I think I knew that I had an issue with alcohol for a long time. But admitting it felt impossible because it would mean accepting that there was something wrong with me.

And how could there be? So many things in my life were going “right.” I was excelling at work, I was in a great relationship, I had hobbies, friends, etc.

What I didn’t realize at the time was that I was working really hard to create a successful, outwardly facing version of myself — one that fit within specific parameters that would allow me to drink in the way that I wanted.

And if I didn’t acknowledge the problem, it didn’t exist — right? Out of sight, out of mind.

In hindsight, there were so many signs that I had a really unhealthy relationship with alcohol — signs that I ignored or rationalized away. But moving in with my now-wife started to expose the cracks in my carefully constructed reality. It was the first time I was forced to think about my drinking as anything other than normal. And instead of acknowledging the signs, I went out of my way to maintain the habit, even in the presence of someone I loved.

When I was living by myself, my drinking was my own problem. At home, I could drink as much as I wanted, and the only person affected was myself. I now know that I was structuring my life — my relationships and experiences — to suit my drinking habits. From friends to girlfriends, I would surround myself with people (and situations) that aligned with my desire to drink and not feel judged. I created a bubble reality where I could protect my habit.

I avoided spending time with friends in situations where alcohol wasn’t involved, and I let romantic relationships fade if I felt they might interfere with the way I wanted to drink. At the time, I didn’t have the self-awareness to understand why I was making these choices — I just followed the path that allowed me to drink without resistance. And the fact that I’m coming to terms with these feelings now comes with a lot of shame and regret. About the friendships and experiences I missed out on because I was being selfish. That’s hard for me to deal with, but better late than never — right?

When my now-wife and I first started dating, I thought we shared similar drinking tendencies (and to an extent, we did). But when we moved in together, I realized that my tendencies were much different — I wanted to drink more. A lot more. That recognition created a certain amount of shame, I think. I wanted to be seen as someone who was in control of his life, and I worked hard to outwardly create that perception. But I didn’t want to control my drinking — I couldn’t control my drinking — so I started to hide it.

And that was a really slippery slope. I would sneak alcohol into our apartment and hide it in my office. I always had to have an extra stash. The weird thing is that I wasn’t trying to hide the fact that I was drinking — I was trying to hide how much I was drinking. In my mind, I was trying to control the narrative in our relationship around my drinking. It was OK to have a few drinks (or more) in front of my girlfriend. But that wasn’t enough for me. I needed more, and I convinced myself that she wouldn’t be OK with that. That she would tell me I had a problem.

But the reality had nothing to do with her. It had everything to do with me — with my fear and shame. And I think what scared me the most was admitting to myself that I had a problem. I convinced myself that I needed to be in control of my life, that I appeared to be this successful, happy human who had all his shit together. I don’t know why I felt that way, but looking back, I know it was very real.

Inevitably, my girlfriend found out about my extracurricular drinking. And to her credit, she didn’t shame me. We talked through what was happening, and I promised that I would stop hiding it. And I did, for years…

While I now see that period as the moment when my drinking began to catch up with me, I recognize that I didn’t acknowledge the actual problem. I didn’t truly stop to question why I was trying to hide my habit. I just kept drinking. So, a few years later — married, with a young daughter, a new job, and navigating life after a pandemic — I shouldn’t have been surprised when I reverted to my old habits.

My life had become overwhelming. I was juggling work, marriage, parenting, home issues, exercise, and drinking. I told myself that alcohol was helping me cope with the stressors, but in reality, it had become its own source of anxiety. It was during this period that I realized that my drinking habits — my relationship with alcohol — weren’t just part of the problem; they were making everything worse. And most importantly, I finally acknowledged that I had a problem and that something needed to change.

And I made a change. It’s been over two years since I stopped drinking, and I’m grateful for every one of them. Looking back on my habits — my relationship with alcohol — I finally have clarity around my behaviors and the reasoning for a lot of my decisions. Everyone faces their own battles, and for me, hiding my drinking came from a place of fear and shame. I was afraid that people would see me a certain way — that I wasn’t in control. And I was ashamed because I subconsciously knew that something was wrong and I wasn’t willing to do anything about it.

And while I have mostly come to terms with my past behaviors, I sometimes still struggle. I still have shame around what I did, fear that it could happen again, and regret for what I missed out on. But at the end of the day, I’m happy and grateful. That my then-girlfriend and now-wife supported me through all of these ups and downs. That we have a beautiful daughter who won’t see her dad struggle with alcohol. And that I get to wake up every day clear-headed, ready to experience actual life — not just a fabricated, alcohol-fueled version of it.

