Meaning of LIfe

So the time has come for some humble acceptance and accountability. 

“One morning, after many dark nights of despair, an irrepressible longing to live will announce to us the fact that all is finished and that suffering has no more meaning than happiness.” Camus.

Drinking alcohol again.  Smoking weed like a half-crazed hippy.  Tired and anxious and emotionally scattered like a handful of coins down the drain.

Last week I did a cash job and had a pocketful of cash ($80) that had sort of slipped through the system, and whilst we were on holiday for a week, I bought a bottle of vodka.  My wife was inside the supermarket of some little town and it just happened to be next to a liquorstore, so I nimbly skipped over and soon enough had a bottle of Absolut tucked under my armpit.

And there it stayed until we returned to our accommodation.  Later that night I glugged it straight in raw, eye-watering swallows, like acid down my throat.  I returned to the open fire and our friends as if nothing had happened.
“But your face is all red and you’re slurring?”
“Umm, I just had an antihistamine...?”
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I have been taking antabuse for a while now.  It is like a sledgehammer of honesty – bringing on waves of nausea, headaches and cramps if I so much as have alcohol in my deodorant.  So you can imagine what 700ml of vodka would do in an hour.  My face, neck and chest went red blotchy like I had some tropical disease and my vision was swirling.

Boldly, with that curious blend of arrogance, ignorance and pure bravado that makes me alcoholic, I maintained my part in the conversation and freely offered my analysis of the local property market, the current trends in the world economy and what to do with your retirement income over the medium term.  By all accounts I was a convincing “drunk-drinking-again.”
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Next day I woke before everyone else, tried to shit it out but couldn’t, then, returning to the scene of the crime, took a last pull of the vodka (there was about a quarter left in the bottle) and went outside into the frigid winter air for a walk.  I stumbled along the country road, clothes layered right on top of my pyjamas, and ducked under the barbed wire fence to walk towards the cattle.

The four steers just blinked at me, purple tongues busy switching from mouth to nostril and back again, panting fumes into the chill air.  My head throbbed, and I pretended not to cough on a cigarette as I shuddered back the dull blanket of the alcoholic tingle.  There, back again.  Felt sort of normal for a bit.

Is this all there is?  I said to the steers as they shifted from one foot to another, or nodded away a drip from their nose.  Just this interminable peace and quiet for a couple of years before the  blinding chaos of stainless steel and industrial butchery?  The perfect provincial idyll before those  few final hours of sheer terror and finally the quiet nothingness of death.

I started to cry and realised for the four thousand, three hundred and thirty second time that I was wasting my life.  I was alcoholic and hopelessly lost, but there was hope.  I can choose my appointment at the slaughthouse – or keep living with three beautiful daughters, and a gracious, patient and understanding wife.

I know life has no meaning – we are all quietly going about paying mortgages in a kind of quiet desperation thinking that everything is going to be OK.  But it can have a meaning – if you have the courage and energy to give it meaning.  Giving your life meaning through a bottle or a ballgame or a bet makes no difference to me – but does lend you a passion and intrigue so you can briefly lift your gaze from the silent monotony and savour each other and whatever distractions you choose.  But for me, and most of us, it just can’t be alcohol, or drugs or gambling even.
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I haven’t been accountable for a while – and this blog is a very rude reminder of how long it has been.  Thanks for dropping by and let’s see if I can’t get my shit together – because people are depending on me and I’ve been letting them down.

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