Losing True

Now if she just doesn't go boy-crazy on me

It seems to me the reason alcoholics become problem drinkers doesn't really start with genetics. Plenty of people who have the gene never drink at all. Some of those people drink and realize they can't handle it right away. Some people who don't have the gene drink themselves into alcoholism, also, because it's ultimately an addictive substance, despite what Budweiser has to say.

 

So I started drinking because my life had a broken quality to it that felt like the steady pressure of glass in my chest. Being 14, I had decided it was me that was broken. I suppose by extension, I was. The minute I felt the feeling of alcohol in my body, in part because I did have the gene, I was gone. And I mean that: the essence of me, whatever there was still intact after the chaos of my childhood, sank beneath the surface. I became very good, very quickly, at keeping her sunk. Then the next several decades were just me trying to function with a partially formed sense of self.

Some people think that whatever age you are when you start drinking is the emotional age you're at when you stop. (This explains why when I fall in love, I write the man's name over and over on all my notebooks and use hearts and flowers to dot my i's, I guess.) I think it might be more complicated, in that the self goes on trying to form under the surface of the alcohol's delusion, and so it forms kind of funky. I mean, I had to become an adult to the extent that I had to learn to drive and speak intelligently to people who could give me money. Beyond that, I didn't get very far.

My sister, the psychologist, says that the adult self formed around drinking is a self that can always step away, a provisional life, as if lived from a doorway. That might have been true; it probably was true. All I know is that when the door that was drinking slammed shut and melded itself into the wall, before me stood the kid I was when the whole thing started, rubbing her eyes.

 

Her experience of waking up into the life I was trying to live has been rocky so far. There was a lot going on that even a talented, together adult would have been challenged by. (Think Sleeping Beauty waking up in Newark airport in the middle of a bomb scare.) 

 

She's terrified, of course, and pissed--rightly so--but I prefer the feeling of her being awake to the numbness. It's been lonely. I guess it’s like the pain of a sleeping limb coming to life: it hurts like hell for a while, then it gets better. I just wish I could have called an intervention in my life to prepare it and me for this onslaught of feeling.

 

When I look at the 14 year old I was when I started drinking, thrown now into the life of a 49 year old, it’s pathetic and comedic; it's sad and it's hopeful. (Her first reaction was not far off from the daughter in "Freaky Friday" as she stares in horror at the mirror from within her mother's body. "I'm the crypt keeper!" she wails.) She's disoriented by, and at a loss, often, about relating to grown-ups. She wants desperately to trust--needs to trust to survive--but has no experience of being with someone trustworthy. She needs to get something like that under her belt, but in the meantime she's still trapped inside the details of an adolescent life: how to get more potato chips, how to win that cute guy who just walked past, how to get that one piece of hair to stop doing that thing.

 

What will change as this process of getting sober continues, I'm learning, is that instead of that inner adolescent acting out suddenly, I can get her calmed down and rational, I can reach her, sit her down, stroke her hair. I can explain to her that even though Newark airport is overwhelming, it can be negotiated. Then she can think, and take a breath, and I can explain to her what I know about grown-ups. And driving. (Also potato chips.)

Skin deep and not counting for much

This morning I went to get coffee, a vice I’ve been allowing myself—both the special trip to buy it, and the drinking of it—in the midst of struggling with bigger opponents. I was getting back in my car when I noticed a commotion in the gutter.

It was a sparrow fighting a luna moth, and if you’ve ever seen a luna moth, you know they’re huge and an unreal pale green with beautiful spooky markings. This one had a wing span of 6 inches. They only live a week or so. And to see one in the hard morning light, flopping around desperately on the dirty pavement because a sparrow—half its size— was picking on it, wasn’t easy. I thought without thinking that of course the moth should win, and escape, being beautiful and rare. And then it should go fall in love and make more beautiful luna moths.

But when I walked over to the gutter, intending to correct this injustice, I saw the moth was mortally hurt. One big chunk of swooping wing was torn off, probably already digesting in the bird’s gut. The sparrow grudgingly hopped a little way off, and if a bird could roll its eyes this one did: Ok, whatever, but seriously, this thing is toast.

I watched the moth struggling and the bird waited. The moth flopped along the ground, barely gaining an inch. I left.

So the sparrow, nondescript one-of-millions, little not-beauty, flew off with the prize. 

By the way: 387,560 tattoos can fit in one amusement park

In Jane Smiley’s The Age of Grief, the hero, whose heart is just beginning to break, takes his car onto the highway and tries to outrun his sorrow. “Lord,” he says, “let me fly. Give me that miracle to ease this pain.”

Today I took my misery—almost fully of my own making—to an amusement park. It’s true that I had promised the day to my sons and two of their friends, but I had revoked it as a disciplinary measure last night. A fierce thunderstorm came through around 3 in the morning, and since I had already been awake I let it be the reason I finally got up and took my laptop downstairs. I went to the park’s website and watched the thumbnail videos of every thrill ride, pure terror and (in my opinion) grave physical danger reduced to one square inch of high-pitched screams and miniature corkscrews of track. I thought: maybe, inside of the stomach of that horrible wrenching speed, I will feel better.

When we first arrived at the park, me unsmiling and grimly handing over cash to anyone who asked for it, and four boys laughing, the skies immediately turned black and filled with lightning and thunder. We stood under a canopy and the boys ate a variety of fried items while I eyed the ribbons of wildly colored steel that made up the landscape. The boys teased me. “Don’t sweat it, Mrs. Losing True. You’ll do fine.”

