My survival

For as long as I can remember I've been a minimalist at heart. As a child we didn't have much, but we had eachother. We were in it together and we made the most of it. Once that fell apart all I needed was freedom. I needed to feel like I took up space in this world, a space that was specially designed and created just for me. And being 16-years-old and on my own all I needed was enough to survive. Fiscally I've never known anything but minimalism. But the same can be said emotionally. I didn't come from a warm, encouraging or supportive environment. There was not the obligatory " I love you" or the perfunctory displays of affection or pride. I was conditioned to get satisfaction by being tolerated. All of the people in my life were disposable and no one lasted very long. There were no survivors. All were either destroyed beyond repair or escaped with their life and never looked back. I know how to survive, but I haven't the slightest idea of how to live.

The very nature of survival is self-serving, self- indulgent and selfish to it's very core. You take what you need without any regard to anyone else's needs. Compassion is a luxury you cannot afford. Compassion means the difference between your comfort and someone else's. Between your needs and someone else's. Your survival and someone else's. When you live on the bare minimum you hold onto everything you have for dear life. You barely have enough for yourself so the idea of giving away any portion of your meager rations goes against every fiber of your being, every instinct you have. And when your life is solely a battle to survive, not to thrive, not to aspire, but just to make it through another day, you only take people with you that serve a purpose. Someone you can gain something from, that has something that you don't. But because of your instincts of survival you only give back the bare minimum, hiding things from them, keeping things for yourself and only helping them so that they can serve you. Survivalists take hostages.

Emotionally, I have only ever survived, and just barely. I have taken anything I could get from anyone and when it came time to reciprocate there was a decision to be made. Wether I thought I needed more from you or not. Wether or not my emotional survival was contingent upon your contribution. Wether or not the emotional cost of you out weighed the emotional rewards. No one lasted long, and few survived. I would bankrupt any fool who would let me. There is only one hostage who has made it to the other side of this journey, only one I deemed valuable enough to keep, and only one who has survived; my wife.

My wife is a kind, gentle, caring, beautiful soul. A nurturing spirit, attracted to the sick and suffering. One who gets out of her own pain by immersing herself in the pain of others. Willing to invest her emotional savings into some poor wretched soul. Fortunately for me, that malnourished wretch was your's truly.

The gifts she gave me were so immense that for the first time in my life I was operating on a surplus. I had more than I had ever dreamed of. She's my best friend. And she had seen the mess behind the mask and didn't recoil in disgust or fear. Being the selfish survivalist that I was I didn't inquire about what she had to gain from this arrangement. I was occupied with my own acquisitions and I didn't want to disturb this delicate ecosystem with any kind of discovery. Don't rattle the hive. This surplus of love, without conditions, made it possible for me to give some of myself without the old fear of demise. And I did. This was the most valuable gift I had ever received and I would go to any length to make sure it didn't go away. I had my first taste of living without the constant thought of survival looming over my head. But life happens and these life events depleted my reserves. Death. Abandonment. Loneliness. And within a few years my savings dwindled to nothing. Then I discovered my new investment; alcohol.

Alcohol was the ideal survival tool for me. It required nothing of me and gave me everything. It made me feel like the person I had always wanted to be, made me feel the way I always wanted to feel. It was the cheapest hostage. Little did I know that I was, for the first time, the hostage. The only thing I had to give was everything I am. And in return alcohol removed my every desire and replaced it with a feeling of effortless complacency I had never felt. A sense of belonging. A feeling that I had a place in this world designed just for me. But being the hostage was taxing and you never know when it's going to stop working for you so I needed to keep my wife there to support me and my alcoholism. It didn't take long before I was giving everything to alcohol and taking everything I had to give from my wife, depleting her emotional currency, and giving her nothing in return. It took the loss of my freedom, my love, my life before I was released from alcohol, but not before I had set my life ablaze.

My first day without a drink (part 2)

I chain smoked on the ride home from jail to replenish my depleted nicotine reserves. With each drag of my cigarette the storm in my head grew more and more tumultuous. In the past my brain was occupied by a myriad of players all united to accomplish one joint goal; get fucked up. They all moved separately yet connected, all of them supporting the others, holding hands, surrounding me. Shutting out any oppositional views. Deflecting guilt, shame, and remorse. That morning changed the chemistry of the team.
There were so many different players on the field. No one was in uniform. No one was playing together. Everyone, everything, was just running around the field, in my head, with no destination or goal. Just running in circles, colliding with one another, screaming at the top of their lungs.  Why the fuck did I say I wouldn't drink anymore? How long am I actually going to have to play along? What's going to happen if I do drink? What's going to happen if I don't drink? Why are you even thinking about drinking? Do you understand what you've done? Don't you see how lucky you are that you didn't hurt anyone? Don't you know that things will get worse? Is this what you want for your life? Is this the person you want to be?

