#28 The part where you finally open your mail and pay your taxes

In May of this year my friend Katie came over to my house to co-work. She answered emails on the couch and I sat at the kitchen table with a very large box of mail I hadn’t opened since April 2021, which was the month I gave up trying.

When I say the box of mail I hadn’t opened, I mean literally not figuratively all the mail that came to my address from April 2021 until May 2022 (when I started trying again), I did not open, I threw into a box. Christmas cards. Birthday cards. Valentines cards. (Lots of cards?) Bills. Tax documents. Parking tickets. Bank statements. Checks for money made out to me! Utility statements and credit card bills and renewal notices for the magazines I didn’t bother opening, either.

Thus in May began my very long slog of cleaning up a mess that was pretty unnecessary, and reeked of regression. Years ago I had been a person who didn’t open her mail. Years ago I had transcended that version of myself. Then last year I became her again.

When I got sober nearly a …