The only roller coaster I’ve ever been on was probably one small notch above Kiddy Ride, and that scared the shit out of me. There are situations in which I like to be scared, and I do find speed exciting. The emotional pain I was in was so intense I assumed the fear of death that little roller coaster had produced in me would rise up, see its shadow, and be conquered.

Unfortunately (my four male companions later revealed) The Hydra, which we chose to start on, took my emotional pain, crumpled it like a piece of tissue paper, and shoved it down my throat. Take that, it snarled. Not only will this not help, now you’ll feel like puking as well. It is a floorless roller coaster, I had read, and I don’t understand why the hell that matters, when you are locked (sort of) into a cage the size of your torso and then turned upside down over and over again. At the top of the first hill, I looked down (NEVER do that, one of the boys said afterward. Just look forward and pray). I tell you now that there was no track there under us. We fell straight down and somehow, got plucked out of free fall to be slammed onto a new track that wound around like, well, a Hydra’s coils.

The ride ended and I fell to the ground and kissed it while the boys high-fived each other and used “awesome” in every possible manner.

“So, now the water park?” I asked.

They patted me on the head and ran off to ride Talon, whose sub-title on the sign was The Grip of Fear. I then stood underneath several more thrill rides holding backpacks and watching for my children’s swinging feet in the cars roaring over my head at 70 miles per hour. Finally they decided to try Steel Force, the top of which can’t be seen because it is covered in clouds and has warning beacons for low-flying planes. On the way we passed Thunder Hawk, which looked tame in comparison. I convinced them to ride it, and they agreed with good humor. “After all,” they said to each other as if I was too young to understand, “she did make it through The Hydra.”

There, on the rickety nearly 100-year old wooden coaster, I found my speed. I can’t say it saved me, but it spoke to me. What I liked was that it was very rough. I could feel the violence of the clacking car smashing against its track in my teeth.

“Whoa,” said one of the boys when we got off. “I thought that was going to be nothing, and it was kind of something.”

They had their reputations to think of, though, and they left me once again to pursue the ends of their lives. I stayed and rode the wooden coaster again, alone. I stood in line and spoke to whomever it is I speak to these days, and I prayed. “Punch it out of me,” I begged. “Knock me free of this sadness.”

I had agreed to meet the boys on the other side of the park after their last ride; they felt it was only fitting for it to be The Hydra. On my way I walked among the crowds of families and couples (because all of them seemed to be one of those two) and let myself really look at them.

A friend of mine has pointed out, over and over, that despite what I imagine to be true about people I see, not everyone is happily married or even happy at all. I tried to force that onto the scenery, and while it didn’t really work I took comfort in the fact that the roller coaster had soothed me for the 45 seconds the ride lasted. If that’s true, then maybe there’s some other comfort out there, some remedy I haven’t yet found. 

I can see Dallas

I've gotten a bunch of calls and emails over the past few days from people I scared with my last post. While my instinct is to immediately reassure, I've been thinking. First. For once.

I have such a collection of shorthand imagery culled from beloved movies it would take years to list them all. I use these scenes as metaphors and analogies to help me understand my own life. (Maybe this is because I think in metaphor; maybe I'm just nuts. You pick.)

One of my favorites is from Alien:  Dallas, the ship's captain, is crawling though the vents with a flamethrower, intent on frying the shit out of the monster if he finds it. The crew watches his progress on a monitor, safe in the ship's control room. Dallas is a blinking electronic blip moving along, and they're guiding him. Suddenly they see another blip, which is, of course, the alien. The crew starts to scream at Dallas that the alien is almost on him, as Dallas, still calm because he can't see any danger, is wheeling slowly around in a crouch, trying to see what they see. Their pleas become hysterical as he turns, still in confusion, and then the alien blip overtakes the Dallas blip and it's over.

The way I've always used that image is to be Dallas--I've heard people pleading with me over the years that, even though I don't seem to see it, there's a monster on my tail. Things have changed, that much I can say, because now I'm standing behind the crew, and I can see Dallas. And the alien. I get that the monster is fatal, trust me. I know it bleeds molecular acid. But where I was once in that pitch black tunnel, my useless flamethrower flickering on the metal walls, now I'm with the crew. I can't say I'm pleading in hysteria with Dallas yet. I'm a little curious about what the hell he's planning to do. And I may yet figure a way to get him out of there.

I would say to everyone: Don't worry; I'll be fine. But that would undersell the monster. And it is one scary son of a bitch.

My boyfriend's back

People in recovery often personify alcohol or whatever substance they’re struggling to kick. They’ll say that while they’re in a meeting—feeling cocky and safe—alcohol is out in the parking lot doing one-handed push ups. They’ll say that alcohol is a mugger hiding in an alley, waiting to bring them down; they say that alcohol wants them dead. Years before I started trying to beat this I snuck into a meeting (ironically, the same meeting I go to most often now) and a man spoke at length about how deeply he respected alcohol. He said he found it the most formidable opponent he’d ever come up against—when he was clever, alcohol was more nimble, far smarter; that when he was strong, alcohol was the Terminator, punching a hole through the tissue paper of his strength. His speech chilled me, and I left, knowing I was no match.

I’m still afraid. What scares me the most is how fast alcohol is, how perfect its timing. I’ll climb into my car, feeling as if I don’t even have the energy to press the gas pedal in the face of the sadness and loss I am up against, and there in the passenger seat he sits, smiling at me. He is gorgeous—the epitome of physical appeal. He looks at me knowingly, his compassion radiating like a heat.

“Hi baby,” he says, tucking a lock of my hair behind my ear. “Miss me?”