so i went out for the first time this weekend since i've been sober. and i don't mean like out of my house, but like out to a club with a bunch of drunk people and surrounded by bars and booze out. i had been 33 days sober and very proud of myself. my 2 BFFs were out too, but one left after dinner. but still, having one was better than none and she was as supportive as she knew how to be. so i was out and i was trying to enjoy myself, and the only reason i was out was for a friend's birthday. these days i don't even go to most birthdays so when i do, you're pretty damn special. the thing is, clubs haven't changed. the people in them are mostly still young and dumb. are they sluttier? i'm not sure because my view on the world has changed between when i was those people to who i am now. maybe i was a major hoe-bag and i just didn't see it that way because it was me. so now that it's them, maybe they're not more or less slutty than me, i just happen to think that they are because i've become sober, older, and totally judgmental.
i digress. this isn't a post about how much clubs suck and how lame it was and how it really wasn't that fun. this is a post about how i was being sober and sticking to my guns despite people trying to tell me that "having one would be okay - just one!"
the thing is, having one is not okay. having one is completely moot. having one is redundant. i ask you - what is the point of having ONE? you can't get buzzed off one. one is like having none. you might as well not then. maybe there are people who have one and do get buzzed. or have one and it's like whatever. but i'm not those people. i'm the person who drinks for the effect that it has on me. i want to drink until i get to the point where it feels awesome. i want to feel like i can do anything and have a great time and i'm on fire. one doesn't feel awesome. one means that i might have a stomachache tomorrow, my sleep is unsound and resets to before the last 33 days, and my desire to drink ten has no reason to not happen. because for me, if i've had one and i'm resetting the counter back to zero, then we're reset - let's go hard. i don't have just one. i have many. that is why having one is not okay.
and you know, most people i see these days get it. they ask me if i want to drink, i say "no thank you i'm sober now" and they shrug and carry on. people who know me better say "good for you" and sometimes i even get a high five. some people might say, "just one?" after the initial rejection, but when i say "no, really, i don't drink anymore" they accept it. but every once in awhile, it's that person that i haven't seen in 5 years. there is a high chance that even before the last 5 years went by, i didn't really hang out with this person. we weren't by any means close friends. we were probably just acquaintances. and in fact, we may have never even seen each other in daylight. and s/he just wants to keep pressuring me. and then they say this:
"not even for me?"
and the only thing i really want to say to them is "seriously? who the !#&* are you??" who says that? what does that even mean? that you, strange person whom i have not seen in years, YOU THINK YOU ARE SPECIAL ENOUGH FOR ME TO FALL OFF THE F-ING WAGON AND RESET MY COUNTER AND RISK GOING ON ANOTHER FIVE MONTH BINGE FOR?? ARE YOU F-ING KIDDING ME????? why not just take a knife and shove it into my liver you stupid ignorant selfish immature hee-haw!
i don't get it. i realize that they haven't seen me so they do not know that i have had some serious issues with alcohol. i get that. but i don't get why they can't just respect me enough when i say that i don't drink anymore to just accept it and move on? i don't get why they think that would mean enough to me to make me take a drink for them. i don't get what goes through someone's head when they so blatantly disrespect me and what i'm saying. i wouldn't walk up to you after 5 years and say "hey, you got fat, you should lose weight for me" why would you tell me to take a drink for you?
people are so stupid.
fatty!! i was so happy to see your name D! hope things are great with you :) and look funksabunch, i'm doing it again! maybe the fine print is making a comeback. thanks for your comments dudes, i really appreciate the sentiment. i don't really get the "i'm sorry" either but that seems to be the thing to say.
Sunday, January 18, 2009
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
the grampeople
while i'm usually a huge doink when it comes to people who can't spell things, one of the words i misspell on purpose is gramma. the other is grampa. why? because that's what i call them or how i refer to them in the third. not as grandma, gramma.
so just bear with me.
