Thursday
Jun162011
Parenting This Sobriety Baby Is A Real Bitch
Thursday, June 16, 2011
Sometimes I feel like someone just picked me up from one place and time and plopped me down someplace else.
This feeling denotes a laziness in my character. It's a deflection of the acknowledgement of my responsibility in the stream of my own life.
This is my friend, Starcat, with whom we visited in Saskatoon last weekend.
I always feel like this after I visit my hometown of Saskatoon. I drove away one day, got married just outside Regina Beach, and then drove on to my new city and my new married life in Regina.
This is an old roommate of mine from the late 1990s.
I was in one place with one life one day, and then I was in another place with another life another day.
Mary!
The older I get, the more I feel like a time traveller. I travel back through memory so easily, so completely, that I often forget that I am 38. I think this is why I struggle with my age sometimes. My sense of narrative leaps around from period to period.
Maybe if I stopped dragging myself through my past so often, I might learn to step more lightly in the present.
No gay pride parade is complete without robots.
At the same time, I want to write it all down, every year of my life.
I want to write down my life at five. That was a big year for me. I figured out mortality. I learned that not getting to do what you want right then sometimes means that you will never get to do it. I learned that I could think up my own answers to hard questions.
There was much wearing of the short shorts at the gay pride parade.
My attachment to my hometown seems to have grown over the last year. It surprises me, this heavy affection.
I think this attachment stems from a great, deep, wide, yawning well of regret for how I handled the last ten years of my life. I felt happy. I drank. I felt sad. I drank. I felt bored. I drank. I felt inspired. I drank, and every time I drank, I forgot almost everything.
I barely remember the names of anyone I met over the last ten years, because I was drunk when I was in public seventy-five percent of the time. Hell, I barely remember the names of more than half the people I drank with at that pub I parked my butt in day in and day out.
There were a lot of regulars and semi-regulars there, but still.
Mrs. Wilson and I had coffee.
I drank quite a bit when I lived in Saskatoon, but it didn't hound me then. It didn't interfere too much. At least, it didn't until the last year that I lived there.
When babies dance, the whole world dances.
It's not that times were easier then. They weren't. I am a happier, smarter, and more fulfilled human being now with a partner I would marry again and again and again. There is nothing in my life I would give away at this point.
Except.
She waved like the Queen at everyone within waving distance.
If I could, I would definitely give away the part where I have to be a recovering alcoholic now. I wasn't an alcoholic then. Or rather, I was, but I could still live comfortably inside of the misconception that I was just having fun.
I really did have a lot of fun. It's just that fun wasn't all I was having.
This cat pees in my footwear when I don't let him make beds out of our coats.
I was told this would happen. I was told that I would eventually fall into a sentimental nostalgia about my drinking days and, boy howdy, have I.
I want a beer tonight. No, let me correct that. I want several pints of beer. It doesn't help that all of my dreams last night had me hiding out in backwater pubs snuggling up to pitchers of cheap draft. It sounds sad, but it was also delicious. I woke up feeling ashamed and guilty.
Parenting this sobriety baby is a real bitch. It better get really good grades and do something amazing with its college degree that I can brag about in my elder years, because I feel like I'm doing all the work here.
This is my handsome father.
Tonight, my sobriety is being fed ungodly amounts of double-strong coffee while it feasts its eyes on movies that will totally leach all the cool out of our Netflix recommended movies list.
I wish I could show you the look on the Palinode's face when Netflix tells him that our main interests revolve around Sandra Bullock's early years and mildly homoerotic coming-of-age road trips.
This feeling denotes a laziness in my character. It's a deflection of the acknowledgement of my responsibility in the stream of my own life.
This is my friend, Starcat, with whom we visited in Saskatoon last weekend.
I always feel like this after I visit my hometown of Saskatoon. I drove away one day, got married just outside Regina Beach, and then drove on to my new city and my new married life in Regina.
