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I look in the mirror and greet what I see with both familiarity and disgust. The blotches, the bloated face and the self-recriminations I determine are indications of my true nature. I quickly rescind that proclamation and acknowledge they are signs of my alcoholism which in many ways has become my true self over the last 20 years.
I believe now I was always destined to be an alcoholic though watching the ugly disintegrations of my father and sister when I was quite young made me hold back my first drink until I was in college. But from then on, and off and on until today, alcohol has been the obsession that has transcended any other obsession. It has outlived any other relationship. My devotion to it turned into slavery and even during the times I have been able to turn my back on it completely, the times felt more like separations; never divorces. And even during those times of abstinence, I would dream of drinking like a lost but not forgotten lover.
Alcohol has let me be things I am not. Or at least allowed me to believe I was things I am not. It has allowed me to trick myself into believing my fantasies were real and anything, no matter how fantastic, was attainable. The irony of alcohol for me is that is has stood in the way of my achieving so many desired goals; both big and small. Alcohol did let me escape. The need and desire had been so strong in me for so long that alcohol, at first, felt like an elixir that allowed freedom. I could escape; transcend my real world filled with its fear and loss and sadness and actually believe there was relief. Relief. It does not sound like the most powerful of emotions but I truly experienced the relief given to me by alcohol as a gift of extraordinary value. Each drink was like a wave of relief washing over me. Each drink allowed the tide to wash over me and amongst the seaweed and sand were my failings, my fears, my damages, and my hurts all drifting off of me. I was washed clean in alcohol. Some distant ocean assumed my flaws.
Antiseptic. Alcohol kills germs. It cleans wounds so they can heal. Alcohol was my medicine. Alcohol would heal me and make me whole. Make me a person others wanted to be around because I would no longer be the sick and broken individual I feared and felt I was. I craved acceptance and alcohol, initially, made me someone others would accept more easily. Alcohol let things slide, made me palatable in a way I never felt I was before. Alcohol made everything fun. Alcohol consumed me with laughter at first. At first.
So I awake to a headache, stomach ache, blotches, bloodshot eyes; self-loathing and recriminations and shame, and I realize that alcohol has deceived me once again. More likely it is I who has deceived myself for I have known for years my drinking has been but a dangerous game. A hope that this toxin would someone deliver me.
Alcohol hides. It hides in the back of my closet and the back of my mind. When I have drunk enough of it, it robs me. It steals my memories of what I have done and where I have been. And as it is excreted from my body gradually and consistently, I am left with the fear and the humiliation of what it might have made me do or say.
I remember what those who are concerned about me have said. "Alcohol is a toxin, not a beverage." I imagine it saturating and poisoning my liver and kidneys. I think of the movie "Alien" and imagine eventually, maybe already, alcohol will become who I am. Consuming my brain and taking over my body and spirit.
I remember my first real drunk. Alcohol was there with me for my first kiss; my first love. It gave me courage that I never possessed instinctively. So I saw the love of my life at a college party and after flirting with him many times in the past, I approached him while filled with liquid courage. I approached him in a way that was not mine but was the alcohol's. He was impressed, and enamored, and flattered. I loved him for years after, and alcohol helped me keep that love going.
After a few years he stopped loving me. He had found someone new. Alcohol was there to solace me. Alcohol was true to me and did not abandon me or cheat on me.
By then I had established a group of friends. Drinkers like me. We made excuses for each other. We drank while dyeing each other's hair, drank while listening to music, drank while having important, in depth conversations, drank in the dorms, drank at parties, drank, drank, drank, and never questioned each other. We understood. I stayed close with my one close friend for many years until she died of cancer at 37. She drank even more than I, but with a finesse I could never quite muster. She drank champagne and Bloody Marys and embodied a 1950's mode of "socializing" that revolved primarily around drinking and hors d'ouvres at cocktail parties she regularly hosted. She introduced me to my husband who also drank some and enjoyed my jovial, outgoing personality when I was "loose."
My dark, depressed moments emerged often but I tried to keep them covered and under control. My dirty secret. The real me was depressed and damaged and unlovable. Those moods brought everyone else "down" and the last thing I wanted to be was alone. I could not risk that. I took antidepressants that either worked some or not at all. I got into exercise to stimulate those natural endorphins. I tried yoga, therapy, AA, but nothing quite worked, or they did work but never for very long.