my evil gramma died suddenly in november. not like, suddenly one day she just died, but like, unexpectedly she had this silent heart attack and we were in the hospital with her everyday and the doctors and nurses gave us mixed messages ("i'm not saying she's dying, but if there are people who need to be notified, then you should notify them." because she's dying? "no, there is hope for recovery.") not to come down on the medipeople because the nurses that i talked to were pretty cool and nice and answered all of our questions. but i think i just didn't want to have hope if it was futile because you get the bigger letdown when they suddenly die, and that is what she did. or maybe if i wasn't hopeful then it wouldn't have been sudden, i would have seen it coming from the day she was admitted. maybe on some level i had a feeling she was going to die but i didn't want to say it because that would be awful, especially if she did die, and then she did and i didn't want to be the a-hole who said stupid things. in fact, in retrospect, i was so zen from the time of her admission and at times the most mature person in the room (amongst my parental generation) that on some level, i think i knew it was her time because if i thought she was going to live, i probably would not have been so kind and zen, i would've been like how some other people were being because as i said in the beginning of this diatribe, she was my evil gramma.
and now you say, she's gone dude, how can you say that? and the thing is, when someone you have lived with your whole life was rarely nice to you, and even then you suspected she was only being nice because she had ulterior motives, and for several years - decades even - you referred to her as your evil gramma, well old habits die hard.
so my evil gramma suddenly died and it was actually really hard because we had such a difficult relationship but we were also close on a different level because she has lived with me my whole life except for the last year. and while still emotionally numb because of the last bit of boozing and a hard shot of denial, my grampa on the other side (who is miles and miles away) takes a bad fall, has brain hemorrhage (maybe in reversed order; i'm unclear as to which led to the other), and had a long ass hospital stay in a country where health care really really sucks. not to disparage against my doogsabunch friend, but the doctors that dealt with my gramps seem to be uncaring ding dongs and communication has been completely lacking. he was finally discharged but the family has moved him into a facility of some kind that has PTs and OTs and nurses and he has available care 24/7. but you know, health care sucks in america so the fams worries about insurancey things. plus there's the how long it will take, how will the transition back home be, will the doctors ever stop sucking?
so i feel really guilty right now because i don't really know how to resolve my evil gramma feelings; i drank a lot last year and so i'm emotionally devoid (i don't know how that works, but boozing actually makes me stop feeling things. it was really useful in certain situations); and i feel like i should do more to help with my grampa. like maybe i should go there. but then will i make a difference? would i just get in the way? i don't know.
anyway, this is me at nearly 1am, not sleeping because i worry that i'm not feeling enough about everything that is going on. [insert raspberry here]. poop.
by the way F, you don't need to apologize for stealing my smallprint bits of uselessness. ever since the pop died, i think it was just waiting for someone to love it, and you do a much better job than i do.
so just bear with me.
my evil gramma died suddenly in november. not like, suddenly one day she just died, but like, unexpectedly she had this silent heart attack and we were in the hospital with her everyday and the doctors and nurses gave us mixed messages ("i'm not saying she's dying, but if there are people who need to be notified, then you should notify them." because she's dying? "no, there is hope for recovery.") not to come down on the medipeople because the nurses that i talked to were pretty cool and nice and answered all of our questions. but i think i just didn't want to have hope if it was futile because you get the bigger letdown when they suddenly die, and that is what she did. or maybe if i wasn't hopeful then it wouldn't have been sudden, i would have seen it coming from the day she was admitted. maybe on some level i had a feeling she was going to die but i didn't want to say it because that would be awful, especially if she did die, and then she did and i didn't want to be the a-hole who said stupid things. in fact, in retrospect, i was so zen from the time of her admission and at times the most mature person in the room (amongst my parental generation) that on some level, i think i knew it was her time because if i thought she was going to live, i probably would not have been so kind and zen, i would've been like how some other people were being because as i said in the beginning of this diatribe, she was my evil gramma.
and now you say, she's gone dude, how can you say that? and the thing is, when someone you have lived with your whole life was rarely nice to you, and even then you suspected she was only being nice because she had ulterior motives, and for several years - decades even - you referred to her as your evil gramma, well old habits die hard.
so my evil gramma suddenly died and it was actually really hard because we had such a difficult relationship but we were also close on a different level because she has lived with me my whole life except for the last year. and while still emotionally numb because of the last bit of boozing and a hard shot of denial, my grampa on the other side (who is miles and miles away) takes a bad fall, has brain hemorrhage (maybe in reversed order; i'm unclear as to which led to the other), and had a long ass hospital stay in a country where health care really really sucks. not to disparage against my doogsabunch friend, but the doctors that dealt with my gramps seem to be uncaring ding dongs and communication has been completely lacking. he was finally discharged but the family has moved him into a facility of some kind that has PTs and OTs and nurses and he has available care 24/7. but you know, health care sucks in america so the fams worries about insurancey things. plus there's the how long it will take, how will the transition back home be, will the doctors ever stop sucking?
