Shhh....

She wasn't the only liar in the room. She believed that she was never the only liar in a room, but at least in this room they all admitted it. Addicts were known liars. To others, to themselves. They lied. But she was pretty sure she was the only one lying about this.

She also wasn't the only person in this room to have had an affair. Or if not an affair, slept with someone they should not have. It was a common part of their rock bottom stories. The affair, the tawdry one night stand, the piece that brought it all crashing down. She'd heard a lot of them. The stories. 

She'd been in AA for five years at this point. She often thought she'd heard all of the stories that there could be. Or at least all of the variations on a theme. 

She had never shared her own story. She'd thought about it in the beginning. But then talked herself out of it. Rightly, she believed. When it became too awkward to attend a meeting without sharing she'd change times or locations. A whole new room full of liars to hide with. 

In vino veritas. 

You are only as sick as your secrets. 

She did not drink and she did not share her secrets. 

So she guessed she remained sick. 

But that was okay to her. She'd rather be sick than spread poison. 

She'd argued once with a group leader working the steps. He believed that often addicts hid behind the second half of the 9th step. The one about making amends but only if doing so wouldn't harm others more. He thought people hid behind the do no harm part to protect themselves. She did not agree. She thought that often people made confessions to make themselves feel better, to stop carrying the weight of the transgression, without ever considering how that would make someone else feel. 

She had been drinking at a conference. That was her last time. She was drinking with a woman who she really believed would be able to make that leap from work colleague, to work friend and eventually to just friend. There had been a real connection. One of those very comfortable things that happens. You just click. And they had spent the past two days going to meetings together and eating meals together and sticking by each other at all of the forced fun events. And actually having fun. 

Then the last night she had more to drink than she should have and said something she shouldn't have. Revealed an level of intimate knowledge about a man that she could not have known if they hadn't slept together. Because they were only work colleagues at the time, because she didn't know her that well yet, her work colleague didn't even realize what had been said, but if the friendship progressed, eventually she would. Eventually she would think about that conversation and the math would not have worked out. And she would have known. 

It wasn't a risk she was willing to take. 

Technically she had not been married at the time. But it was truly a technicality based on legality. She and her wife had been together, had committed to each other, years earlier. And the affair, it was an affair, not a one time drunken accident, had ended not because she had realized she didn't love him, but because she realized she loved her wife more. And she loved how her wife looked at her. And felt about her. And all of that would go away if she found out. 

And all of her wife's friends who had told her that a bisexual could never be faithful would have been right. That she wasn't really one of them. She was just oversexed and couldn't make up her mind. She'd been dabbling but would go back to dick as soon as one came along she liked the look of. Some lesbians could be very unwelcoming to those they felt didn't fit the whole mold. And she didn't really blame them. So many of them had been told their whole lives that they didn't really want a woman, they just hadn't found the right man yet. And here she was sleeping with women when she wanted and men when she wanted. Just making it more difficult for the rest of them to assert that they had no urge to sleep with men.

There had been many late night discussions about monogamy and that it was the same with her as it was with her wife. Just because she was bixsexual didn't matter. Monogamy was monogamy. They were only going to sleep with each other. They promised. 

She had lied.

She didn't realize at the time she was lying. She hadn't meant to lie. And she had been deeply ashamed of herself even while the affair was happening. But she had fallen for him as well. And she had a lot of excuses and reason why it was okay. Why nobody was going to get hurt because nobody ever had to know. And that worked until the first person found out. And she realized it was only a matter of time before her wife did as well. And she did think about it for a moment. What she wanted to do. Maybe she didn't want monogamy. Maybe it had been a mistake to think that it was for her. 

Then she went home and saw her, at the time, eternal fiance, and realized that no, she was her home. She was worth everything and more and that there was no excuse in the world for doing something that could hurt her that deeply. 

So she ended the affair. Messily it turned out. Nobody wants to hear, I love you but I love them more. And no matter how she tried to word it, he had heard that as the truth. I still love you, but you are not enough. She is. She is enough. And you are not her. It had been dicey for awhile. She thought any day she would come home and find he had confessed, he had spilled her secrets. But he didn't. And she didn't. And life moved forward.

Until that night in the bar when she heard the words so casually slip from her mouth and the alarm bells that hadn't been dampened with booze rang. 

She hadn't touched another drop. She couldn't risk it. 

She told her wife she was stopping because her family history was rife with addicts, which was true. And that she was getting too comfortable drinking too much, which wasn't. She rarely drank too much. She could take it or leave it. But if she just left it people would still want her to drink. She didn't want to have that one too many drinks in vino veritas moment to sneak up on her again. So she would just leave it.

But nobody likes a sober person unless they are an alcoholic and then they leave you alone.  

She wasn't the only liar in that room, but she was pretty sure she was the only one lying about being an alcoholic.