where I've been

It started around the time I bought my house.

I began to get restless at bedtime, just as I was meant to wind down. At first, there weren’t any thoughts attached—it was more of an inner trembling, a vague feeling that something was wrong, or about to be. Getting to sleep became difficult, and then I started waking in the middle of the night shot through with adrenaline, sheets soaked with sweat, breath caught in my chest. I chalked it up to another symptom of perimenopause, made an appointment with my OB and also my physician, treated the symptoms with medication and hormones. This helped for a while, but eventually the slithering feeling of dread crept back in, stealing my nights and finding its way into my days, too.

Buying my own house had been a long-held dream, something I’d imagined and hoped for since the early days of sobriety when I began to piece my life together. The dream was very far off back then; I had to first crawl out of significant debt, then save enough for a down payment—a mighty task given where I live in the Northeast—but I felt I could do it, little by slow.

Over the years, I thought about it constantly. Created vision boards with pictures of cool front doors (always blue), brightly lit kitchens, moody living rooms with bookshelves, funky tiles and opulent light fixtures. I made a dozen Pinterest boards for inspo, and when Alma got old enough, I included her so she could add her style. We learned hers leans Coastal Grandma, whereas mine is some mix of Mid-Century Modern and Old World European, so that really threw the algorithm for a spin. When friends talked about their remodel projects, or asked about a new couch, or what kind of blinds or flooring they should buy, I’d jump in and excitedly offer my opinion—a proxy for being able to do it myself. I followed interior design and home renovation accounts on Instagram, imagining how fun it would be when I could finally make a space fully my own.

I’d always created sanctuaries in the condos and apartments we’ve lived in, taking great care to make them feel like home. Tending to my physical space had become one of the great joys of sobriety—one of the ways my shifting inner life began to express itself externally: more sanity, more beauty, more peace. But renting had its limits; I always wished I could do more. And after moving twenty times in as many years, I wanted a place to settle into, grow roots, stay.

Following my breakup in early 2024, I moved back to my little seaside town, and resumed the dream of home ownership. In my heartbreak, it became something of a white whale, an achievement that came to mean much more than it had before. Then, last September, just two days after celebrating eleven years sober, I got the keys to my very first home.

It was a thrilling time, those first weeks here. Before we moved in, I had all the carpet removed, revealing beautiful hardwood floors. I put a fresh coat of paint on every wall and spent a full week wiping every surface clean. I relished the fact of an actual basement to store things in, and a garage—a garage!—extravagances I haven’t had since I was a kid. There were a zillion projects I planned to do in the future, but after a couple of months, we were mostly settled in.

Then came the leak. One night after dinner in early November, just after I’d collapsed into the couch to watch a show, I heard a strange sound coming from…somewhere. I jumped up and recognized it immediately as the sound of water, but from where? When I followed the sound to the kitchen, I saw a literal waterfall coming through the light fixture in the ceiling. Buckets. Torrents. So much more water than you ever want to see inside your house.

I ran upstairs and realized one of the toilets had been running, so I shut it off, and emergency texted my friend whose boyfriend is a plumber. The following morning I learned that because of a broken part, the toilet had been dumping water into the ceiling for more than an hour.

Fast forward to today, nearly ten months later, and my kitchen is still being worked on. At this very moment, I hear drills and hammering. The water damage spread to several rooms in the house and while insurance covered a portion of the repairs, it didn’t come close to covering all of it. The upside is I got a new kitchen (and had wanted to renovate it someday, anyway); the downside is I was forced to do it way before I was ready, financially or mentally.

Oh but these are just the surface facts.

Yes, I bought an old house, there was a water leak, and I had to undergo repairs, which are taking far longer than expected. It happens all the time, people keep telling me; this is home ownership, and intellectually I know that’s probably true. There are other things, too, but they’re also just facts of living. I had two medical scares in a six-month period, one last fall and one this spring, both of which required minor surgery (all results, gratefully, were benign). My daughter is starting her senior year, and the fact that she’ll be leaving for college next fall is a wobbly chin, a lump in my throat, a breath I can never fully take in. I have a book deadline that’s hanging over my head, with significant financial and career consequences attached. My body is constantly changing and my mind always feels muddy and my face looks different in the mirror these days. AI and women’s shrinking bodies (again), among other things, feel near-apocalyptic.

These things are all real. I’m not saying they aren’t, or that I should be coasting through (though, of course, some part of me thinks I should). What I’m saying—what I’m trying very hard to say—is something in me seems to have cracked when the water came rushing in, or perhaps it was when I bought the house, or maybe it all started when my relationship ended two years ago and my sense of reality, and of myself, became a sudden hall of mirrors.

Whenever it was, however it happened, that crack created a fault line of doubt in my foundation and despite all my efforts—despite everything I know to do, and all I’ve learned from the past—it feels like I’ve fallen through.

I was talking with a friend yesterday morning, trying to explain what it’s been like. I said I’m afraid all the time, but it’s a different kind of fear, one that’s seeped into my bones. I said I wake up with dread most mornings and hardly ever sleep through the night anymore. I said there’s a story that whispers in my ear: I’m being right-sized for reaching too far, flying too high, getting too close to the sun. I don’t deserve what I had and maybe never did; that it was all a fluke anyway, and now I’m just being found out. I told him there are other stories, similarly dark, and they circle around like vultures sometimes.

I said it feels like I’ve lost my voice, and that’s been the most terrifying of all. Because when I sit down to write—the thing I’ve always been able to do when nothing else makes sense; the thing I rely on to make things make sense, or at least find the next thread to pull—I simply…can’t. I sit down to work on something, a newsletter or a page of my book or even a basic email or an Instagram post, and I freeze. I am frozen. I can’t find a way in or out.

This has bled into the rest of my work, too, and even my personal life. I’m hesitant and self-conscious. I second-guess, struggle to make decisions. I ruminate in ways I never have.

My friend listened and then, very gently, suggested: perhaps I should write about this. He reminded me I didn’t have to have any answers, and people would probably feel less alone if I did. Something in me knows this is true, and yet I’ve been hesitant to put it down.

But here I am, and here we are. I promised myself when I got off the phone with him that I’d write one simple thing. I’d type the words, not think about it too hard, and hit publish no matter what. I’m also, at the advice of my brother, surrendering and asking for help. Not from you, but from God. The universe. The great source of love I feel disconnected from, but am told (and somewhere know) is still there.

That’s it. Thank you, truly, for being here.

Love,
Laura

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You are reading Love Story, a weekly newsletter about relationships, recovery, and writing from Laura McKowen. Laura is the founder of The Luckiest Club, an international sobriety support community, co-host of the Dear Vernon sobriety podcast and the bestselling author of two books, We Are The Luckiest and Push Off from Here.

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