so i feel really guilty right now because i don't really know how to resolve my evil gramma feelings; i drank a lot last year and so i'm emotionally devoid (i don't know how that works, but boozing actually makes me stop feeling things. it was really useful in certain situations); and i feel like i should do more to help with my grampa. like maybe i should go there. but then will i make a difference? would i just get in the way? i don't know.
anyway, this is me at nearly 1am, not sleeping because i worry that i'm not feeling enough about everything that is going on. [insert raspberry here]. poop.
by the way F, you don't need to apologize for stealing my smallprint bits of uselessness. ever since the pop died, i think it was just waiting for someone to love it, and you do a much better job than i do.
Sunday, January 4, 2009
new year, new..?
i took my last drink on december 13th. i guess technically it was the 14th since i had my last drink after midnight. since then i have restrained from drinking, but it's hard. it's really hard. and people have everything to say about the matter because everyone thinks they know. but how could they know? they didn't binge drink almost every night for nearly eight years and then follow that with a roller coaster struggle to stop. and while to most, stopping entirely seems rather extreme, they weren't with me on those nights that i don't remember, or the mornings i woke up wondering where i was. they weren't there when i regurgitated everything and then some for three days straights. they weren't there when i was curled up on my bathroom floor for hours wondering why - why did my internal organs hate me so? in fact, i had so strategically worked out all the different people i partied with that no one person was around enough to realize how bad it was, or witness my many awful decisions. even my best friends only heard about some of it and way after the fact. yes, i lived in a little world called Denial for a long time, but isn't that only the more telling that i had - correction, have - a problem?
so things i learned the first time i quit (it lasted for a whole year and a few months):
- i live in a dark dark place for at least 6 months
- i can't stay in bed all the time
- my real friends will still be there at the end of the tunnel
- avoid people who tell you "come on, you can have just one drink"
- avoid people who tell you "you just have to do it in moderation"
- avoid people who tell you "you do not have a problem"
knowing all of those things, i thought the second time around should go more or less smoothly since i have been through it before. i was wrong. because now i'm back in the dark place. and i want to stay in bed all the time. and i don't want to do anything. and i'm angry for no reason a lot of the time. and the stupidest things make me lose my temper. and add to that this time around i'm not just quitting drinking, but i decided to quit in the holiday season. do you have any idea how much drinking happens over the holidays?? plus there was just too much time spent snowed in with too many people in my house (family people, you know what that means). oh, and my evil gramma just died in late november and i have huge internal struggles because i still think of her as my evil gramma and she's gone now and there will never be going back to fix things and i have to deal with the fact that she was evil, even though you're supposed to only say good things about the dead. the evil gramma thing makes me want to drink - a lot.
but this is a new year. the holidays are over. so at least a lot of the temptation is gone too. there's an opened bottle of grey goose in the next room, but i just have to not think about it. if i don't think about it, then i won't feel like drinking it. of course the more i tell myself don't think about it, the more i think about it and want to drink it. argh.
so things i learned the first time i quit (it lasted for a whole year and a few months):
- i live in a dark dark place for at least 6 months
- i can't stay in bed all the time
- my real friends will still be there at the end of the tunnel
- avoid people who tell you "come on, you can have just one drink"
- avoid people who tell you "you just have to do it in moderation"
- avoid people who tell you "you do not have a problem"
knowing all of those things, i thought the second time around should go more or less smoothly since i have been through it before. i was wrong. because now i'm back in the dark place. and i want to stay in bed all the time. and i don't want to do anything. and i'm angry for no reason a lot of the time. and the stupidest things make me lose my temper. and add to that this time around i'm not just quitting drinking, but i decided to quit in the holiday season. do you have any idea how much drinking happens over the holidays?? plus there was just too much time spent snowed in with too many people in my house (family people, you know what that means). oh, and my evil gramma just died in late november and i have huge internal struggles because i still think of her as my evil gramma and she's gone now and there will never be going back to fix things and i have to deal with the fact that she was evil, even though you're supposed to only say good things about the dead. the evil gramma thing makes me want to drink - a lot.
but this is a new year. the holidays are over. so at least a lot of the temptation is gone too. there's an opened bottle of grey goose in the next room, but i just have to not think about it. if i don't think about it, then i won't feel like drinking it. of course the more i tell myself don't think about it, the more i think about it and want to drink it. argh.
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