It’s the text of a meme I’ve come across on social media again and again.
For a long time, I smiled at it without really understanding the truth behind it.
Recently, I randomly ran into a guy I used to work with for a long time.
And that sentence came right back to me.
We had a thing back then. It was never really clear.
And since both of us worked with alcohol, its presence was just part of the deal.
A glass of champagne here. A sip of wine there. A tasting. Aperitivo.
Some of it was fantastic. Light. Funny. Intense.
But still – something about it all felt blurred.
Like the edges were softened just enough to stop me from really feeling where I was.
Who I was.
What I wanted.
And for a long time, I tolerated a lot.
Emotions. Situations. Relationships.
Like I’ve said before – alcohol is a fantastic way to smooth out the edges.
To turn down the voices.
To shrink your own ambition. Your sense of self. Your life.
And it’s kind of shocking how true that meme is – and how easily we all laugh it off.
How quickly we normalize what should be questioned.
I wish I could say this was a one-off.
But it’s not.
And I’m not just talking about alcohol.
There are so many ways we distract ourselves.
The busy-ness. The pleasing. The Scrolling. The numbing.
We try to smoke it away, drink it away, fuck it away.
The quiet addictions that don’t look like addiction.
Numbing doesn’t always look like drinking.
Sometimes it looks like being endlessly productive. Or endlessly available.
We tolerate things we never really chose.
We stay in jobs, in dynamics, in cycles
that a clearer version of us might have walked away from.
The guy I ran into is a wonderful person.
Funny, charming, thoughtful.
But in the end, it was an escape. For both of us. From whatever that is underneath.
And sometimes I wonder: Who would we all be without the things we use to numb ourselves?
Beyond the glass is more than being sober.
It’s about remembering who we are when we stop numbing what we feel.
Beyond the Glass Project 
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