There is a loneliness, and isolation from man and world, that alcoholics can turn from a gnawing discomfort to a full-blown desperation given time in one's head and just time. I hurry to isolate myself from everyone around me when I feel small, insignificant, a non-person. Silly, right? But that is my identity, my reason to drink to feel comfortable, to drink to act out, to dance hard, laugh loud, mouth off, and let the world know that I AM HERE!
Look at my life since I stopped the insanity that came with my drinking. I am working in a field I love, my private business is taking off so much faster than I'd dreamed, my relationship is wholesome and loving. I continue my education with passion and love of learning. I am of help to others in the rooms, and my daughters can count on me at any time to show up with sanity. I have met two wonderful, dear, honest friends in AA, and have friendships, though few, outside of AA with women who are smart and funny. I have a deep and abiding love for the woman who sat me in my seat, and a new caring and commitment to my whole family.
I see it all, know it all is my life now, that the past is past, and yet...tonight I am just a lousy drunk, non-deserving, so so small. An impostor. A girl playing dress up with a beautiful woman's clothes, with her life. Pretending I am a professor when I don't have even a basic degree. Everyone else was invited to the party but me. I am sure that my life was meant to be fucked up, that to drink til I pass out is the real me, that I am supposed to giggle and beg and puke my way through life. I am unlikeable, certainly unlovable, by anyone half-sane, at least, including myself.
This mania is, I know, temporary, and will go away as soon as tomorrow comes, and I feel the sun on my face, and forgo my insignificance, my identity crisis, with a big "So what?". To be one of many, useful, helpful, productive will be enough. My gratitude for the life under my feet and around me will be enough. Oh, not that I don't have gratitude now! I have truckloads! And with that, right now, comes a steam train of guilt that my gratitude isn't the key to snap me out of my self-centered funk. See, I really do suck. I can't get gratitude right!
Alcoholics realize this as "the jumping off point", when a life fueled with alcohol is a desperate one, and life without alcohol seems unattainable. I know that if I drink, I will hurt someone. Maybe kill someone. Maybe kill myself, quickly or slowly, maybe I will. If I don't drink, I will have to keep my seat in AA. I then can hug my children, love my partner, learn my lessons, and tend my garden. So, I feel lonely in AA. I really don't want to belong. But without it, I would surely be alone. I must sit with the others in our life raft, and wait to see where we end up.
Sunday, May 24, 2009
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
Bewitched
Just yesterday I picked up a copy of Augusten Burroughs' "Magical Thinking" from our employee book swap shelf, not looking at the title, just happy to have found Augusten among the autistic. The contents were not what I had hoped from Augusten; it is a collection of shorties and essays without continuum, and I prefer Augusten's writing when he is telling a whole story with his short stories. I like when he is really going somewhere, like in "Dry", and the chapters have connection. This book seems to be a money-making hardcover for the author and his publisher, resting on Augusten's popularity. Not bad, but not so good, at least to my taste. Anyway, the title has grabbed me, and thrown me around a bit, so
Dear Augusten, I am once again eternally grateful for your contribution to literature on the whole, but more importantly to me and my sobriety.
Loves, The Great "I"
The definition for magical thinking is given on a front page, and it really threw me. I have known a man who has repeatedly fallen into schitzophrenic mind benders, where he believes he has the capacity to will the world to do his bidding. This affects quite a few alcoholics while they are active, but this poor idiot (let's call him Leon for Mr. Spinks, because when this fucker didn't get his way with his mental powers, he would literally knock me down) hasn't had a drink in over 2 years, and still thinks he can make the wind blow. He really does... he called me one day while walking through the cemetary to tell me he had willed the wind to blow, and it did, and all the trees were applauding him. What do you say to that? Really? I said, "Good job."
