Thank You for being my Friends

On the weekend my favorite uncle or someone else said something like "So you're an alcoholic?"

And I paused - it was a real certain time for me.  I nodded.

It was what you might call a moment.

And they kept drinking and ordering wine and shit and I just sat there sucking water.

But I love the guy.  And I thought my confession was sort of meaningful.

He is a coal miner and he earns triple what I do - but he is always ready to help with steps and stairs and gutters and fences and stuff.  Like the father I never had - but then, out of the blue, I get to see my father, (should I capitalize the D as in Dad or what?)

Anyway there is he is as we brush past in the bowels of the courthouse - I touch his shoulder with my hand

"What are we doing here?"

And he looked at me. He is just like me in a way.

"I didn't do it?" I says. Cause its the truth.

"Of course you didn't" he says, in a half-smile, half mind-fuck.  I remembered I needed to check my blood count genes for his family shit or whatever.

**

Now, things have changed and I went for a 10km walk after we won our court appearance.  It was such a satisfying victory - but as we had a coffee, I felt sad and empty and to be fucking honest, ready to get smashed.

**
Thank you for being my friends.  Sometimes I cry just reading this shit and it makes me feel so guilty and responsible and back in touch.

You hit only what you aim at

In the long run, men hit only what they aim at. Thoreau.

 It’s not really funny at all but drinking crept back into my life – just the same way as smoking did after I quit the first few times. One drink at a party turned into three bottles and then I was skulking around drinking away the hangover and a few days later I was planning days off where I could drink all morning and be ‘sober’ by dinnertime so no one would notice. Straight back down to rock bottom. It was delicious fun for a bit but living hung over and tired is a clusterfuck – so here I am on day three sober again.

Exactly a year ago I stopped drinking for 297 days, so here we go again. This time is different because I know I am alcoholic and like I said to my wife – anytime I am drinking, you just know things are drifting off the rails. This time it was going to court a few times with my mother and sister, and I concede I did let the emotion and sense of betrayal get the better of me and I was feeling ungrateful and cheated standing in line at the liquor store.

I took my eyes off my goal and let drinking slip from my center and my base to become something that wasn’t so bad. Like being quadriplegic isn’t so bad compared with living with cancer. And I found myself skipping class and drinking sauvignon blanc (cause it wouldn’t stain my teeth) under the shade of my tree ferns watching the chickens. In the rain. On a Monday morning.

Whist there is a sense of supreme peacefulness and complete and utter selfishness in drinking like that, 9am whilst the neighbors drive off to work, it is breathtakingly destructive. And then the news this morning that an acquaintance has parked his car by the lookout, taken off his shoes and stepped up to the railing, and despite the plea of person standing nearby, launched himself off into suicide. Grim, visceral depression and the permanence of a decision brought home from bleak Canada.

So I apologize for my absence – I was too ashamed to get it together and write about how fucking splendid it was being drunk again. Just hear it from me, being drunk that one time always flows over into the next day and the next cause I am always chasing away the hangover with another drink. I am aiming up higher again and back with all the humility of a lesson learned.

134th Post

Have been talking with my lawyer - she is of course well spoken, clearly elucidating and almost phonetically pronouncing each word as it leaves her mouth.  She shares the same name as my mother, but she listens to me when I talk, which is something my own mother would never grant me - the dignity of active listening.  So we get on well and she is acting for me.  I have given her a short document on my position and the antecedents leading up to the incident so she is well backgrounded on the situation.

And she mentioned mediation again.  And this is what I said.

Some relationships sour and turn fetid and are irrecoverable.  There is simply nothing that can be done to salvage or recover the situation to any sort of respectful working arrangement.  Mediation is not going to do it.  Listening and cataloging the history of pain and suffering is not going to do it.  The best strategy is to simply accept the situation for what it is - broken - and move on.  Perhaps time may heal the indignation and hurt, but I feel giving the whole shebang even another second of oxygen is simply wasting my time and resources.

She was taken a black by this, and saw the passion and fervor in my voice - (she said not to talk with such vehemence in court) and sort of sat back in her chair and shrugged her shoulders.

"OK, no mediation then.  So we're going for a win, or a loss.  No middle ground."

"Mmm,"  I nodded.
*

Am I being a stubborn alcoholic?  No.  I have dealt with this mess a decade ago (albeit by drinking my way through it, which was whatever it was) and it is not for my mother to choose when she re-ignites the fire and me to play out my role.  I have moved on and, although it is hard to say, actually forgiven her and all involved for their roles in it - and myself too - we were all naive and foolish and let the heat of the moment carry us away.

But, with ten years of hindsight, and a year of sobriety, I don't want to go back there, and trawl through the broken glass and hurtful shit that was said and try to make some sort of patched up mediation out of it.  It was war at the time, and that was it.  Things happened and wwre said and done.

Moving on has been such a release and allowed me to concentrate on other more productive and stimulating things like online shopping career wife kids etc.  I am not willing to go into a series of mediation meetings and validate all the old crap again.  What happens on the field stays on the field.

*

What do you think?  Am I still thinking like an alcoholic - or am I moving forward and letting the past stay there?  Have your say.. everything helps doesn't it?

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