I imagine it would be happier.

Gross. :p

For the first time in awhile today I didn't have any cravings, I didn't see any shadows. What I'm left with is guilt. Why am I always guilty and how do I get rid of it? Inevitably the guilt, and the fear of future guiltiness leads me back to drinking. I've done horrible stupid things to wonderful beautiful people and the fear of doing them again encapsulates me and holds me away from that outside world. Maybe it's only part of the equation, it's difficult to decipher now, I've become such a mess that I cannot read my own codes, I've forgotten all my own passwords, I have no access to my roots any longer...

New York City, 2007, I'm working in the city, staying at the Essex House, an old friend who I grew up with doing theater, haven't seen her in years, comes up from the lower east side to meet for (guess what?) a drink. I don't know why this is permissible in my mind as I've spent the previous year grappling for the first time with admitted alcoholism, with varied success but with a greater self knowledge now, I KNEW it was a bad idea, I KNEW it was a bad idea, I KNEW IT WAS A BAD FRIGGIN IDEA?!!?!! Since moving back east for this job I had been cheating in my sobriety...

Three things happen to me always when I go back, even just to visit. #1 I start swearing every other word, it's contagious... #2 I start losing my R's in mimic... #3 I start incorporating alcohol into my meals...

It starts off well enough, a third friend that was supposed to meet us feigned a headache and gracefully bowed out (after we called her when she didn't show up), we make fun of her, knowing that she's an upper west side snob and just couldn't stomach coming ALL the way to touristy midtown on the subway. A beer. A Burger. Some catching up... What I'm guessing was about four beers in some Romanian guy starts talking to us, nice enough guy, interesting conversation about I forget what, everything's fine, I step out to smoke...

Outside there's a bongo bum singing blues and his friend. I start talking to them as I'm inclined to do, 'specially when on my way to drunk, give em both a smoke and go back in...

Romanian guy now sitting next to friend, fine, I suggest a shot and a toast... Third shot round responsibly declined by friend and Romanian guy... three or four more beers in my by this time... starting to feel that slide, like all traction has been lost on a slope made of wet rubber, I'm destructive, I'm in this for the goal, I imagine I've always loved (let's call her) jasmine, this Romanian guy's trying to pick her up... I go out to smoke...

Bums drinking whiskey in a bag, I joke about the Yankees, they tell me I shouldn't wear a Red Sox hat in the city at night, easy prey... I jokingserious direct their eyes through the window, telling them that the Romanian guy is trying to pick up my girl and what they think I should do about it... obvious drunken bum responses given 'fight fight fight!', ... but it is in jest on my part... one of my vices, funking with people when I drink...

Go back in, thinly veiled funking with Romanian guy... I think I'm so slick when I drink but how horribly obvious must I have been?... eventually convincing both for one last shot together in return for my implicit agreement that it's getting late and this is the last... Remember vaguity... walking Jasmine outside, insisting on buying her a taxi, ... suggesting that she can stay in my hotel room... did I try to pick her up? This girl I watched play anne frank as I sat in the light booth with her mother calling cues?... what else did I say?... how big of a fool did I make of me?...

Somehow, being LITERALLY across the street from my hotel I took a taxi home that night. Maybe I rode the taxi with her? But I don't think so. I remember walking forever and ever around New York. I must have somehow simply gone the wrong way, somehow, being DIRECTLY across the street from my hotel. Eventually I must have realized that I was lost and, though I know Manhattan fairly well could not get an accurate reading on the GRIDLIKE street concoction they got going on there... I must have gotten into a taxi just for the simplicity of saying two words and having them take me there.... I remember pulling out my wallet... I had three hundred dollars when I met with jasmine... I have nothing in my wallet now... all of that money couldn't have gone at the bar though I did buy drinks for three people for four hours and probably gave a twenty to each of the bar bums.... I remember the taxi guy furious, and getting out and stumbling... black.

I wake up somehow four hours later, work, jesus, thank god i am so recently and deeply drunk that there is no hangover until the day is almost done, I cut off early anyhow... I have a text from jasmine, she wonders if i got home ok.. apparently called her during lost wanderings... I text back breif... 'Y got home sry abt lst ngt'... no reply. I don't expect I'll ever see or hear from her again.

