the length of waves

Day three came around and for the first time I felt stressed; I was going out to dinner with my first ever boyfriend. This was, by no means, the stressful part. He and I are actually great friends and hang out on a semi regular basis. We realized a couple hangs ago that because we were teenagers and idiots when we were a couple, we never really went on proper dates. We had dated from the time I was fifteen to when I turned twenty and I really couldn’t remember a time we went out to a nice dinner. We decided, recently, to change that. And today was the day.

We were celebrating a few things; being adults, still being friends, his new job, and his big move coming up in a couple weeks to Austin. As I was sliding in to my perfect “first” date dress, I started to feel a bit bummed. I couldn’t have a glass of wine to celebrate all of the things, well, not that I couldn’t, but it wasn’t part of my current plan. The next feeling that came over me was guilt, like I would be holding him back from his celebratory beverage and the credit he, we, deserved. Stress. My solution? I was going to order a soda pop (a treat for me) and put it in a wine glass. Sounded crazy, but I knew he had loved me after doing crazier things. I slid in to my jacket and the passenger seat of his car.

It’s apropros that part of this two week sobriety was experienced with him. You see, he is the first person I ever hurt with this drinking habit of mine. We were sixteen and one of our friends who had a “cool” mom and a hobby of stealing liquor from his work was having a house party. We went to the party and our stories chart differently; they intersect, but only at certain points. He swore we were together and was sober. I swore we were on a break and was reckless. My lips kissed flights of glasses until they soared on to the lips of someone else… and he watched it happen. Hand in hand I walked with the stranger out the door until he couldn’t handle it anymore and pulled me back inside. We spent the evening arguing on the floor in the dark and he told me loved me for the first time. Oh, the romance. Again, idiots. He made me promise not to drink anymore and I obliged. I became sober. The perpetual designated driver. Hell, I even bought some straight edge gear (laughing real hard about this now). We broke up in September of ’06 and when New Year’s Eve rolled around I found myself standing in Times Square, waiting for the ball to drop, sipping on an accidental alcoholic beverage. How was I to know an “electric lemonade” had booze in it? Again, idiot. I kissed a dude in a kilt and my sobriety goodbye.

But tonight, tonight was about the now. The things we’re doing and not the things we’ve done. We sat down at one of my favorite restaurants, that just so happens to host some of my favorite chianti, which just so happens to be hosted (in large quantities) by my body each time I’m there. They serve the wine there in essentially a normal cup, so my soda disguised as wine plan is unnecessary, but also completely necessary, because it brings me to epiphany two.

kiss my glass.

It didn’t matter if my glass was half empty or half full, it just mattered what kind of glass I had. I kept analyzing my desire to have a wine glass, even if it didn’t house the proper liquid. I wanted to do that to give an illusion, to make it feel like I had the tools to celebrate, and to not make someone else feel uncomfortable. In my planning the upcoming week, I had thought about this strategy often. Going to a bar? I would just order a ginger ale and ask for it in a short cup and everyone would be none the wiser. Genius, right? But why? Do we really just get drinks to make people comfortable? To make ourselves comfortable? When did it become weird to be sober? When did it become such a big deal if someone wasn’t drinking?

Like many revelations as of late, this really troubled me. This constant compliance of comfortable, of this is the easiest thing, of I’d rather not explain. How did we get here? When did we become the poster children for peer pressure? Are we all just so afraid of making genuine connection without liquid courage? Afraid of the icy attitudes of others without a booze blanket to keep us warm? Mostly I’m just full of questions here. Maybe at our age, in this time, we’re all just so desperate to relate. We’re the generation of hope, of “we’re all in this together,” of “I don’t really know what the hell I’m doing, but I’m sure I’ll figure it out.” Maybe we all feel a little lost. Maybe in all these temporary life escapes we all just want to make sure there is someone by our side to elope with. Maybe we feel more comfortable then. Justified in our actions. Sloshed in solidarity. This then ties in a whole other level of dependency. Where we don’t only rely on alcohol to provide us whatever we seek at the bottom of the glass, but that we also have someone to make us feel less guilty about it, that we are also there to make other people feel innocent, too.

I am left urging myself and others, again, to reach beyond the effortless. We’ve more in common than the glasses we hold. More interests to share than inebriants. There are more valuable questions to ask than “what are you drinking?” And certainly better than “why aren’t you?”

So cheers to all y’all, with whatever glass your heart desires.