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Our Week in St. Martin
My wife and I recently spent a week in St. Martin, an island with split governance by France and the Netherlands. Being that we are both food nerds and prefer a more quiet escape - we stayed on the French side, where the beachside neighborhood Grand Case is known for being the culinary capital of the Caribbean.
As a couple, it was the best vacation of our 15-year marriage. We stayed at Le Petit, a quiet, ten-room hotel on the beach, where I took the above picture from our balcony.
The promise of fantastic food was delivered consistently, with everything from seven-course tasting menus to the approximately 36,000 croissants I consumed for breakfast being exceptional.
Iâd be remiss if I didnât mention that amongst the multitude of fine dining restaurants occupying a single mile of beach, one of our favorite meals was the simplest.
Ciao Bella is little more than a counter and a pizza oven beneath an awning, with six small tables and folding chairs next to the road. Alberto, who introduces himself as the chef and waiter, is the uber personable owner of this one-person operation. A native of Palermo, Italy, and a former sous chef for Mario Batali, Alberto is a member of an extensive ex-pat population in St. Martin. He also is the genius behind the best pizza weâve ever eaten.
My Week in St. Martin
Aside from being our longest vacation as a couple, this trip held a specific designation for me as an individual.
It is the first vacation Iâve taken as an adult, completely sober.
Abstaining from alcohol is a surprisingly strange decision in modern society. As Annie Grace succinctly states in This Naked Mind, âAlcohol is the only drug on Earth you have to justify *not* using.â
The justifications were plentiful on vacation, as my interactions at restaurants and bars followed a consistent pattern:
Me: What are your non-alcoholic options?
Them: You donât drink?
Me: No.
Them: At all?
Me: Nope
Them: For how long?
For How Long?
That question is one I instantly seized as being something to consider. I wasnât bothered by the quizzical response to not drinking, as it is how Iâve responded dozens of times when people told me they were sober. Instead, I was fascinated by the assumption that such a decision must be temporary.
The interaction read to me: âoh, you arenât drinking, how long do you plan on keeping that up?â
Now, a younger version of myself would have struggled with these interactions and allowed the social pressure of not feeling weird to override my discipline in abstaining. Yet, even in retrospect, I am surprised at how I found my conviction bolstered by each interaction.
There is leverage here, I noted after walking on the beach one morning.
Letâs rewind to June 20th, the day I quit drinking.
It Isnât Always Dramatic
Perhaps it is my personal, narrow framing of those who choose to quit drinking that causes me to assume that clearly, something catastrophic has occurred.
They got a DUI.
Their marriage is failing.
They lost their job.
They habitually bought a bunch of stuff they would never use or need.
Wait, is that last one too specific? I digress.
In my case, there were no life-altering moments that forced a decision. My career, family, and marriage are all in the best place theyâve been. In fact, a conversation I had with my dad in my early twenties recently had sudden relevance.
My dad was describing his fatherâs annoyance with aging. Quick-witted and an engineer by trade, my grandfather felt like his mind was dulling. His frustration was amplified by being present and aware amid this slowdown.
At the beginning of June, I had a major presentation for a large healthcare system. I relish these scenarios, especially when presenting on my own to an audience of ten or more people.
This isnât a story where I was hungover from the night before; I hadnât had as much as a single beer in the days leading into the meeting.
Initially, the conversation followed the blueprint I envisioned as I was going through my process as Iâd done thousands of times over the last fifteen years. While I couldnât pinpoint the exact moment in the conversation, an opportunity presented itself, and suddenly I was disarmed.
My grandfather's feeling of reaching for something that had always been there and finding only a void rushed over me. It was terrifying. In my mind, the remainder of the presentation was essentially jibberish. I felt wholly unable able to string a series of thoughts together coherently.
My immediate resolve wasnât to quit drinking; it was never to encounter feeling mentally helpless again.
As a habitual tinkerer, I went through my checklist of habits, asking myself the oft-quoted Jerry Colonna question: where am I complicit in the conditions I donât want?
Next week, Iâll dive into my observations over the last forty days of sobriety and how my mental, physical, and spiritual health have been impacted.
Thank you for reading, have a joyful week, and I will see you next Sunday! If anything here resonated with you, please share it with someone else!
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