I'm hoping that writing some of these out will help me little by little deal with the guilt. This was hardly one of my worst, but it was the last time I got drunk with real consequences. I lost a friend, albeit one I'd only talked to a few times since high school, it was someone I grew up with and respected and was close to her parents and have mutual friends with. It was someone who, if I was a normal person, I might have been very interested in keeping in touch with again, maybe working with her on some of her projects which she alluded to before we met up, another in a long series of old theater friends trying to get me back in the arts... but drinking acted like an atomic bomb on this situation. It completely obliterated any possibility of anything that may have existed in just a few hours. It takes so little time to ruin years of memories and long standing friendships. It takes so little, almost nothing. I hate this. I hate all of this. This guilt, this regret, and this one of the more benign episodes, not involving police or bodily fluids or self harm or sex or injury.

How can I forgive myself for any of this? I'm supposed to look at myself and say 'I forgive you siamcat, you have a 'disease' and it's not your fault, you're trying to get better now so all this is ok'. It's NOT OK! It's NOT OK that I've RUINED things and HURT people and GIVEN UP possibility and STUNTED my growth on EVERY PERCEIVABLE LEVEL EVER!!!!

Crap,... I don't know.

How about starting with today, yesterday is gone. Don't dwell on it any more than your dropbears or heffalumps. Concentrate on making today a success. Tomorrow today will be one yesterday that you wont regret.

I'll be looking into heffalumps soon, I'd forgotten all about them. I don't know where I'm going to find that book though...

Take care, bon appetit, dessert must follow.

Wow. Awesome writing.





You move on. Cut yourself some slack no matter how difficult that is for you to do.

For me, it's the only way to begin to heal.

The people on this board know how it feels to watch the destruction of our own lives. We have watched relationships split up. We have kissed our jobs goodbye. We have watched wealth fly out of our pockets. We have watched families splinter into dysfunctional chaos. We have had our physical and mental health rot. We have watched love either still-born or murdered by stupidity or mistakes. We find a common bond. We are normal people who were seduced by alcohol.

Blindness regarding the damage that alcohol often brings seems abnormal to me. It’s like living in a war zone with bullets flying all around and saying “none of these have hit me, so I’m not involved.” I’m not trying to blame to innocent people. I want to clarify what a normal reaction should involve when considering alcohol. Some bleed, some don’t. Some die, some don’t.

All of us can look back to when we were younger, less thoughtful, or more impetuous and repeat the words that have been spoken a trillion times “if only I knew then what I know now.” If anyone in the rest of the world could ever forgive any one of us, it will begin with us forgiving ourselves.

Hope comes from our own minds. The world may judge us, but, while sober, we can grow, learn, love, notice and see. We can forgive ourselves and forgive everyone around us for being human.

Hmm, since I can't speak from my own experience here, I'll just say I hope you find what you need. I have nothing to offer.

my head hurts

((((Siam))))

Many people are afraid to forgive because they feel they must remember the wrong or they will not learn from it. The opposite is true. Through forgiveness, the wrong is released from its emotional stranglehold on us so that we can learn from it. Through the power and intelligence of the heart, the release of forgiveness brings expanded intelligence to work with the situation more effectively. -- David McArthur & Bruce McArthur

When I first found out about my husband's heroin addiction, I was really angry. And I thought it would be a long time before I forgave him. But as I recovered from the initial shock, I came to realize that it was not my place to forgive. This was not something he had done to me, he had done it to himself. It took him a long time to admit his problem to me, and only did it then because I confronted him about it. He was ashamed of himself for becoming addicted, and had allowed self-loathing to fester in his heart, building walls around himself to "protect" me and the girls from his hurt. Throughout all of this, I have fought to maintain a certain level of peace in myself, and have continued living life. He is slowly working on forgiving himself for what he has done. He has said that seeing me and the girls living, loving, and being happy despite his addiction has helped him to realize that the present continues to unfold despite the past.

So don't say, 'I forgive you siamcat, you have a 'disease' and it's not your fault, you're trying to get better now so all this is ok'. Instead, try saying, 'I forgive me. It is all my fault, but the past is done, there's nothing I can do to change it. The best I can do is to try to make the present better so it won't happen anymore.'

Hope this helps,
Daisy

PS You're writing is really beautiful. If you're looking for something to do instead of drinking, why not write a book called, "Adventures & Musings in NYC" or something great like that?

Thanks for all your kind posts. I'm a perfectionist. Forgiveness is a tough thing for me. I guess if I really felt like I was moving on or living in general it might be easier for me to forget, if not forgive, the piercing atrocities of my past. I'm stuck in time, afraid to step forward or out of my cavernous self exile. To meet new people, to make new friends would only mean temptation for me, temptation to attempt the life of the normal, temptation to once again live and breath in the freedom of moderation, a dream never realized. I'm imprisoned and I'm hungry, for anything, human touch, validation, motion....

