Audience of One

"There is no faster way to create enduring unhappiness than to act against your beliefs."

One phrase in the "Best Lent Ever" podcast really caught my attention today. "We should live our lives for an audience of one." I had just finished up posting a message to a long-time friend of mine on the MMListserv, a girl that I held virtual hands with as she weaned herself off alcohol. She and I have come a long way since then and she has become one of the most dynamic, self-assured women I know. Through her messages, I can see how much she values herself these days. She wrote this morning that an old friend is coming to visit her and she worried about he'll expect of her. It made me think of how much we worry about what our friends think when we first try to quit drinking or change our drinking in any way, it's as if they are an audience we have invited to watch our life and we are playing a role for them, even though we know, offstage, we are a totally different person. I don't know about you, but I'm kind of disappointed that Val Kilmer isn't Doc. Holliday in real life. We don't want people to be disappointed when they find out that the person they saw on that stage is not who we really are, so we stay up there on that f'ing stage for years-for me it was decades-and we use booze to keep us in our role. I lived a conflicted, divided life for way too long-that's why the voice in my head never shut up, it just kept saying, "Come on, you can do better than this. This isn't the role you were born for.."

I finally did come of that stage, more like tumbled off into the orchestra pit. It took a while to quit trying to play the role, though, I'd been playing it so long I'd forgotten who I really was. But I came back to myself when I no longer had booze leading me away. The Best Lent Ever refers to that "audience of one" as God, but I think it can also apply to ourselves. When you become brave enough to act as yourself, your authentic self, that audience of one in your head quits throwing tomatoes and sits back in awed silence to watch the rest of the show.

Juggling

I just wanted to let you all know that I haven't run off and joined the circus (although it is circus season down here and if you think circus's in the states look a little rough around the edges, you should come to Mexico. Shudder!), I'm just juggling priorities right now and trying not to drop anything.

How wonderful!

To have a life. To be busy.  To have a purpose.  To have a reason to get up in the morning other than drink!!

To be sober!

I am so grateful.

Now to change my train of thought in the middle of the tracks, as I'm wont to do.  A member posted on the moderation management board the other day that she was grateful for the struggle, she was grateful that at least she had a desire to change when it seemed so many didn't.  So many seemed to be happily drinking themselves to death.  (not her exact words or intent, I'm taking artistic license here).

I wrote back and said, "Don't be too sure.  You don't know that those people don't wake up every day and say to themselves, "Today is the day I'm going to quit. Today is the day, I'm going to take back my life." only to fail once again."

That was me.  It may have looked like I was just a drunk who didn't care while deep down, underneath the blood shot eyes, splotchy skin, shaky hands...I was consumed with the desire to change.

I remember there were these two guys I knew in high school, I'll call them Bubba and Butch.  Bubba was your typical muscle brained athlete who liked to pick me up and dump me in the trashcan or body slam me on the wrestling mats, that was his way of showing me that he liked me.  Butch was the stereotypical dreamy bad boy with big beautiful green eyes, long feathered hair (it was the 70's), soft lips (yep, I know for a fact they were soft) and, down deep, a heart of gold.

They were teenage hard partying boys, that grew into adult hard partying men.  They did drugs, a lot of drugs, they didn't go to college, they held and lost multiple jobs and women.  I liked them a lot but I always held myself above them.  I was better than them. I didn't hold out much hope for either of them.  I figured they'd go through life stoned and wind up as shriveled shaky old drunks at the ripe old age of 49, minus the majority of their teeth, on a liver transplant list. If they were lucky.

I lost track of them through the years but lo and behold, through the magic of facebook, I found them again a couple of years ago.  And guess what?  They had sobered up and cleaned up their act and there I was flushing my life down the proverbial shitter of alcoholism.

Alcohol doesn't play favorites and it doesn't matter if you're rich, poor, famous, infamous, brilliant, or just an average Joe, there are no advantages.

If Bubba, Butch and I can do it, you can.

Summer Child

My mom always called me her little hoyden.  I was never a tomboy, I was much too uncoordinated for that, but I was a little kid that bounced out of bed on summer mornings and was out the door in my mismatched plaid shorts and daisy print shirt before mom could holler, "Would you please brush that rat's nest out of your hair?"