I wasted years of my life drinking. At least that’s the story I tell myself when I start wondering whether it’s too late to become the person I might have been.

I can’t get those years back. I know that. But what bothers me more is the question underneath it all — whether I permanently narrowed my own ceiling, whether there’s a version of me that is no longer possible.

For a long time, I carried this quiet belief that your 20s and 30s are the years when the ceiling feels higher — when you have more room to grow and meet your potential before the constraints of time and responsibility settle in. And by that logic, I missed something important.

Not entirely, of course. I built a career. I fell in love. I became a husband and a father. Life happened in all the ways that matter. But underneath it all, my drinking dulled things. My ambition softened. My presence for my loved ones faded. My potential slowly narrowed. I was always operating below what I was capable of, convincing myself it didn’t matter. That things were fine.

Nothing collapsed dramatically. It just faded.

The athlete in me feels this the most. Growing up, I was fast and competitive. I liked to win. Then, slowly, I wasn’t. The hardest part isn’t just that it happened — it’s that I consciously made the choices that chipped away at a version of myself I didn’t appreciate until it was gone. Now that I’m sober and more intentional than I’ve ever been, I look back with a complicated mix of regret and strange gratitude. I’m not sure I’d be paying this much attention to my life if I hadn’t lost so much of it.

There’s also an uncomfortable truth I have to be honest about: jealousy.

I’ll be mid-run — breathing steady, feet hitting pavement, enjoying the fresh air — and I’ll glance at my watch. I’ll see my pace and immediately wonder why it isn’t faster. I’ll notice my heart rate and decide it shouldn’t be that high. I’ll tell myself I should be stronger than this by now.

From there, I lose focus and my mind starts to drift to what could have been different. If I had trained seriously a decade ago. If I hadn’t spent so many mornings recovering instead of running.

The run keeps going, but I’m no longer inside of it. I’m somewhere else, comparing the present version of myself to an imagined one who started sooner — and to real people who did.

I know that it doesn’t actually matter what anyone else is doing. Their races, their timelines, their training blocks have nothing to do with mine. But in my head, I stitch their progress into a story about my own delay. I turn social media feeds into evidence that I’m behind.

It’s not flattering, but it’s honest. And when I look more closely, the jealousy isn’t really about other athletes at all. It’s about the gap between who I am and who I assumed I would be by this point. My mind still carries an older image of me — faster, lighter, less constrained. My body tells a different story.

I want to run one hundred miles. And the competitive part of me doesn’t just want to finish; it wants to do well. But every time I measure today’s effort against some imagined timeline, I reinforce the sense that I’m playing catch-up in a race no one else is actually running.

I spent years not really showing up for myself. Now that I finally am, I feel the pressure of time in a way I never did before. I know that there are only so many hours in a day, but knowing it and accepting it are different things.

Between work, trying to be a present husband and father, and all the other little stressors that pop up day to day, there’s a small window left for myself. I spend that window running. And even then, I sometimes feel like I should be getting more from it — going longer, pushing harder, trying to get to my goals as fast as possible.

What I keep forgetting is that this small window is not separate from my life. It is my life. It’s unfolding in real time, whether I’m fully there for it or not. And if I spend it trying to outrun the past or accelerate the future, I miss the only thing that’s actually available.

The ceiling doesn’t feel as abstract as it once did. It feels closer. Not necessarily lower — just more visible. I can sense the constraints more clearly now, and that awareness sometimes shows up as urgency. There is pressure, yes. But there is also a choice about how I respond to it.

When I step back, I can see that the past is just a collection of experiences that led me here — to sobriety, to running, to a level of focus I haven’t had in years. I know that. But knowing it doesn’t make the feelings go away.

The regret, the jealousy, the quiet resentment about time — these are all just different versions of the same exit. A way of leaving the moments that matter. And while I’m telling myself the story of what might have been, my daughter is growing up. The morning run is happening. My actual life is passing by, and I’m somewhere else entirely.

Drinking numbed my presence in so many ways. What’s harder to admit is that rumination can do something similar. It narrows the present in much the same way that alcohol did.

And instead, if I’m fully here, there is no higher or lower ceiling to calculate. There is just this breath, this stretch of pavement, this ordinary day.

I’m not very good at staying here yet. But I’m trying.

Maybe the prime years of my life were never fixed on a calendar. Maybe they’re simply the years in which I’m present enough to notice them.

And if that’s true, then they can only ever be now.