I've been thinking a lot about external manifestations of internal yearnings. What makes us choose excess over moderation. The carnal appetites we acquire in response to psychological mutations we acquired as children...

'The third child is always the mistake', or so it is written... there is a syndrome associated there, especially if it's been stated by the impregnators that this is so. My parents love me, but they were honest, two was enough, but they got a bonus. My brother and sister were overachievers. In rebellion to high expectations I strove to prove I could achieve more,... but never by the rules. I wrote lengthy papers, but on subjects out of context with the curriculum. I endeared myself to teachers and then skipped their classes to get high in the woods out back. I turned down cushy desk jobs for manual labor, traveled instead of collegiated, bachelored instead of married...

I'm trying to get through this all in my mind. Grow the funk up. This is childs stuff for shedding. But I stunted my grown, mentally, physically, somehow not so spiritually... By 13 I was drinking every weekend, by 14 every night. I dont' know how I got through it all, how I hid it enough from my parents, whiskey was the norm and it's certainly not olfactorally subtle. I showed up at a school drama meeting once when I was seventeen. A board meeting, four students and three parents and the school director. I apparently attempted to light many cigarettes in the cafetaria during the course, I cursed incessantly at the lack of support the Principal gave to the program, I loudly veto'ed any talk of Chorus Line or Guys and Dolls while slurring a long oration in favor of Annie. Stomped the table with my fists... I don't remember one moment of it.

Perhaps the one prescient choice I made in those days was not to pursue a life in the arts. It greatly facilitated my drug use, alcohol is easy to come by working professional theater, they don't mind if you're thirteen, fifteen, it's just the life style. Coffee and liquor, marijuanna and cocaine, you take the uppers through tech week and drink the rest of the run, then tear down, and do it all over again. I basically lived at the cast house every summer from age 14, had my own small room, a glorified closet in the attic, they called it the 'Anne Frank Room'. I fused so many chemicals into my blood, my genes, my DNA must look like a Rat Pack buffet of viral addictions, I hope to never procreate. In trying to find the beginning I remember this all, and it's a tough and muddy walk trying to get through it to reach back to a time when I didn't have that outlet, that infection encoraged or apathated by all around me.

To reconstruct a life without it is incredibly arduous, when there's no foundation from which to build, you're left with a muddy ground that periodically collapses all you try to build upon it. I have to get to the foundation, somehow, through this myriad of false starts and dead ends and trap doors and deceiving mirrored hallways back to a solid place from which I can begin to build a road forward. Every time I take a step now, it just feels like the ground is moving an equal distance backwards, away from my intentions...

I'm a third child :)

Something to keep on mind is that thinking about how difficult it is to rebuild your life is not going to make it happen. Stop thinking of it as a fight against the world. If you have convinced yourself that you are a mistake, a funk-up, a stunted person, then that's what you will make yourself. You said it yourself, you're afraid. We're all afraid, Saim, just of different things. Meeting new people, making new friends...it's scary. Anyone entering new relationships is exposing themselves and their vulnerabilities, but unless you want to spend the rest of your life "imprisoned and hungry" in your "cavernous exile", you just need to do it. If you're worried about temptation, try to get out in places where it wouldn't be an issue. Volunteer or go to public programs at nature centers, at libraries, museums, that kind of thing. I feel for you, Siam, and I really hope you are able to break out of yourself. Remember that every day you wake up, you have another chance to start life over again.

I hope that didn't sound too negative or anything...it wasn't meant that way :)

shizzle-cluster-funking-towards-spiraling-dimensia
 

I made it home from work today, phew. I walked in the door, my ears bleeding Belle & Sebastion, I turned my ipod ALL the way up so serious was I in drowning the rest of the world out, through thick shielded sunglasses, I want a Harry Potter invisible cape for Christmas, you listening Santa? Got home and shut the door TIGHT even locked the chain and footed the doorsnake flush against the crack. Blinds drawn windows cracked, huddled on my sofa.... I'm safe.

Anxiety, procrastination, fear...

I really needed to buy a mirror when I first moved here. I put it on many of my various grocery type lists. It took me three hundred and ninety days to buy one. There's a Walgreens three hundred feet from my apartment. This is how my life seems to be. Life is right outside if only I could build the confidence to partake. But, I can't. I am too comfortable in my phobia perhaps, but when I try to care I just can't, apathy seesawed with phobia, the perfect combination, Eleanor Rigby syndrome...

My ears hurt, seriously, but I don't care, it was worth it, it's such a novel treat to listen to an album in order that once meant so much to you. I'm tired of shuffle, I'm tired of mp3's, I miss the focus of album and needle, when you had to be fully aware of your music, the order chosen by artists and not the intuitive-electro-demons that haunt all sensitive technologies...