A child of the sun. Skinny brown legs pumping, handlebar tassels flying, off in search of new skinned knees and bug bites and whatever adventure those summer days held for me. Cannonballs into flimsy backyard swimming pools, Miss America with a sprinkler ring perched on my head as my crown, slip-n-sliding on smooth wet sidewalks (ouch), kool-aid stands...What more could life have to offer?  Falling in bed at night, feet black from my staunch refusal to wear shoes, skin itchy from sunburn and tumbles in freshly mown grass, my mind racing with the promises of tomorrow.

I looked in the mirror yesterday, my cheeks slightly sunburnt, my legs brown and freckled, my hair a wild, brittle tangle from too much chlorine and sun, a rat's nest, as my mom would say, my tummy protruding over my bathing suit bottom. "Kary May, if you're going to wear shortie tops at least suck your belly in," my ever mortified older sister, Kathy frequently admonished my ten year old self.  I didn't care back then, why should I now?

I looked into cloudless green eyes and saw that summer girl again.  The girl I fought so hard for.

Hi, there. I remember you.

NA Beer article

 

A fellow member of mmabsers shared this article the other day and I loved it, but what I found even more interesting was to go to the original site and read the attacks on the attacks on the author.  There's still a lot of people swimming in that big ol' river of Denial.

Here's the link to the original article: http://www.vice.com/read/why-non-alcoholic-beer-is-the-best-kind?source=vice_iphone_app

 

Why Non-Alcoholic Beer Is the Best Kind

By Ben Johnson

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I haven’t had any alcohol for a year. I’m not sure I can recommend sobriety for everybody, but it did OK things for me. I don’t blame my problems on other people as much. I can finish a higher percentage of the things I start. If I don’t like something, I generally don’t do it. I go to bed early. I read books.
My life is less “fun.” That’s OK. Fun is people yelling boring stuff at each other more often than not. Fun is pretending there’s no such thing as death, or even human-scale consequences. Fun is a lie. Fun is overrated. Fun is a gaggle of 14 year olds on a 3 AM trip to Walmart daring each other to wear the Super Mario pajamas and the Barbie tiara to the checkout line and “acting casual” about it with their loudest most gratingly desperate uncasual voices while your credit card is declined and Ivan the checkout clerk with the lazy eye is sighing through his nose. Fun is waking up the next morning covered in clown makeup and wondering who you are and how bad it is.
Why did I quit drinking? I had my reasons. The reasons involved doing horrible things to nice people, and being on the receiving end of unfunny wisecracks in the back of a police car, and having concerned family members show up to kick my skull in. Not to be melodramatic or anything. My biggest reason for not drinking was to kill off the drunk version of myself. I built him up too big and let him start making decisions for me because I’m a chickenshit, and he repaid me with an appropriate degree of contempt for my personhood. OK, but I’m stubborn and contrarian enough to insist on the last word. So it’s the dry life for me, and that grinning whiskey-filled malicious bastard can hang.
I am learning things.
Like do you know what’s great? Non-alcoholic beer. It’s such a fantastic invention. You can drink it and drink it and drink it and you won’t feel a THING. It’s like drinking beer’s lawyer. Instead of getting all drunk you just need to pee a lot and then you start yawning and you realize that all alcohol usually does for you is allow you to sit in the same place jabbering about nothing for four hours with people you’re not even sure you like (one of them is you). As far as I’m concerned, it’s a recipe for a perfect night.
Imagine this scenario: you meet up with people, drink something that signifies “beer” just enough for you to relax and be social, converse for an hour or two without saying anything particularly mean or funny or interesting, and then once your ass gets sore and you realize you’ve had about enough of the human experience for one night, you leave and go home and read a book in bed until you fall asleep at 11 PM, one day closer to the sweet release of death, substituting for contentment with the momentary relief of not having fucked anything up too badly for anybody today. Repeat forever. It’s not bad, you guys. Not bad at all.
My current favorite beer is Clausthaler. It tastes like sand-flavored soda. I love it so much I could drink like four of them in a week. Any more than that and I get a headache. As sensory experiences go, there’s nothing better in the world than opening up an ice cold Clausthaler, taking that first big swig, realizing this is the price you’re paying for being an actual human being, and choking half to death on regret and loss.
I recommend it to somebody. I recommend it to myself. That’s enough. And I would probably also recommend it to anybody currently coming unglued without knowing it. You don’t want to know it, guys. It sucks to know it.