Tougher Than the Rest

It started before the year even took hold. On New Year's Eve day, I found out that my tests came back positive for Chlamydia. I suspected it might as a result of the sexual assault I suffered in August. After hanging up the phone and confronting my boyfriend in the shower to share the results, (and fleetingly holding on to the thought that maybe he had given it to me), I resolved that I would never really know how I got it, but there it was. I thought back to the other men I had slept with since August, and awkwardly called each of them to both wish them a Happy New Year and to let them know they needed to get tested, even if we used a condom. Then I cried. I entered January 2014 determined to succeed in a self-assigned month of sobriety.

Six days later my friend Katy's mother died of complications related to MS. My best friend Sarah's mom died of the same 11 years ago. I went home for the funeral, and saw a lot of old friends, some doing better than others. Three weeks later, my friend Molly died, and again I found myself in my hometown trying to make sense of another loss. I stayed sober until the night of her funeral, almost all of January behind me.

Come February, I was drinking again, and unable to control my emotions. I had no idea how to handle what the year decided to throw at me in just over 30 days. I lashed out at my boyfriend, I ignored my professional obligations, and I cried constantly. I went home again in March, this time for a wedding and my dad's 60th birthday celebration. A better occasion to be sure, but being home again brought so much to the surface that I still wasn't ready to face. Immediately after that trip, I spent a week in Costa Rica trying to understand all that I had been through. I spent each day with close friends on the beach, doing yoga every morning, learning to surf, eating well, journaling, and trying to rededicate myself to myself. I came back renewed and ready to change my perspective. Turns out it's not that easy. A few weeks later I broke up with my boyfriend because I knew I didn't love him and I never would. He didn't take it well. Still being emotionally exhausted, his behavior pushed me into a weary and often hateful place.  

April brought on taxes, as usual, equally as tedious. I don't remember if May had flowers or not. As a cure for boredom, I started seeing an old flame again and remembered why it didn't work out the first time immediately, but continued to date him anyway. In June, I visited my parents in Philadelphia and saw how terribly my dad's alcoholism had progressed, and how it made my mom feel. I heard stories about the effects of mood enhancers and alcohol; about drunken nights that ended in tears and broken ribs. About how concern turned to anger and crept quickly to feed off my mother's inability to be around this anymore, and my dad's inability to control it. I went to Puerto Rico not long after and tried again to ignore the creeping madness my life had become.

Just before the Fourth of July, I broke my arm and learned just how stupid and clumsy I can be in the middle of the day. And just how little my boyfriend cared about my general well-being. I'm still suffering as a result of that. I am drowning in debt, and my spirit is want to wonder down a dark path. I can't say I blame the guy I was seeing from wanting to flee, and I am actually thankful he did, his drinking only further fueled my own. In truth, I am in no condition to date right now. I went home again at the end of July - for another wedding - and lay witness to my mother's new-found hatred. Maybe 'hate' is too strong a word as she still loves my dad, but she most definitely does not like him right now, and I cannot blame her for that. She's been putting up with an alcoholic for nearly 45 years. She blames herself for enabling him, for being codependent, maybe even for staying all these years as she watched it get worse. Deep down I think she knows he would die without her. Who knows exactly, but she finally had the courage to tell him that he is ruining their marriage. He says he'll try. So far, he's failed at even that.

It is now August and I am attending my first Al-Anon meeting tonight. My mom went to one last week. I need to know how to talk to my dad about what he's doing to us, to himself, and I don't know how to do that without making him angry, or worse. He's been there before too. I'm not sure what I will get out of it exactly, but I am not going alone and I am grateful for that.

At the end of this month, and I going to be in a wedding in Pasadena, for friends that I love dearly. In September, the day I turn 33, I am traveling to Copenhagen with two of my three coworkers for a work-sponsored trip. In October, my best friend Michael is going to marry his best friend, Michael. I'll be in that wedding too. I am trying so hard to look forward, not backward, to these events to come that are happy and full of hope, because some days, all I can think about is the heartache and shame that this year has brought so far and it makes me hateful. It makes me want to crawl in bed and hug a man who doesn't love me instead of a man that does and forget all the things I have to do. It makes me think of Molly, and I start to understand how this happened to her. How she must have woken up every morning hungover and hating herself. The best thing for a hangover is another drink, so there she went. You know the rest.

