Coveting "Normal"
I remember reading an essay in a book once where the author was desperately trying to learn a foreign language in his late 40s and was failing miserably. He so wanted to be the person who got it easily and wished he could just change up his DNA or cognitive makeup so he would suddenly be someone who was “good at languages.” It got to the point where he was looking at foreign babies in their prams jealously because they got to just sit back and learn/understand the language with no noticeable effort.
I was thinking of that story today at lunch. Not about language but about the ability to drink normally. I was watching a woman who was part of a couple across the veranda from us order a nice, cold glass of white wine with lunch. And she sipped it for the entire hour and a half. Just one glass!! Sipping one glass over an hour and a half??!! How is that even possible? Her partner had a beer (a normal sized beer, not even a big one) and managed to make that last the entire hour and a half too. Plus it didn't even look like they noticed that those glasses of wine and beer were sitting there front and center begging to be drunk. They were freaking ignoring them…
I started having “body snatchers” fantasies at that point. I was coveting their DNA, their brain chemistry, their livers…whatever it is that makes someone a “normal” drinker and not an alcoholic. Whatever makes someone able to ignore (IGNORE!!!) a full glass of wine or beer for minutes or even an hour. Whatever makes someone be able to sit and enjoy a glass of wine or beer at lunch and know that that one glass was not the inevitable start of many, many more. I want to start over as THEM, the non-alcoholic drinker, in the pram.
AND when the woman left? There was still at least a full swallow’s worth of wine in her glass. “How can that be??!!!” my brain screamed.
God, I wish I didn't have the brain of a drunk. I wish so badly I could just be “normal” and order and ignore a glass of wine with lunch. I wish I wasn't the person who looks longingly at someone’s glass of wine or someone’s beer and doesn't just want it---but also wants to be the person who can drink it---and only it---and walk away.
Instead I am the creepy, newly sober chick staring at you from over in the corner secretly coveting your DNA or whatever it is that makes you “normal.”