Today, I am 591 days sober.
And if my dad were still alive, I know he would be very proud of me. I think about that more often than I say out loud. There are days when I wish I could sit beside him and tell him that I made it this far. That I didn’t go back. That even on the days when drinking would have been the easiest escape, I chose something else.
Today is one of those days.
If I were still drinking, I probably would have grabbed a case of beer. I know myself well enough to admit that. I would have tried to numb the frustration, quiet the anger, and make the whole situation feel smaller than it actually is.
But I’m not drinking anymore.
So instead, I’m writing.
And maybe that’s one of the biggest changes sobriety has given me. I still get angry. I still get hurt. I still have days when I want to scream, fight, and tell people exactly what I think. Sobriety didn’t make me emotionless. It simply taught me that I don’t have to destroy myself every time life becomes unbearable.
Today, I chose to be the bigger person.
But if I’m being completely honest, it isn’t because I’m sitting here thinking that being the bigger person is always noble or that silence is always the right thing to do.
Sometimes, I’m silent because I’m poor.
We are poor.
And being poor in the Philippines teaches you things that people with money and privilege don’t always understand.
It teaches you that being right doesn’t necessarily mean you can afford to fight. It teaches you that justice can become complicated when you don’t have the resources to pursue it. It teaches you that sometimes the person with more money, more connections, more influence, or simply more power can make the world much harder for you.
You can know you’re right and still know that fighting will cost you more than you can afford to lose.
So you swallow your words.
You step back.
You let things go.
You choose silence.
Not because you’re weak.
Not because they were right.
Not because you don’t have dignity.
Sometimes you are simply trying to survive.
And I think there is something deeply painful about realizing that poverty doesn’t only limit what you can buy. Sometimes it limits how loudly you can defend yourself.
There are systems that are supposed to protect people, but navigating those systems can feel impossible when you don’t have money, connections, or the luxury of taking time away from simply trying to survive. So you learn to calculate your battles. You ask yourself whether being right is worth the consequences of proving that you’re right.
And sometimes the answer is no.
So today, I chose silence.
But I want to be clear with myself: silence is not surrender.
It doesn’t mean I don’t know what happened. It doesn’t mean I agree. It doesn’t mean I’ve forgotten. It simply means that today, I chose to protect what I have instead of losing more trying to prove something I already know to be true.
And maybe that’s what growing older has taught me.
There are battles you fight loudly.
There are battles you fight quietly.
And there are battles you survive by walking away.
Tonight, instead of drinking, I’m writing this.
591 days sober.
My father isn’t here to see it, but I hope wherever he is, somehow, he knows.
I chose not to drink.
I chose not to make a difficult day worse.
I chose to sit with the anger instead of drowning it.
And maybe tomorrow I’ll wake up and things will still be unfair. Maybe being poor will still make certain things harder than they should be.
But at least I’ll wake up sober.
And sometimes, when life gives you very little power, choosing not to lose yourself is the power you still have.