I don't want to become a person who lives in hate. I see what it's done to my father, to my friend, and to my heart. Since I turned 13, any wish I make whether it be on stars, on eyelashes, on birthday wishes, has always been for love. I can't help it, it's just something I always do. My friend Jenny calls me a hopeless romantic, and maybe she's right; but maybe it's more than a Jane-Austen-novel-kind-of-hopeless. Maybe it's because I've never given up the hope. And maybe that's what will save me after all.        

Old Familiar Friend

It's January 25, and I'm 24 days into a sober month. The only alcohol I've had in the last 24 days was a small shot of a Greek liqueur at my friend Katy Mena's mother's funeral. We all toasted to Vicky to help ease her passing into the next world. I don't regret it, and I don't think it counts as cheating.

It's been hard. Harder than I ever imagined it would be. I didn't realize how much I rely on a glass of wine or a beer at the end of long day to help me wind down. Or a whiskey on the rocks to help me have a better time when I'm out with my friends. Or several more to stumble home and have sloppy sex with my boyfriend. It's not like I was wasted all the time, but it started to feel like too much. Like I couldn't just go a night without having a drink, or two maybe, to relax. There is always a happy hour somewhere in New York, and I am usually always available for boozy brunch. No better way to chase a hangover than to wash it out with a Bloody Mary and bottomless Mimosas.

It started as just a casual statement to myself. I think I want to quit drinking for the entire month of January. Then I said it aloud to some people and they said, I think I like that idea. Then more friends agreed, and here we are, almost to the end. There are days that I've wanted to get completely shitfaced in some weird effort to make up for lost time. Yet, the only time I lost is when I was shitfaced. Or hungover. Or in the middle of a seizure the next day because I abused my brain chemistry by drowning it in alcohol.

For years I have watched my Dad struggle to be what people jokingly refer to as a "functional alcoholic," and I try not to let this need overtake me like it has him. Or worse, like it is doing to my friend Molly right now. My Dad is almost 60, and while it scares me to think that he may one day drink himself to death, Molly is already there. She is 33 years-old, and may not make it through the night. As her friend, I have seen her turn from the smartest, loving and loyal woman I know to a shell of herself - a hard-hearted, self-destructive, deceiving person that I am scared of. She has become such a different person that I feared losing her friendship forever if I confronted her about her alcoholism. So I didn't. I let my need for Molly to be alright, and the need to justify my own desire to continue on my own path without judgment, stop me from telling her that I was worried about her. That I thought she needed help. That I didn't want her to die.

It maybe too late now to tell her those things. She is in the ICU on a ventilator struggling to keep her organs working. Her liver failed, and now her kidneys are failing too. She is swollen and yellow, and now I believe she is the one who is scared. I've been talking to a lot of our friends over the last two days, and every conversation we have ends with, "I love you." We are all trying to hope for the best, but I'm not sure what the best is anymore.

I am heartbroken standing in this middle ground, and trying to sort through the twisted clarity my break from alcohol has brought. It has called attention to my need, even in this most inappropriate time and place, to want to drink. I want to drink just to take the edge off feeling so helpless and sad. I want to drink so that the reality of Molly's situation is less, well, real. I want to drink so that I won't be as frustrated with my boyfriend for trying to be helpful. I want to drink just because I do.

I find these confrontations confusing. I hope that I am a person who can control myself, but when it comes to alcohol, maybe it is not that simple. What will it be like when I get back to my normal routine and "allow" myself to drink again? Is it even a wise choice to ever go back? I am struggling to find solace in my old familiar friendly state of mind, and I hope to keep that wary understanding for as long as I can. I don't want to ever depend on alcohol to make me feel like a better version of myself. I want to see drinking as a fun thing I want to do, not a fun thing I have to do.

For now, I'm going to be grateful that I am able to stop for the month of January; I'm going to continue to understand my relationship with alcohol; and I'm going to pray for my friend.