I should have named this thread shizzle-cluster-funking-towards-spiraling-dimensia... but I didn't, obviously.... I'll name this post that...

((((Daisy))))

Back at 'ya (((((Siam)))))

Thought this might cheer you a bit - I hate ipods, I don't own one - I'm a musical luddite. The only CD player I've got is my 6 year old's Hello Kitty boom box and lately we've been listening to Ziggy Stardust and John Denver over and over and over...

Hang in there,
Daisy

Daisy,

I own a SanDisk MP3 Player, just can't imagine myself giving Apple the money for something that I have to pay 50 bucks for when the battery dies. The only reason I ever bought one is because I used to work in a library and spent many hours alone at the end of every quarter shelving books. The music helped break up the drone and gave me a good rhythm to work with. On the other hand, at home we still have infinity speakers and a turntable. Some albums just don't sound the same when digitalized (CD or MP3). Examples include Peter Paul and Mary's Reunion and Neil Diamond's Hot August Night. They just aren't the same. Same goes for my old soundtracks from the 50s and 60s like Music Man and Robin and the Seven Hoods.

The only things I really like on CD or MP3 is music that came out digitally. Even then, some of the early digital works like Paul McCartney's Tug of War still sound more natural on vinyl.

We used to have a cool old turntable that was M's grandmothers, but the kids broke it a couple of years ago :( Now we just have a bunch of albums we can't listen to. Of course, I suppose we could get off our lazy a$$e$ and get a new one...

All this week I have to work next to a liquor store. There is a sale. 20% off all French wine, beer or liquor. I wonder if France is going out of business. Advertisements don't effect me enormously, but seeing people walk in and out of the store all day does. I wonder what they'll be doing with all that alcohol. If they'll be having cuddly nights with loved ones, or drinking alone in front of reality tv. It is easy to spot the alcoholics. They walk in as if by accident. Spend enormous amounts of time inspecting labels of rare champagnes and aged brandys. Then walk out an hour later with a few cheap novelty wines and a case of schlitz...

It is enormously humid here. Reminds me of beach-night-drink-bonfire-friends... all things I have not had in a long time...

My brain is sodden, I can't feel a connect, I can't think but in strips of disaffected hodgepodgery, words are like boiling jam...

When do I get to the point where I feel whole? Are the parts of me stunted and mutated by a lifetime of chemicals able to grow again? Will they scab? Will they heal? In stopping the bleeding am I only stimying the only motion my life has? I can't live forever with this disarray of whimsical emotion, I can't stomach this prison of dust covered impossibilities. When can I go outside? When can I breath with confidence? When can I kiss anothers' lips again? I want to go home, but I can't find where that place is. I want to feel safe, but I cannot sleep or wake without anxiety. I want love, but it is impossible for someone to love a person who is so filled with hatred for himself.

So what of the emotionally deformed? Where do WE end up in the scheme of things? Do we die alone? Do we insist ourselves amongst distant relatives in the end, or do we die on the streets huddled in some corner of some city begging for food amongst the animals? Do they put us in hospital wards? Do they euthanize us? When there's no place to go where do you sleep, how do you survive, why do you live anymore? This last question haunts me...

"Becoming nothing, I'm ceasing to be superfluous" I thought about this a lot when I first read the story from which it's quoted. A man grappling with his own sanity, plagued by impossible situations, bumbling into the heights of euphoria one moment and sinking wildly into the vacuum of despar the next. I wonder if Turgenev had an alcohol problem or suffered manic depression. In any case I've looked down into the Mississippi with the same impulsions and wearied thoughts as his character stared down into the Neva.

I wish I could say everyday I get better, and that I'm finding new and better ways to live happier and healthier all the time, but I feel that would be dishonest. I know lots of tricks, but I haven't the impetus to use them. I care too little about myself, I have grown to hate me for what I've done, for what I've become, or haven't become. There is no one else to judge me, there need not be, I'm enough. I hoped once that from isolation I could move forward clean and virginated into a world of my own making, that anonymity would give me the cover from which to emerge into happiness, into possibility. Instead I've learned that facing myself, alone, in shadows of memory, haunted by my guilt manifestations, fractured beyond repair by that which I seek to flee, I've only gotten so so much worse on every level. Sobriety is the one thing I'm getting better at, everything else is exponentially rotting, falling, or breaking away from me...

Schlitz…. It sounds like it’s coming up again. Blaaaatz…..Paaabst….Schlitz….

