It’s OK if you find this January hard. You’re NOT alone.
FIONA LOONEY
IN retrospect, we didn’t really think Dry January through in our house. For starters, we failed to note that there are five weekends in this arid month – that’s one more than is decent. And we certainly didn’t process how withdrawing the last remaining shred of social normality from our lives – at a time when every other support has been ripped away – would actually affect us.
I was doing fine, to be honest. Three weekends deep, and, with a mountain of work to summit each day, I barely had time to think, let alone drink. I’d even begun considering extending January’s drought all the way to the end of February, which is a month of a perfectly respectable length and would see me through to the end of my current work demands.
But, as he was heading for bed on Saturday night, my 21-year-old son came to talk to me, and everything changed. He is a happy man, the sort of giant boy who laughs his way through life and never seems stressed by anything. But he was really, really sad on Saturday night. Sadder, he said, than he’s ever been. He’s missing his friends, his college, his job, his life. And even though Dry January had been his idea for both of us, now he was missing his nights sitting at the kitchen table with me, drinking cans, playing music and talking stuff and nonsense. After ten months, Not Nearly Enough had suddenly become Too Much.
He wasn’t the only one. I know so many other people who found last week the hardest. The numbers were so grim, the forecast so bleak, the reality so difficult that a lot of people cracked. My children are in third level, but I know the return of homeschooling for thousands of parents brought a whole new level of stress into an already almost unbearable situation. Add to that the fact that there is no real end date to look forward to – nobody honestly believes we will exit Level Five in 11 days’ time – and it was all just a bit too much. Never have those old jokes about ‘looks like I picked the wrong time to quit drinking’ seemed more appropriate.
So, in the end, I didn’t so much fall off the wagon as quite calculatedly climb down from it. I bought wine for the Sunday dinner, and we all drank some. Then we opened another bottle, and the music came on, and my son hogged the playlist like he always does. And we listened and we laughed and we chatted and reminisced and, in spite of my early start on Monday, we stayed up late. Nothing was right, but somehow it wasn’t as wrong as everything has been lately.
On Monday morning, both the 21year-old and the 19-year-old volunteered that it had been the best night of 2021. That made me simultaneously happy and very sad, because none of the best nights of my 19- or 21-year-old life involved my parents or sitting around at home.
THERE is very little we can control about our world at the moment, but I think what I learnt last weekend is that we have to be kind to ourselves. If sea swimming makes you happy, then good luck to you and your tender extremities. If you’re doing Marian Keyes’s novel-writing classes, then I hope you’re laughing as much as you’re trying in them.
But just because there’s a J in the month doesn’t mean we all have to raise our game or take up Pilates or skydiving or otherwise add a bit of spit and polish to our lives. This January, between homeschooling, remote working and all the stresses of simply turning on the radio, it’s perfectly acceptable to carry on carrying on – to forget about endorphins and getting your steps in, and just to veg on the sofa, if that’s what you really want to do. Forget about Instagram-worthy moments; whatever gets you through this terrible time, that is your absolute best life right there.
I never imagined that I would give my children alcohol in an effort to improve their mental health. But then, I never imagined any of this. We live in unimaginable times. Nobody should be trying to be a beacon of virtue right now. Whatever you are doing, trust me and trust yourself: you are absolutely doing enough.