 After spending the last 3 days semi-permanently fixed to my couch, I am feeling more tender and humbled than ever. There is nothing quite like the vulnerability of lying face down, unable to move, while your child patiently brings toys to your bedside in the hopes that you’ll find your way back to her. Then, impatiently, screaming for food, while you manage to piece together a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, peel a banana, and pour some water, all the while trying to dissociate from the extreme nausea and discomfort that reminds you of your fragility. In those moments, time is lost. You move literally minute by minute, focusing on survival.
I am not exactly sure how we got to Thursday. The last time I remember feeling normal, I was sitting in the sun, poolside, drinking a post-brunch mimosa with good friends while Nova napped in the house. That was Monday, Memorial Day. There is nothing particularly damaging about this, in fact it sounds quite fabulous -- a beautiful afternoon with cocktail in hand and our toes in the pool -- but even at the time, I kind of knew that I was pushing my limits. Some may recall a post I wrote last October about my unhealthy relationship with alcohol. I’d had a rather eye-opening epiphany when I realized that perhaps my then- struggles were not all about George's death, but that my continued reliance on alcohol was also a main contender in how I was able (or unable) to show up. This was a defining event for me -- taking responsibility for my choices, acknowledging my weaknesses, removing George as the crutch and putting my habitual drinking on trial. Calling the kettle black. I really thought back then, that I would never have a drink again. It’s amazing (and yet entirely comprehensible) how the mind can rationalize itself back to a state of -- Hey, no problem here, as long as we fall into the same pits with eyes wide open, we won’t get hurt, right? Hm. Now I’m not saying that the mimosa I had on Memorial Day gave me the stomach flu, but perhaps that on top of the drinks I had at our neighborhood brunch on Sunday, on top of the drinks I had visiting friends in the east bay on Saturday, on top of the beer I had with dinner on Friday and the wine before bedtime on Thursday… all of that on top of the fact that in the core of my being I know that I have ultimately failed in my attempts to either extricate or recreate my relationship with alcohol… I mean, it’s possible that my body was trying to tell me something. It’s also possible that I just caught the stomach flu. Regardless, these last few days of involuntary fasting have given me a few things to think about. What exactly happened there? Why did I fall back onto my daily ritual with alcohol? Last weekend was only one of a string of examples. I had returned to the safety net months ago. During that time when moving out and moving on and having to make what seemed like a million decisions about my life and the stuff in it, made my brain scream: Please, turn it off. I turn off, tune out, with alcohol. It lessens the overwhelm. (Of course, I know there are much healthier ways of doing this, but I have neither the time nor the patience to dust off my meditation practice.) And alcohol is one of those things like sugar, or caffeine, i.e. highly addictive substances -- once a pattern is established, it takes a shit-ton of willpower to cut the cord. Additionally, my association with alcohol has its place in the happier moments in life -- celebrations, holidays, sunny days, park days, lunch with friends days -- and so it becomes a social staple, making happier events even happier. But how can one substance be responsible for both decreasing negative emotion and increasing positive emotion? It doesn’t quite make sense. Something I will need to dig into when I’m feeling back to my normal self. But what screams in my head now, is not -- turn it off -- what screams in my head now, is -- How am I still, at 38 years old, struggling to untangle myself from this attachment to alcohol? The untangling, I now realize, is more complicated than a declaration of abstinence. There is something about the way that I use alcohol that is so deep-rooted -- a way to fill in some emptiness within that I didn’t think existed anymore -- and until I expose the truth I will not be free. Because either that emptiness is false and my brain needs a rewire, or that emptiness exists, and I need to fill it with love. Either way, alcohol no longer fits into the equation. I am no longer that girl who needed alcohol’s social lubricant to have meaningless conversations with strangers, and even friends; whose insecurities ran so deep that I needed a drink in my hand to numb the pain; whose own identity was largely a mystery well into adulthood, masked by the identities of those that I followed, trying to find a safe place to fit in. I am no longer that girl. I am a grown woman now, and I am carving out my place in this world. The excess energy I have spent to maintain this toxic relationship is no longer available. I have better things to do. Here begins an investigation within. |
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