So, I was remembering all his claims how Leon really could do magic, how he could read people's minds, make them look at him/scratch an elbow/break up with a boyfriend/answer a phone he had willed to ring, and I thought how much fun I used to have with completely fucking with that when I was a drunk, and how scary and sad it is now that I am sober. Once, a few years ago, he asked me to watch the crack under the front door while he showered, because he had just willed the spies who spied on him while he bathed to spy once again, and he wanted to prove to me just how powerful he was. Leon was actually manifesting the spies while he undressed. Now, I was hammered, and thought, yeah, this will be fun! Let's just mess with the bastard! (If you were a drunk, you would do it, too.) Leon positioned me crouched in the hallway (so "they" wouldn't see me through the windows) with my wide eyes two inches from the crack under the door. And, when I knew he was good and naked and soapy, I ran to the bathroom and whispered that yes, he was right, they were here just outside the door, I saw them! I needed to hide, too! I waited silently while Leon rinsed and got out, and then we had sex, that kind of sad, clutching, desperate sex a man will have when he thinks you are the only one in the world who believes/knows/cares about him. (I feel badly about this now, but I didn't then. Back then, the least that bastard owed me was a lay.) This happened a hundred times over four years of our crazy duet; I could write a book.
What scares me, really does frighten me now, is that Leon a. still believes that he possesses magical thinking, and b. still believes that I believe he has this fabulous gift. Today, Leon is a scary, cynical psychopath. I realize I've encouraged him to walk on that rail, and now he is dangerous to himself and others. I am not being dramatic by projecting some awful outcome should he go on a schizophrenic tirade and stab someone, possibly me. I'm just being sensibly cautious. We still cross paths, and I stay far to the right. I am careful not to cross the street, though; I know he wills me to cross the street, and his days of getting his way with me are way over.
I am also a bit thwarted by Leon. Without the booze (his or mine), he just isn't fun anymore.
Dear Augusten, I am once again eternally grateful for your contribution to literature on the whole, but more importantly to me and my sobriety.
Loves, The Great "I"
The definition for magical thinking is given on a front page, and it really threw me. I have known a man who has repeatedly fallen into schitzophrenic mind benders, where he believes he has the capacity to will the world to do his bidding. This affects quite a few alcoholics while they are active, but this poor idiot (let's call him Leon for Mr. Spinks, because when this fucker didn't get his way with his mental powers, he would literally knock me down) hasn't had a drink in over 2 years, and still thinks he can make the wind blow. He really does... he called me one day while walking through the cemetary to tell me he had willed the wind to blow, and it did, and all the trees were applauding him. What do you say to that? Really? I said, "Good job."
So, I was remembering all his claims how Leon really could do magic, how he could read people's minds, make them look at him/scratch an elbow/break up with a boyfriend/answer a phone he had willed to ring, and I thought how much fun I used to have with completely fucking with that when I was a drunk, and how scary and sad it is now that I am sober. Once, a few years ago, he asked me to watch the crack under the front door while he showered, because he had just willed the spies who spied on him while he bathed to spy once again, and he wanted to prove to me just how powerful he was. Leon was actually manifesting the spies while he undressed. Now, I was hammered, and thought, yeah, this will be fun! Let's just mess with the bastard! (If you were a drunk, you would do it, too.) Leon positioned me crouched in the hallway (so "they" wouldn't see me through the windows) with my wide eyes two inches from the crack under the door. And, when I knew he was good and naked and soapy, I ran to the bathroom and whispered that yes, he was right, they were here just outside the door, I saw them! I needed to hide, too! I waited silently while Leon rinsed and got out, and then we had sex, that kind of sad, clutching, desperate sex a man will have when he thinks you are the only one in the world who believes/knows/cares about him. (I feel badly about this now, but I didn't then. Back then, the least that bastard owed me was a lay.) This happened a hundred times over four years of our crazy duet; I could write a book.
What scares me, really does frighten me now, is that Leon a. still believes that he possesses magical thinking, and b. still believes that I believe he has this fabulous gift. Today, Leon is a scary, cynical psychopath. I realize I've encouraged him to walk on that rail, and now he is dangerous to himself and others. I am not being dramatic by projecting some awful outcome should he go on a schizophrenic tirade and stab someone, possibly me. I'm just being sensibly cautious. We still cross paths, and I stay far to the right. I am careful not to cross the street, though; I know he wills me to cross the street, and his days of getting his way with me are way over.
I am also a bit thwarted by Leon. Without the booze (his or mine), he just isn't fun anymore.
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