This is an old roommate of mine from the late 1990s.
I was in one place with one life one day, and then I was in another place with another life another day.
Mary!
The older I get, the more I feel like a time traveller. I travel back through memory so easily, so completely, that I often forget that I am 38. I think this is why I struggle with my age sometimes. My sense of narrative leaps around from period to period.
Maybe if I stopped dragging myself through my past so often, I might learn to step more lightly in the present.
No gay pride parade is complete without robots.
At the same time, I want to write it all down, every year of my life.
I want to write down my life at five. That was a big year for me. I figured out mortality. I learned that not getting to do what you want right then sometimes means that you will never get to do it. I learned that I could think up my own answers to hard questions.
There was much wearing of the short shorts at the gay pride parade.
My attachment to my hometown seems to have grown over the last year. It surprises me, this heavy affection.
I think this attachment stems from a great, deep, wide, yawning well of regret for how I handled the last ten years of my life. I felt happy. I drank. I felt sad. I drank. I felt bored. I drank. I felt inspired. I drank, and every time I drank, I forgot almost everything.
I barely remember the names of anyone I met over the last ten years, because I was drunk when I was in public seventy-five percent of the time. Hell, I barely remember the names of more than half the people I drank with at that pub I parked my butt in day in and day out.
There were a lot of regulars and semi-regulars there, but still.
Mrs. Wilson and I had coffee.
I drank quite a bit when I lived in Saskatoon, but it didn't hound me then. It didn't interfere too much. At least, it didn't until the last year that I lived there.
When babies dance, the whole world dances.
It's not that times were easier then. They weren't. I am a happier, smarter, and more fulfilled human being now with a partner I would marry again and again and again. There is nothing in my life I would give away at this point.
Except.
She waved like the Queen at everyone within waving distance.
If I could, I would definitely give away the part where I have to be a recovering alcoholic now. I wasn't an alcoholic then. Or rather, I was, but I could still live comfortably inside of the misconception that I was just having fun.
I really did have a lot of fun. It's just that fun wasn't all I was having.
This cat pees in my footwear when I don't let him make beds out of our coats.
I was told this would happen. I was told that I would eventually fall into a sentimental nostalgia about my drinking days and, boy howdy, have I.
I want a beer tonight. No, let me correct that. I want several pints of beer. It doesn't help that all of my dreams last night had me hiding out in backwater pubs snuggling up to pitchers of cheap draft. It sounds sad, but it was also delicious. I woke up feeling ashamed and guilty.
Parenting this sobriety baby is a real bitch. It better get really good grades and do something amazing with its college degree that I can brag about in my elder years, because I feel like I'm doing all the work here.
This is my handsome father.
Tonight, my sobriety is being fed ungodly amounts of double-strong coffee while it feasts its eyes on movies that will totally leach all the cool out of our Netflix recommended movies list.
I wish I could show you the look on the Palinode's face when Netflix tells him that our main interests revolve around Sandra Bullock's early years and mildly homoerotic coming-of-age road trips.
categorized in health and tagged in alcoholism, childhood, health, past, sober, sobriety, stream of consciousness
health and tagged in alcoholism, childhood, health, past, sober, sobriety, stream of consciousness 
Reader Comments (15)
Someone asked me at a meeting tonight if I ever miss drinking. And I said, "Sure. I miss being a normal person with normal reactions to normal things. Instead of a sot one angry resentment away from a ten day drunk." And then that person proceeded to lecture me on how I haven't quite smashed any reservation that I am an alcoholic. I disagree. I know I can't drink. I just miss the ease of cracking open a beer or six and zoning out. Like I used to before I knew. Thanks for sharing this. It is good to know that I am not the only one who misses the beers.
Thank you for your raw honesty, as always, Schmutzie. I loved your storytelling snippets and paragraphs and your pictures in this one too. Thinking of you.