Then I got pregnant and that worked. For nine months, I did not drink. I did not want to drink. And I felt somehow released and redeemed. Sobriety is a unique experience. There is the period before you drink and the period after you realize you have a problem. You never go back to normal. You never see your relationship to alcohol the same way again. You become "sober" or "abstinent". You work a program or you don't. But you are always an alcoholic. Always stigmatized and identified by your weakness; your gullibility to and love for a liquid that provides both peace and self destruction.
Pregnancy was my short-term cure but it did not hold. I convinced myself that someone who could not so much as drink a beer for almost 2 years could not possibly be an alcoholic. So I ended our separation and returned to my true obsession and primary relationship. And as in most bad relationships, our reuniting was perfect. Now I had more to deal with. A child, work, growing older, problems in my marriage, and the realization that life was not going to live up to my expectations nor was I going to live up to the expectations of those around me. But the alcohol lifted me up and gave me relief if only for a short time.
But I was drinking too much and I knew it. I was drinking in the morning sometimes and drinking alone and spending my days waiting to drink again. In the back of my head I knew it was all wrong but I was afraid because alcohol had always been the only one there all along. In my limited thinking, there was nothing else I could turn to. And I still fooled myself into believing the payoff was worth the price.
So I got pregnant again and kept alcohol at bay. My marriage was groaning beneath the weight of responsibilities, bills, and disappointments but I didn't drink again while I was pregnant and felt great pride in this achievement. I gave birth to baby number two and realized, in a moment of frightening clarity, that I was living a life I feared I could not handle and believed I was unable to sustain. My husband and I moved further apart and became angry strangers who shared the love of two children and numerous bills but nothing else. I inevitably returned to work, drinking, and self-destruction. I let my depression overtake me. I let my family devolve into a separate entity to which I felt no real connection. I paid bills. I stopped caring about how I looked. I gained weight and gave up. And then what? I realized I was at a crossroads. Perhaps some alcoholics die fast but I didn't feel like I would. I sensed myself lingering, suffering, and causing pain to others. For once I had others I cared about and I worried that the destruction I had experienced in my own life with my father and sister and had been causing myself for years might become my own children's fate as well.
If there is a Higher Power for me then that Higher Power is my children. I remember a particular morning, a particular moment that became a turning point. Nursing a hangover, I slept in one Sunday morning while my husband was with the boys. When I finally awoke I was greeted with my inevitable self-loathing that was simply self-pity in disguise. I rolled over to see the clock and leaning against the clock was a homemade get well card from my older son. There was a drawing of me on the cover; in bed with miles of hair covering the pillow. Though my hair is long, Zachary has always drawn it as the overwhelming feature of my physical presentation. I looked long at the drawing and saw Medusa, Rapunzel, and Sleeping Beauty. I opened the card and saw that it was a get well card. "Dear Mommy, I am sorry you are sick. I want you to get well. Love, Zachary". I wanted to get well finally and for good.
I didn't want to want to drink but I did. So I went to detox. A grand statement for a person like me to make. I feared I wouldn't be able to tolerate it but once I was there I felt that feeling of relief for which I had been searching for so long. I had admitted my "secret", owned up to it and given up and in so doing had given up the hold alcohol had on me. Or at least began to. The process of detox may release the physical addiction to the chemical but the psychological and emotional connection is strong. Why do so many women return to abusive men? Not all progress is linear. I returned to my abusive bottle after detox but not in the same way or to the same extent I had before. Something had changed. I couldn't allow the rest of my life to be given over to this liquid that was robbing my soul and threatening my children too. "I want you to get well Mommy."
I stared again long at the blotches and the wrinkles and lines on my face that provided a road map of my life on my skin. There was no getting away. No escaping where I had been. The alcohol had become something of me; it was a part of who I was intrinsically. It would forever be there waiting for me. When I was vulnerable or when I was pompously strong. When I was down and depressed or happy and celebrating. There was no ending this relationship, but there was a possibility of changing it. Day by day. The bloating subsided, the blotches less noticeable. The pain muted. The lines etched a history on my face but not necessarily a future. That was still undetermined and malleable.
That is still mine.
Regina Walker can be reached at info@moondance.org. |
