When will I make another post. What will it be? What is this? When my subscription expires will I continue to pay for Alcohol Free AS Fuck? Since I was in my mid-teens, I had aspirations to write. It started as an elementary English project to create my own children’s book, terrible drawings and all. My dream to be an author has been narrowed down to: published or unpublished using a pen name or maybe my own. Short stories about fictional troubled characters or my own real life chaos with personal photographs interjected into the sadness. A children’s story about cats. A children’s story about single moms by choice. An informational, semi-inspirational monologue about living as a poly-substance dependent and/or a codependent. A movie script. A blog.
The thought of starting a blog was an impulsive and mostly irrational decision caused by mania. I had thought about it in short bursts of hope but it never transpired into any meaningful plot, I am still apprehensive. The day that I created this site, I watched about two hours of YouTube videos about WordPress and trusted Google from there. I think I did a pretty decent job in what became a 3 day hyper-focus. I could act surprised by the joy building a website brought me but Live Journal and Myspace prepared me for this moment. Thanks Tom!
Hesitance maintaining this project comes down to being scared. Fear runs my life. What if no one reads what I say? What if everyone does?! What if I say something wrong or hurt someone? What if my page gets hacked and my identity gets stolen. Which identity would they steal, all of them or just my government one? Which government one? Here we go, around and around. My brain is an echoing tunnel of hamsters endlessly chasing emptiness. Soft and warm, nocturnal and attracts cats. We live to die or die trying to live. So that leads me to a political conversation about assisted suicides.
Just kidding. We won’t go that deep into nihilistic thinking but it isn’t too far fetched in relation to addiction. At the centerfold of my Alcoholics Anonymous career, the sink or float moment, is what I call Valentines Day Massacre. (Not to copyright the movie which is horrifically awesome) The moment my addiction and codependency crashed into the toxic love triangle depths of hell was oddly my saving grace. Due to the nature of many blackouts, knockouts and general overuse of drugs – I remember these stories with the most accurate details that I can recall. Sometimes I gain small snippets and naturally I lose some memory too. I try not to forget where I came from so I don’t accidentally wander back there.
“My brain is an echoing tunnel of hamsters endlessly chasing emptiness.”
Valentines Day Massacre
It was another cold winter in Buffalo, what an obvious statement, but sometimes the lake winds make the dark solstice especially harsh for the Nickel City. Many take advantage of the chill by making babies. I was an unfortunate one and definitely the only person that didn’t deserve to be single for the heart-filled Hallmark holiday. It is hard to say if I was truly that egotistical or if I had allowed the art of tradition to severely warp my self worth. I don’t remember how long I was sober at the time, I think around a year.
It was February 13th and I was single. Who wants to go to a pity party alone? I reached out to my friend-zoned trouble-seeking friend to go downhill at the bowling alley. Upon arrival, I think he assumed it would be a fun date but I wasn’t slow to show my hand by ordering a pitcher, not to share. Towards the end it turned into a contest, me, 62 and a half inches, 140lbs, outdrinking Andre the Giant. My little delusional world of superiority often led me from the pitcher to the bottle. I don’t recall much of my descend into oblivion but I do remember finishing his pitcher on the way out. Seriously, who just leaves behind bought booze? So wasteful.
We pulled up in front of my townhouse, it was probably my 15th rental by my silver anniversary, and I had two dilemmas: I needed food and to pee. I asked my friend to take me to Main Street Taco. He declined and insisted that I make my way to my pillow. Watching him drive away was equivalent to when my mother went out Saturday nights. I was free. I don’t recall if I peed inside or outside but I trudged on to seek greasy dopamine.
The decision was originally tacos but it was a far walk, it was cold, and they didn’t have alcohol. I was found two blocks away from another former employer, a pizzeria/bar. At this point, I had to keep an entourage. For me, an emergency contact was the person you call when you come out of a blackout, lost, and need a ride home.
There are still remnants of hysteria left in my nervous system when I think about frantically calling JR. It wasn’t his first time bailing me out. My apartment was conveniently in the same complex so he could be my caretaker much more efficiently. I explained through the ancient Samsung that I was standing on the corner; drunk, lost and just smashed my face into the ice glazed sidewalk (twice). Being great at land navigation and common sense, JR told me to look up and read the street sign.
When JR showed up, he asked me where my apartment keys were. With my freezing hand digging around my Coach purse, I didn’t know. There was nothing in there. The contents of my bag spewed down the block in what I assume was an attempt to find my phone to contact the mothership. Good friends come get your drunk ass in the middle of the night, great friends collect all of your shit out of the snow. There may have been a heart to heart at the table where JR and I had previously had our, “we’re grownups now” talks. Although I don’t remember a word that was said, I know that I slept great on his couch knowing that I was safe. I probably should have gone to the ER but JR’s has free coffee in the morning.
Waking up in someone else’s house never loses that split second of panic when waking up after a bender. Feeling the room and the me-sized dent in the couch I knew upon waking where I had passed out. My head was pounding, my body aching. There wasn’t an immediate A ha moment that I had beaten myself into submission the night before. Using the restroom, I couldn’t hide from my abused reflection. I began to inspect my body and I had wounds and bruises from my face to my toes. To watch, I imagine my brawl with mother nature was similar to a semi hitting a deer; fast and sloppy. I crawled back to Alcoholics Anonymous the next day.
I half-heartedly went to my homegroup on Valentine’s Day with a busted face. I cried. They hadn’t seen me in months and didn’t look surprised at my defeat. Ms. Mary, a beautifully aged antique, pounded her finger into my chest and said, “you are going to die”. There were other words, equally harsh, and I was feeling the rage burning in my gut (maybe it was remnants of vodka). She was right. I could have died that night. It wasn’t my last drunk. It wasn’t even the last time I would blackout roaming Buffalo winter wonderlands – but the planted seed had finally germinated. I wasn’t a dud! The wait to get into long-term rehab was two weeks and I stayed dry. I went to meetings, called people and didn’t pick up. That was it. I just had to want to be sober more than I wanted to be drunk. For me, getting drunk could mean death.
Do I want to live, or do I want to die?
Just for today, I choose life.
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