Learning to Swim in a Lake Called Melancholy
Sobriety, love, and my long swim to serenity
I grew up in a beautiful home overlooking a serene lake in Laconia, New Hampshire. Despite the calm setting, the house was a loving war zone.
My parents tried hard, running businesses that failed, while raising my sister, my brother, and me. However, as we grew, so did the fighting. They confused infatuation with love and perhaps never should have married. Love was in there somewhere, buried under expectations.
As the firstborn who was highly sensitive, I became a tuning fork for the house. Every slammed door rattled through me. Every whispered insult ripped into my soul. At night, I recall hearing pots and pans flying as if hungry ghosts were fighting.
By the time I reached high school, my skin felt too thin for the world. Kids told me I was immature, too sensitive. They weren’t wrong. I was awkward, bony, and late to puberty. I didn’t have a girlfriend, lacked confidence, and had no idea what to do with the swarm of feelings in my chest.
It wouldn’t be long before I found ways to soothe my wounded soul. From a young age, being insatiably curious, I discovered that beer and wine offered a temporary reprieve. Not long after, weed became the girlfriend I never had. With just enough of either, I could walk into a room like I belonged. With a few more slugs and tokes, I was fearless and often reckless. I fought with boys who were otherwise friends. I puked, blacked out, and called it fun.
The first blackout scared me. I was thirteen, school was canceled for a snow day, and my house turned into a fort for friends. We raided the liquor cabinet, found cold beer and wine in the fridge, and drank like the grown-ups we imitated. I puked on the kitchen floor, staggered upstairs, and collapsed in my parents’ bed. I woke with a bruise on my chin and no memory of how it got there. My mother was standing over me. “Cliff, are you okay? What’s wrong?” she asked.
“Hi, Mom. I think I have the flu,” I said. She consoled me, but later another mother called. “Maryanne, the kids have been drinking. How could you not know?”
That was my childhood.
By the time I left for college in 1983, home was gone. My parents’ marriage collapsed, and the next closest thing I had to a home was a frat house. It smelled of stale beer. The floors were sticky, the shag carpet soaked up secrets of boys like me who thought we were men. I was a lightweight drinker, a keg racer who always ended the night puking or blacking out before the girls showed up.
Some mornings, I woke up piecing together the damage I had done: broken drywall, torn shirts, and marker art on my body from so-called friends. Other nights, I floated in a cloud of my own making, melancholy humming under the hood of my insecure self. Even in my loudest moments, surrounded by music and smoke, there was always a shadow at the edge of the room, a whisper that I wasn’t enough.
And then there was Janice. I noticed her before I knew her name, standing inside the student union, laughing with friends. My heart rattled like a loose doorknob. She had long blonde hair and a smile that lit up the room. She was dating an older guy, which made her untouchable. Still, I watched for her at parties. After a few beers, my inhibitions would melt enough to say, “Hi.”
One night, I saw her in the kitchen of a cramped party. The stereo blasted Duran Duran, the air thick with weed smoke. She brushed past me, close enough that I caught the scent of her shampoo. My whole body stiffened in beer-soaked panic. I wanted to say something clever, but nothing came to mind. She smiled politely and kept walking. I stood there with my red cup, sipping doses of melancholy, hoping she might notice me one day.
As fate would have it, my luck changed in senior year. We found ways to talk, then to laugh, and finally to spend time together. In the spring semester, we went on our first date, a bicycle ride that turned into an adventure at a small lake. I rode a too-big Fuji named Lightning. She followed on her yellow Raleigh. That day, I vowed to marry her.
We dated through that last semester, fragile at first, then more certain. I graduated and kept my vow. We married within two years. Against all odds, we built a life together. She became the salve when melancholy pulled me under. We had two sons, and though I was often more boy than man, Janice held us together when I crumbled under the pressures of life.
Through years of drinking and drifting, Janice stayed when others might have suffocated me in my sleep or left me. Eventually, I chose sobriety. It was not easy. Every time I came close to drowning in my self-loathing, Janice was the lifeguard who saved me.
Sobriety stripped me raw at first. I thought putting down the bottle and weed would fix me. Instead, it exposed me. The rage I had numbed for decades erupted in fits of wrath. I snapped in traffic, shouted at small things, bit my nails until they bled. There were days I wanted to crawl out of my skin, nights I lay awake wishing I could silence the punishing banter in my head.
It took years of spiritual practice, counseling, and one small change at a time. I remember the day I picked up nail clippers instead of chewing my fingers raw. The day I paused before losing my temper. The day I chose to breathe through an urge instead of launching a missile of words. These were quiet victories, invisible to most, but proof that change was possible.
The melancholy never stopped. It waited like the small lake of my childhood, a constant undercurrent calling my name. I once thought it meant I was damaged beyond repair. Over time, I realized it was not my enemy but my companion.
Melancholy slowed me down. It made me notice the things most people missed in the panic of their genetic and emotional riptides. I learned to surrender to the current, to go with it instead of fighting against it. Instead of arguing with reality, I learned to go with it. Surrendering became a win.
Life worked out for me in the long run. Janice and I will soon celebrate forty years of marriage. Our sons are grown, healthy, happy, and raising children of their own. My life is evidence that miracles are real. Every day of sobriety reveals a brilliant light that once seemed impossible.
Now, instead of chasing highs or numbing pain, I sometimes find myself in tears of gratitude. When melancholy calls me, I float in it as if it were the deep, cold lake I grew up next to in New Hampshire. It is a lake I call serenity. I no longer fear drowning. I turn on my back, look at the brilliant blue sky, smile, and float with it.
I’m an author, mentor, and facilitator. I help founders, executives, and professionals overcome career burnout, stress, social anxiety, and lack of engagement. Learn more about my unique, five-step method at www.CliffordJones.com.