Clearly you have a creative interest in writing. Further, you are lonely. If you find the courage to go to work, can you find the courage to engage this clearly vital part of your life? Can you take a writing class? Do you visit any bookstores? I understand that a lot of people are reclusive, wired into their text messaging, ipods… whatever, but not everyone is that way.

I believe that you have conducted a fantastic analysis of your own life. So once you have gathered all of this introspective information, and processed it, isn’t it time to come up with a plan? Make a plan. Be specific. Go out and talk to 10 people today. Even if you get shot down, even if all you say is “Hi! My name is Saimcat.” I’m telling you if you walked up to me in a bookstore, I would stand mesmerized by your insights with regard to many of the emotions that humans feel.

How about a recovery group? Are there any of those locally? Is there anyone on this website or others who lives close to you?

In some ways, I have no ground to give advice on these matters as I have distanced myself from many friends through the process of becoming sober. In other ways I’m the perfect person to give advice because, more frequently than I would like, I approach life in an act first, think later kind of way. People need human intercourse. If you go out and look for it, you will find it.

It seems that you already have admirers of your stunted growth, hatred for yourself and emotional deformities.

amusing is good sometimes, give it a shot=)

I am a bookstore junkie. I have met many people in bookstores. The more technologically advanced our society becomes, the more we introvert. Sitting in front of the TV, alone, plugging into an ipod, text messaging or sitting in front of the computer. It’s freakin sad. There was a time when people sat on their front porch or had a neighborhood barbeque. In some places they still do that. The next time you’re sitting in grid lock traffic, look around. Everyone is alone in their car, listening to the radio, talking on their cell phone, doing anything to cling to the evolutionary relic of human contact.

In my area, there are no SMART face to face meetings, but there are other meetings. The meeting that I attend is called “we, agnostics” and it is for people who do not subscribe to common religious philosophy. I met another atheist, and I hope to build a friendship from my attendance of this group.

I can see that you are going through a difficult time. It’s hard for people, who relate all too well to what you are going through, to watch you struggle without wanting to make things better.

I believe that just the act of changing things is enough to make a difference in how we feel or how we perceive the world. It’s a lot like theatre. Change the actors, change the plot, change the setting. Shake the snow globe.

Sometimes life can be so beautiful through the dark storm clouds of the midwest. Sometimes I look at the buildings and they seem electric. The sky pastel and everyone is love. Even the homeless smile after all...

I've found something, something beautiful, a wonderful secret, amalgamation of spirit...

Today I am tired, my stomach hurts, I'm overworked, I've been smoking way too many cigarettes. By all accounts I should be miserable. A week ago I would have been. But I'm sober, I'm sober, I'm sober. I don't loathe myself today. I don't look in the mirror and grimace. Today I feel light, almost fluffy, overwhelmed by the possibility that still exists in this sick world. For all it's stoney classifications and its right angles and it's FUNK YOU to nature, for all mankinds' idiocies, for all the hate and war and robbery there is a transcendence. There is a possibility of reprieve. There are beautiful people in hidden corners and alleys and children who smile innocent of the beauty that we've lost. Is this hope? Is this infectious hope filling this tired cynic? This thirty year old dodderer? What gives?... Wouldn't you like to know....

Freepath... shake the snowglobe.... :) I love you man, you're right of course, but in certain states of mind all helpful comments seem facetious. That's the problem with depression. I once heard a wise woman (ahemfellyahem) here talk about how she left SR because she imagined that all of the responses to her posts were ephemeral and condescending. She came back sometime later and realized that they were genuine and really very helpful. When immersed in the disease of unhealthy mind nothing helps, nothing, it's TERRIFYING to contemplate that I've spent more than half of my life in this frame, this twisted meandering nonsense of psyche. My problem is so much more than alcohol, perhaps I should burden a mental health community with my ramblings instead of hardworking all american addicts like yourselves, yet, here I go less crazy, the anxiety is less contagious, I can work through alone the dark times and come back to pick up the crumbs of insight afterwards, even if the afterwards seems like forever in coming. I thank all who've posted here, (even the comments promptly deleted for apparent inapropriatenesses...).

In any case, my snowglobe's been shaken. Not by me but by something greater than me, something as yet indescribable even in mimikry, even in dream... But nonetheless I have been inundated by a gift from those gods that normally relish in my torment, and I fully intend to ride this wave all the way to the end of time, ... granted the gods are not lying in ambush along the way, oh, how thy revel in doing that...

Siam, this hardworking, all-American alcoholic surely did not feel burdened reading your post. You write beautifully and your words resonated with me. Thanks. :)