Page Breaks + Snap Shots
It’s ten months to the day I decided not to kill myself. (10 months and 1 day if you want to get all mathematical, which tonight I do.)
It’s odd typing that for many reasons. Not for the reasons you might suspect though. It’s a personal date, but I’ve come to grips with my own narcissism so that’s only mildly uncomfortable. Spend any amount of time with me and you’ll see what I mean.
It’s weird because it is so arbitrary in a life that streams with memory. It’s a period — and a Period — in my life. A page break. A stopped moment. A distinctly dog-earned bookmark I can easily flip to, remember, re-remember, add to, make notes, scribble out and re-tell.
But it’s a story that only really makes sense to me. One that only has meaning to me. One with any resonance only to me. Not that my family and friends aren’t happy I didn’t. Merely that it’s a secondary thankfulness for them.
And as a writer, that’s odd.
The Stream
Then again, maybe I’m more than a writer. I don’t think so but I’m sure there are those who would argue with me. I’m not much interested in that debate. For me, the writing is enough. It’s everything. Not in that bad alcoholic, everything way. Simply that in my life as I move through the space-time my lens is focused as a writer.
I see narrative flow in life. In people. In relationships. Sometimes, like yesterday, I can feel foreshadowing as it’s happening. And I name it. And I’m not surprised.
Then again: if you say you can’t, you’re right. So maybe that’s what I do.
Ink Blots
But we were talking about moments and streams before all this other stuff got in the way so we should make our way back. The short version of the story you’ve heard before is that a confluence of events swirled together in a moment as I drove home from Austin, having said my goodbyes — unbeknownst, I suspect — to my friends.
As I sat outside the place I’d decided to finish the job, I called a friend and set about my road to actual recovering and sobriety. Over the next 90 days, as I attended those daily meetings of fellow recover-ers, my life changed.
Completely. Unequivocally. I see and interact with the world in ways that were unimaginable to me just a few short months ago. Every tiny detail of the world is new to me. Which sounds dramatic. Because it is. The anger, fear, shame, disgust, disillusionment, frustration, hatred and rage are just. Poof. Gone.
But it’s a story that only really makes sense to me. One that only has meaning to me. One with any resonance only to me.
Because the rest of the world was, unbeknownst to me, going about its merry business without a care to the complete psychic change I was experience.
The Dark Arts
They talk about the pink cloud bursting in my little meetings. That parable has many meanings; one is to remind us that nobody else really cares that much about our change. They have their own problems to deal with. The world doesn’t stop to pat us on the back for not drinking.
These days, I spend most of my recovering time trying to figure out how to manage the kinds of relationships I have with people who either still react to me as my old self (because there are remnants of that personality that exist today and elicit profound reactions from people still in my life from the old days) or who are struggling with their own personal demons today.
It’s confounding.
What It All Means
In the last few days, it’s become clear to me that my road ahead is still long, winding and unsure. Because while I can still see the snapshot and know that was the moment my life changed, stories don’t work that way. They don’t exist outside that space-time. They don’t exist on their own.
My moment is just one in a long line before and after, a line that still follows me today. Resonating in my memory, others’ memory, experiences, actions. That addict is me. Will always be me. Will follow me every step along the way.
No matter how far removed from the alcoholic in me, the stream follows me. My lasting impact on those around me is still here. Today. As much as I want it not to be. And my presence still brings that pain out. In the same way that a drink for me today would put me right back in the same spot I was in when I took my last drink.
My second-hand alcoholism is worse than my actual alcoholism. Worse maybe because those around me are forced to deal with something they never signed up for.
But What It Actually Means
I exist cautiously. Maybe too so. Because while I can’t control the stream following me, I can control the stream ahead of me.
I hide in the words. Away. Removed. Distant. Where the damage is contained. Or containable.
Still: 305 days of living. Good living. Righteous living. Seems like a small number to most people. To me, it’s a lifetime.