Oct

1

Banished

October 1, 2007

At some point I realized that I go days on end without thinking about alcohol at all. I mean, the subject just doesn’t cross my mind, it’s not on my radar, if I had a personal tag cloud representing the contents of my brain “Drinking” would be one of the itty-bitty words faded into the background while things like “Maternity Waistbands” and “The Facial Expressions of Michael C. Hall” would be in the forefront.

I remember how drinking used to consume me, how I’d spend my entire day obsessing about it, from the moment I woke up and started battling the hours-long hangover that gripped me every single morning. Every minute that led up to the first swallow was nothing more than an impatient foot-tap. I remember feeling trapped on a painfully stupid hamster wheel: wake up, hate self, drink, repeat.

It was so hard, in those first months, to deal with the fact that I had to stop, and that I had to stop not just for a few weeks or months but I had to stop forever, I could never have a drink again. My head filled with a thousand images of things I couldn’t do: toast with champagne, order port with dessert, have a cold beer on a hot summer day (funny how none of these images included any disgusting realities like drinking cheap vodka straight from the bottle and holding my nose so I could swallow it without gagging).

I couldn’t have guessed at how unbelievably freeing it would be. How a thousand and one burdens would be lifted. I didn’t know what it would be like to live with clarity, without the endless cycle, the endless drown. I felt like it was going to be impossible to make it through without the crutch I had grown to depend on, the stick I used to beat myself bloody before going back for more, day after day.

I wish I could go back and tell myself: hang in there, because it is worth it. God, it is so worth it. But I guess it doesn’t matter, I made it here anyway. Here in this fan-fucking-tastic place where I don’t think about drinking for days on end.

It will never go away, not entirely. It lurks, a dark and shameful thing that I gave so many years to. But it’s more than I could have ever hoped for, to be able to forget about it at all.

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Sep

30

Sunday morning: easy like

September 30, 2007

The Rain has arrived, the dark and penetratingly chilly variety that we’ll see off and on throughout the fall, winter, spring, and the odd day of summer when it causes you to shake your fist at the Pacific Northwest weather gods, howling that it’s July for fuck’s sake, give us a goddamned break.

The days are shorter and it’s depressingly cold and unfriendly at 6 AM, which is exactly when Riley chose to start bleating from his room this morning like a malfunctioning alarm clock. I lay there in our bedroom listening to him grouse, thinking 1) what I wouldn’t give for a shock collar about now, and 2) this second kid thing, this upcoming newborn with all the months of interrupted sleep caused by such a creature . . . my god, my god, this has all been a REALLY TERRIBLE IDEA.

I know lots of people eschew caffeine altogether during pregnancy, but as far as I’m concerned, a hot cup of coffee is often the difference between wallowing in bleakness for the entirety of the day, and deciding that ha ha, sleep is overrated, why just look at all the marvelous things a person can get done before 8 AM if they put their mind to it! Such as drinking a second cup of coffee. Mmm.

Too bad you can’t siphon off just a drop or two of toddler energy, like if they secreted a lickable stimulant similar to those poisonous frogs. As I type this, Riley is engaged with galloping back and forth in the hall, his little pajama’d feet going pah pah pah pah pah pah pah—a repetitive sort of game but one I heartily endorse as it doesn’t typically involve pelting his ball into various breakable objects—and this is after he spent a good fifteen minutes practicing various ways to violently throw his body onto the couch (current favorite: the Spawning Salmon Maneuver).

(Now he’s kicking his ball up and down the hallway. He’s pretty good at this. I feel like I can see into my future when I watch him Pelé his way around, and it involves many Saturdays standing under an umbrella at a soccer field. Clutching a latte, of course. Maybe there’s a minivan nearby. Oh, god.)

I really am looking forward to meeting the tiny person who’s been studiously engaged with kicking my various internal organs over the last few weeks, but on dark raining mornings I can’t help wondering why we haven’t biologically evolved to produce children when they’re at a more stable age. Sure, newborns are adorable and squishy and all that, but why can’t they spring forth fully-formed and ready to sleep through the night and pitch in with the housework? Come on, DARWINISM.

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