. On day 108, Marcelline (then 2) had a fever-induced seizure, and I had to call 911. At a wedding the next night, day 109 of staying dry, I told Evan I wanted a drink because I was so shaken by seeing my baby have a seizure.
We each had a manhattan and then shared a slow dance under the stars. At the end of the night, he stayed out with the wedding party, and I went back to the cabin we had rented and opened a bottle of red wine and watched “Friends” while I fell asleep.
On mornings when my daughter doesn’t come in bawling about missing the Olympics, I ask her if she stayed dry through the night. Lately we have been neck-in-neck on our streaks. The longest dry streak I’ve had in the past few months has been 15 days.
I think about what my “Olympics” are. I fear that if I don’t get completely sober soon, I’ll never write the way I want to write. I’ll never get my book published. I’ll never run the mountains I want to run. I’ll never love myself the way I want to, which means I’ll never love my family the way they deserve. I fear that by not staying dry through the night, one night at a time, will mean I never make it to my greatness. And yet, I drink.
A month or so ago, I drank too much wine and was mean to Evan in front of Marcelline. I woke up early the next day and Evan recounted everything that happened. I was mortified. I apologized to Evan, and he hesitantly let me wrap my arms around him as I said, “I’m so sorry.”
Finally, he wrapped his arms around me and said, “It’s OK.”
But I don’t know if it is OK. I don’t know if I’m OK. I climbed into bed with Marcelline and snuggled up to her for 20 more minutes until she had to get up. When she awoke, I decided to tell her about last night.
Something I am trying to do is be honest with Marcelline about most things. She sees so much. She sees my relationship with Evan. She sees my relationship with work. She sees my relationship with my body and the way I eat. She sees my relationship to alcohol. So when something goes awry, I swallow my pride, admit my fault and talk to her about it. (Or at least that’s what an Instagram Mom told me I must do.)
“Hey sweetheart,” I said. “Last night I drank too much alcohol, and I was mean to Papa. I apologized to Papa, but I wanted to make sure I apologized to you, too. I’m so sorry.”
Marcelline didn’t skip a beat. “It’s OK,” she said. “But, Momma, did you apologize to yourself?”
I was taken aback. I haven’t apologized or forgiven myself for anything in as long as I could remember. I always looked to Evan, and if he forgave me, I was forgiven. But I have never come to myself and apologized for not being kind to myself, for slipping up, for keeping myself from the big things in life by some solid self-sabotaging.
I told Marcelline I hadn’t apologized to myself and promised her I would. And then I asked her the question of the morning: “Did you stay dry through the night?”
“I did!” she said. “How many days is that? How many more days until I get to go to the Olympics?”
“That’s four days,” I said. “You’ve stayed dry four nights, so you need three more.”
She had me by four days. Marcelline wet the bed — to much distress — the next night. We keep leapfrogging each other in staying dry through the night. Sometimes Evan will have already dealt with a crying child and cleaned up Marcelline before I’ve even gotten up.
When I do finally get up, I ask Marcelline: “Did you stay dry through the night?”
“No,” she says.
I pour myself a tall glass of water and think, “Me neither, kid.”
I want so badly for us both to stay dry through the night for many nights to come. There are so many Olympic events in life out there waiting for us.
Rachel Stevens is a writer in Jackson, Wyo.
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