the length of waves

and drinking is one.

 

Now, first let me start off by saying the word “problem” is subjective; the very essence is based in a personal feeling of unwelcomeness or a desire for solution. For me, the solution I’m seeking to this “problem” is how exactly alcohol has become intrinsic to my life and how to finally establish this midpoint on the teeter totter of none at all and way too much.

 

I remember the first time I paused and thought about how much of the sweet nectar I was actually consuming. This is already an exaggeration; I had thought about it often, but it was the first time I had to put it down in to words. I was filling out my dating profile page, stringing together individual letters, to form words, to form sentences, that somehow were supposed to show to some undisclosed group of recipients who the real me was. I answered questions about fidelity, trust, what ifs, and would – you – evers. I filled in my height, my body type, my religion (lack thereof), but the space that caused me the most pause? The frequency of my drinking. “Never” was certainly out of the question, but I wasn’t really confident on which other to choose. Socially? Often? Did that make me sound like I drank too much? Did that make me less deserving of love? I clicked one, then the other, then back, then settled. I decided “often” would classify me as an alcoholic and I certainly wasn’t one. In my 2009 mind, an alcoholic was someone who drank alone, and that just wasn’t something I did. But as years go on, lifestyles change, and so do the definitions of what we believe is moral and reasonable. Even more so, our abilities to justify that we’re in control and that there isn’t a problem, seem to drown out any signal that there actually is. Now, I can drink a bottle of wine by my lonesome and I’m not phased. My definition of alcoholic has been altered, and it still isn’t me.

I took to the internet to find if when I looked up alcoholic, maybe my thoughts would be all wrong. Maybe the internet thinks I’m guilty. Problem is problems are subjective and so is the definition. Alcoholic: a person suffering from alcoholism. Alcoholism:  a condition in which someone frequently drinks too much alcohol and becomes unable to live a normal and healthy life. But what is too much? What is normal? What is healthy? When does it become a problem? And that’s the thing – mostly – it does when you decide it does. For me, I have some qualms with the realm of drinking. Not only my sometimes over consumption of it, but just, the bare essence of it in our society today. And so, you know, I’m going to talk about them.

 

drinking is not something to have in common.

 

Internet dating has had a presence in my life for the past seven years. I’ve met, and this is not an exaggeration, close to a hundred people from varying sites. I’ve read thousands of profiles. I’ve scanned for commonalities and deal breakers. One thing that gets under my skin? People thinking that alcohol is something to have in common. You like drinking whiskey? Tight. SO DO MILLIONS OF OTHER PEOPLE. You like craft beer? GOOD FOR YOU. Unless you’ve put a passion to action about alcohol other than just drinking it, this is nothing to boast, it is not a foundation for commonality. I watched some girl drink a “motor oil” shot this weekend, so basically, spoiler alert, people just like alcohol… even when it’s disgusting. I’d be lying if I told you I hadn’t used it to create conversation, an icebreaker, a first date. Okay, I’d be lying if it wasn’t a key component on the development of my last relationship. This is why I’m so disgruntled by it and my foolish 2009 self. I became someone’s dream girl based on two things, and two things alone: because my favorite drink was whiskey neat and I liked the movie “500 days of summer”… he filled in the rest.We broke up and two years later got back together after a responsible night of drinking almost an entire Costco sized bottle of bourbon. Oh, the romance. Looking back on it, we didn’t really have anything in common, just our temporary whiskey escapes together, on a nightly basis, in varying locations. It’s saddening and showed me that alcohol is certainly not going to sustain any relationships (at least any good ones). But it is easy. Grabbing drinks is easy. Liquid courage makes things easy. Like the way I learned real life labyrinths are meant to teach you that there are no short cuts to places worth going, I feel the same way here. Learn about someone. Do something. Challenge yourselves, for heavens sake.

the sweet escape.

Being an adult is hard, I guess. We’ll always think that life is hard because it’s happening to us. Think back to junior high you… life was SO hard back then, right? You had homework, book reports, boys who liked girls that weren’t you. Current you realizes how small these problems are. Current you struggles with bills, shattered forevers, jobs we don’t like, and decisions that feel like earthquakes with aftershocks we sometimes can’t handle. I happen to really enjoy my job, but it doesn’t change the fact that it is taxing. I interact with hundreds of people everyday who also believe that being an adult is hard, and I get that, and I cater to it. By the time I leave work I don’t want to make any more decisions, about life, about what to eat, about where to go. After a day of check ins, I just want to check out. The more I dwell on this point, the more disheartened I feel. Since when did I want to escape a life that I love? And when did alcohol become the dominant catalyst for such?

how many lives can we live in this one?

I’ve many a regret that stemmed from a night of over indulgence. Many black outs that have darkened my opinion of myself, my character, my self control. My body has been partner is some pretty abominable things while my mind floated in some alternate universe. I recently told a friend about my biggest regret, “it wasn’t me,” I told him. “I don’t even remember.” But these are excuses we make. These are things we justify because we know, we think, we want to believe that we are good people. That these things are bad and accidental and out of our control. But you’ve only one body, you’ve one brain that tells you to touch the glass to your lips once more, once more, once more. I have escaped myself so much so that, at times, I have become a person I didn’t recognize, one I hated, one that lost her spirit to spirits.So it goes to say, that we then spend so much time convincing ourselves we aren’t bad people, that we forget how to be good. I want to be good again.

everyone is friends in the girl’s bathroom.

You want a compliment? Go ahead and stroll into the ladies room around 11pm on a Saturday. Your hair looks great. Your outfit is the cutest. And your body, damn girl, it looks good. The drunken bathroom friendship is a beautiful thing. But those aren’t the friendships that matter.

I care about people. A lot. Each human is this invaluable vessel of emotion and experience and I want to meet all of them. I want to know my friends peaks and valleys. Their dreams and destructions. I want to share secrets and ideas. Luckily, I have friends that are willing to take the time to discuss these things with me. Problem is this other friend of mine, alcohol, serves as an interference for me remembering a lot of it. I have had inside jokes I created in the evening that I resided on the outside by the morning. I have had some very intense, life altering discussions that didn’t make it to the next day. And that destroys me. And it’s my own damn fault.

In the same way that we are responsible for our triumphs, we are also liable for our defeats. For the most part, we tend to want to keep credit for ourselves. In the same way of an elementary school open house, we want to look at people and say “I did that.” For me, alcohol has limited my desire to do such; it has challenged me in my development and preservation of my character. This is where my deconstruction finds it’s foundation. I’m going to spend the next two weeks breaking down the role of alcohol in my relationship with myself, with others, with society as a whole. Come along for the ride as I dig up the past, the present, and the times that went missing.