I find placing definitions on myself based on hobbies or personal choices very difficult. As if there’s this undetermined point I need to hit to achieve a certain status. A good example is my sobriety — I haven’t had a drink of alcohol in over two years, but I still struggle to call myself sober. In the same vein, I’ve been running consistently (or as consistently as someone who keeps finding ways to hurt himself or get sick can manage) for the last three years, but I get uncomfortable at the thought of calling myself a runner.

It’s hard not to think about imposter syndrome. The idea that I’m not good enough at running to call myself a runner. Or that I haven’t been sober long enough for it to be real. That there’s some finish line I haven’t crossed yet, some threshold I need to reach before I earn the right to claim these identities.

But where is that finish line? At what point do I become comfortable considering myself sober? When do I graduate from “someone who runs” to “a runner”? And more importantly, who decides?

The Labels We Accept

We have no issues defining ourselves based on our careers or relationships.

I am a cinematographer.
I am a husband.
I am a father.

These labels feel solid, concrete, unquestionable. No one asks me how long I’ve been married before accepting that I’m a husband. No one questions whether I’ve been a cinematographer long enough to claim the title.

So why, then, can I not be other things?

Maybe it’s because careers and relationships come with external validation built in. You have a job title, a paycheck, a marriage certificate. There’s documentation. There are witnesses. Society agrees that you are what you say you are.

But sobriety? Running? Those feel different. They’re choices I make every day. Actions I take in private. Commitments no one else sees unless I tell them. There’s no certificate for being sober. No official marathon finish line that declares you a runner. And even when I do finish races, they feel more like personal achievements than proof of identity. It’s just me, waking up every morning and deciding who I want to be.

And maybe that’s what makes it so hard to claim.

The Issue of External Validation

Culturally, it seems we’ve become a society that craves external validation. We measure our worth by likes, follows, comments from strangers. We need someone else to tell us we’re good enough before we believe it ourselves. And I think that’s part of what’s happening here — some part of me is waiting for permission that’s never going to come.

The truth is, it doesn’t really matter who’s listening when I say “I’m a runner.” If I run, I’m a runner. If I don’t drink, I’m sober. The math is simple. But somewhere along the way, I convinced myself that claiming these identities required approval from someone else. That I needed to be fast enough, consistent enough, or sober long enough for it to count.

But count to whom? And for what?

The uncomfortable reality is that I’m the only one keeping score. I’m the one moving the goalposts every time I get close. I’m the one saying “not yet” when the answer should probably just be “yes.”

More Than a Descriptor

Part of me wants to dismiss sobriety as just a descriptor — something that modifies who I already am. I am a sober husband and father. But that feels reductive, like I’m diminishing its importance.

Sobriety is a huge reason I got into running. It’s why I can be a better husband and father. It’s not just something I do; it’s something that fundamentally changed how I move through the world. To me, it feels like more than a descriptor. It’s a huge part of who I am.

And running? Running gave me something to focus on when I stopped drinking. It gave me a way to process stress, to be present in my body, to prove to myself that I could set a goal and follow through. It’s not just exercise. It’s evidence that I can show up for myself, even when it’s hard.

So why can’t I just say it? Why does my throat tighten when someone asks if I’m a runner, and I deflect with “I like to run from time to time” instead?

The Complexity of Being Human

I think a lot about how complex human beings are. How everyone is different — mentally, physically, emotionally. How the labels we carry (or refuse to carry) say as much about our internal landscape as they do about our external actions.

Maybe the discomfort isn’t about the labels themselves. Maybe it’s about what happens when I claim them. When I say “I’m a runner,” I’m making a promise to myself that I’ll keep running. When I say “I’m sober,” I’m acknowledging that I can never go back to who I was before. These aren’t just identities; they’re commitments. And commitments are scary because they require follow-through.

Or maybe I’m overthinking it. Maybe I just need to practice saying the words out loud until they stop feeling foreign.

Being Your Best Self

What I keep coming back to is this: it’s probably more important to be happy with yourself than it is to wait for external validation. To be your best self for you and the people close to you. To be a good neighbor, a decent person, someone who can be counted on. The labels are secondary to the actions.

But there’s something powerful about claiming who you are, too. About standing in your truth and owning it, even if no one else is watching. Especially if no one else is watching.

I haven’t figured this out yet. I’m still uncomfortable with the idea of just claiming it — claiming any of it. But maybe that’s the point of writing this. To sort through my thoughts. To see if the discomfort loosens when I put it on the page.

I’ve been sober for over two years. I’ve been running regularly for three. Those are facts. Whether or not I call myself sober or a runner doesn’t change them. But maybe one day, I’ll believe the labels as much as I believe the actions.

And maybe that will be enough.