If it's any consolation I wasn't drunk that much in my last 10 years and I can't remember a bunch of stuff. Possibly due to drinkin & druggin in my youth but I put it down to lack of sleep.
I think I get where you're coming from. There's so much built into that nostalgia. The drink. The idea of being the person who gets to drink. The idea of being young and free and less weighted with responsibility. The pure weirdness of the nostalgia effect itself--that yearning for the lost time which has become rather glorious in retrospect. And fascinating too--what was really happening REALLY? If only we could travel back. And I don't even have pictures, alas.
That wonderful, wonderful feeling of drinking is probably why it's so hard to quit drinking. Even when it ceases to be a wonderful feeling there is the memory of it being a wonderful feeling.
But you now is so damn wonderful. And you can't be you now with that. Also, you can't get that again. It sucks.
I think loss really sucks. I want to be a Buddhist so I can just get over that shit but I never seem to get around to it.
I love the post Schmutzie! Good luck as you feel the nostalgia and cravings for both parts of the past and for booze. You are doing an amazing job and you are incredibly strong. It was great to see you, even if it wasn't very long. (I was so incredibly exhausted!) Hopefully I will get to see you next time that you are in town. Take care <3
Thank you for sharing this. Even if my own experiences don't exactly match yours - even if I don't know what it's like to be a recovering alcoholic - still, your loss resonates with me. This is your gift - the ability to connect, through your writing and pictures, with each of us, and we are the better for your generosity with it. Thank you.
What a beautifully written post. I have often wondered what life without booze looks like, both my Mum and sister no longer drink and most of the time I drink enough for all of us....I appreciate you bringing us on your journey.
this is all kinds of beautiful.
STOP WATCHING NETFLIX.
There's a Spider Robinson (Canadian! Holla!) story about a guy who gets thrown into a prison in Latin America for ten years and is then released, and all the trouble he has coping with ten years of progress all at once. One of the lines in the story is, "We're all time travelers- only most of us do it at the rate of one year per year."
My husband Erik is diabetic and he often talks about his disease in the this way. Although, I am not comparing the two. They are very different...the mourning of a loss, does occur with both (and with alot of other things as well).
He often speaks about missing the spontaneity he used to associate with eating. He misses not having to count carbs, carry an insulin pen or worry about how a stomach flu might land him in the hospital. He can cope, sure. So can you...but he is sometimes upset about the fact that he even HAS to cope...when so many people don't.
Until now though, I guess I'd never thought of alcoholism in those same terms...I'm not sure why, I just didn't. Sorry it's so hard sometimes. I am glad that you chose to face this tho, because the world needs more people like you, who challenge us to think differently. I like that about you. Don't change...mmk?
i like that time traveler line Michael left...
those photos make ME nostalgic for a long-gone life that wasn't even mine. what an under-the-skin post this is.
i get nostalgic for smoking and then have to find ways to come to terms with the fact that i haven't exactly quit, i just don't smoke. and then i read books about the semiotics of smoking in order to make me feel better. or less vulnerable to it. perhaps i need to try some Sandra Bullock movies?
I struggle with not allowing the nostalgia to creep in, which has meant that I've hardened myself against all sorts of emotional remembrance of the past - both good and bad. It's not ideal, but it's the best way I've found to maintain my own sobriety. A non-alcoholic means of forgetting.
Love to you as you keep on fighting.
Wow. So eloquent. The parenting metaphor is incredibly apt - I miss the spontaneity, the freedom, the ease, the extra cash...of life BK (before kids). I love my kids but sometimes I think that life was a hell of a lot more fun back in the day. Being a grown-up kind of sucks sometimes - one consolation is having enough of a brain to read stuff that's really good and say "wow, that's really good." Thanks for helping this grown up this afternoon.
Man, oh lordy, woman. You just never cease to make me thank god for the internet.
I'm sorry you're struggling. :(
xoxo
ps. Palinode's comment made me laugh out loud.