Alas, those golden skinned years have decided to exact their revenge. I kind of take side glances out of my weaker left eye at my reflection in the computer screen these days and I often lie to the cap'n and tell him the internet is too bad for video skype. Not because I don't want him to see me-- how he saw me every mornings during my boozer days and didn't turn to stone, I'll never know -I just can't stand staring at myself while I talk to him. I can't pay attention to anything he's saying because I'm noticing the newest crevice at the side of my mouth or how my latest attempts at improvement via make-up reminds me more and more of Bette Davis in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane.
That's okay, I've got the guy thing about long hair, too. My friend, Barbara, says at a certain age woman should not wear long hair. I reply, "I agree. At the age of 105, it might be time to get a whack job so I'll look my age."
But last night I'd had it . I was going out with some friends for dinner and it was hanging lank around my face and my too-long bangs were parted in the middle just begging for some bobby pins to complete my look.
In desperation, I ran to the kitchen and grabbed the shears out of the drawer. Chop! Chop! Chop!
Then I looked back in the mirror.
And smiled.
My bangs weren't perfect, but they weren't as bad as some of my grade school pictures where I swear my mother must have used my kindergarten safety scissors at the same time the one and only earthquake to ever hit Liberal, KS must have struck. But just like in those pictures, I looked younger. Better.
I decided I could live with the rest of my hair for awhile.
NPR ran an article last week on moderation for heavy drinkers, In the article, Re-Thinking: Can Heavy Drinkers Learn To Cut Back it mentions Moderation Management and as many of you know MM is the organization that was and still is my main means of support through this recovery journey of mine. MM has fought to overcome that all or nothing mindset of "If you are a problem drinker, you're only recourse is to quit drinking completely." that has been force fed to all of us through the years. Many of moderation's naysayers, have gone as far to say that MM is a danger to alcoholics, that it encourages recovered alcoholics to drink again. To that I say, if they were that unsteady in their sobriety, they were probably going to drink again, with or without MM.
When I joined MM, I knew that I most probably, maybe even most certainly needed to quit drinking, the equivalent of shaving my head in the above scenario. I had been drinking heavily all of my adult life, twenty five years, more or less. In the latter years of my drinking, I'd developed a physical dependence to alcohol and found myself stumbling downstairs at 2 am most nights to chug wine just to quiet my palpitating heart. By no one's definition, certainly not MM's, was I a candidate for moderation. But I just couldn't get my head around walking around like a bald troll in a world full of people with luxurious heads of hair. I worried that my husband and friends would not adjust to it well either. It was too big of a change all at once.
So, basically, I cut my bangs. I started participating on the MM message boards and learning about and using their tools, such as counting my drinks, limiting the days I drank, spacing my drinks. All those things that define moderation. My husband and friends raised their eyebrows a little bit, tried to cajole me into drinking more to assuage their own misgivings about their personal drinking, but then shrugged their shoulders and continued to drink. After all, I wasn't making them cut their hair.
However, those little snips here and there weren't working so well for me, I wasn't seeing the big change that I wanted and let's just say my hair seemed to grow back overnight. So I I decided to take and inch or two off the ends and attempted my first 30 day abstinence period. I didn't succeed, but I made it twenty days and I found out the world did not stop revolving, my husband and friends didn't run for the hills, and I lived through it.
I tried to moderate for a year. In the end, I found that trimming the amount I drank did not work for me. There was never enough change or progress to make me feel good about myself and I still had no control once I started drinking.
But those dramatic swaths of time I spent abstaining, as recommended by MM? They saved my life. I hadn't had one day, much less a week, or a month without booze, in a decade . Those abs periods introduced me to a life I had never experienced as an adult.
A much gentler world.
They also introduced me to a person I had never taken the time to get to know.
Me.
After that year, I could finally imagine a life without booze. But even more, Since my "hair" no longer consumed me, I looked forward to the baldness of life in all of its fierce and liberated beauty with an anticipation I hadn't felt since I was young.
I haven't had a drink in almost four years and I've never regretted or been disappointed in one second of it.
Does hanging around and listening to people discuss moderation tempt me to try again. Nope. My unfettered hairstyle suits me to a "T".