I just wanted everything to stop. I wanted my thoughts to be quiet. I wanted the insurmountable shame to go away. Before I could catch myself I came to a solution; I need a drink. The brusque nature of the thought startled me. I was still subscribing to the school of thought that I could stop drinking whenever I wanted, I just didn't want to. This simple 4 word thought dissolved that concept in an instant. There was a great part of me that didn't want to drink anymore, but more accurately there was a great part of me that didn't want the consequences that came with drinking anymore. Conversely, I just wanted to figure out a way to drink the way that I wanted without having the negative results. I was 22-years-old and the concept of not drinking for the rest of my life was suffocating. I had never, even for a moment, given sobriety the slightest consideration. I never entertained the idea of quiting. I never needed to as far as I was concerned.

My father is an alcoholic. He gave me my first sip of alcohol when I was 4-years-old. My mother was at a Tupperware party and he was charged with the task of watching my 2 siblings and me. I was thirsty and asked him for a drink, to which he replied, "here, try this," and handed me his mostly empty bottle of Bud Ice. I don't think he really thought I would drink it. I would always comment on how he stunk when he was drinking. I hated the smell of alcohol. Wether that was because of the behavior I associated with him smelling like alcohol or wether I genuinely found the smell unappealing was far too in depth for my 4-year-old thought process. But even as a small child I knew when I was being challenged and condescended, and to this day, that makes me want to act out. So I threw back my head in the same fashion I had seen him do so many times before and drained those last two ounces of beer. I hated the taste but I loved the feeling of doing something that I wasn't allowed to. I loved the feeling of showing someone that they didn't know what I would do. You can't peg me. My father's face displayed a look of complete shock and then utter pride. That single act of defiance became our first bonding experience. It became his favorite party trick. A testament that his fun loving party boy DNA had been passed on to his first born. As it turns out my desire to act out also came from him, and he used our secretive sipping as a way to act out against my mother's strict, structured and hyper vigilant parenting techniques.

My father's drinking affected his life adversely. He lost his marriage. He lost his children. He lost his job.He lost his health. He ran into legal trouble. He moved back in with his parents and to this day, 16 years later, he continues to live with them on-and-off. He's had a series of unhealthy and obstreperous marriages and relationships all ending in a myriad of pain and destruction. He was a poison. And in my addiction I used all of his exploits and escapades as a litmus test for my own alcoholism. So long as I abstained from these behaviors there was no way I could be an alcoholic. The only thing I put more effort into than my drinking was presenting the appearance of holding it together. I made sure to always have a job. I have been with the same girl since I was 14- years-old. I paid my own way in the world. I moved out of my house at 16 and never went back. I had yet to have any legal repercussions. I maintained a healthy diet and exercised to maintain some semblance of health. But what I didn't realize until recently was that none of those things had anything to do with alcohol. I drank like him. And although I hadn't had most of those consequences come into fruition, yet, I drank like him.

I arrived home and immedeately had to get ready for work. My work ethic was greatly fear based because if I lost that cornerstone of normalcy I might arouse suspicion. I needed to keep a job because surely no one with a drinking problem could hold it together like I could. I quickly whisked through the abridged version of my morning routine, normally reserved for the days I woke up late and drunk and had to rush out the door. I had gotten arrested in my work clothes so, step one: locate work clothes, was taken care of. I brushed my teeth, tried to make sense of my tousled hair, and reapplied make-up over the make-up I was still wearing from the night before. Then I went into my room, grabbed my half bottle of Jack and sat down in the living room fully prepared to finish my getting ready routine the same way I did every morning, with a few nips of Jack.

Fortunately I checked out of auto-pilot right then and became painfully aware of what I was doing. In less than 1 hour I had had 2 urges to drink. I had no mental defense. I didn't have the chance either time to counteract my desire to drink. I didn't realize it at the time but these thoughts hide in the shadows of my alcoholic mind, waiting for me to turn my back and let down my guard, and then it strikes. It's unassuming and startlingly calm. It's there to offer comfort and camaraderie in trying times, to offer an ally in times of war, to be a friend in times of loneliness. Alcohol had become my solution to every situation. And in an instant I realized that it had become my problem.

My first day without a drink

February 4, 2012 is my sobriety date. I've encountered some controversy over whether this day counts as my first day sober because there was no way I was legally sober on that date. But I didn't drink despite the immense hangover and the emotional turbulence from just getting out of jail, and as difficult as that was I earned that fucking day. This first day without a drink was especially hard because I had never tried to stop drinking. A few weeks before my sobriety date I blacked out and subsequently blacked back in with my wife throwing a tv and screaming at me so I decided to take a week off from drinking. And to reward myself for making it 7 entire days without drinking I got hammered. That was my only experience in not drinking to avoid consequences and I knew that getting arrested was not going to be as easy to diminish. I knew that I had to stop indefinitely.

A big part of why I initially stopped drinking was to diminish the consequences and back lash that was sure to come as a result of my arrest. For this alcoholic, nothing was more terrifying than being called on my bullshit. For anyone to question me was a sign that they were getting a glimpse behind the mask and if they saw what I was hiding they would start thinking of me in the same way I thought of myself. They would see the inconsiderate, inadequate emotionally stunted human that I am. And I didn't love me. I didn't really like me. And surely neither would they. I disliked myself so much that I looked down upon anyone who did like me. I thought of them as entirely inferior because clearly they weren't privy to the reality of anything. If they could buy my shoddy act they could be suckered into anything.

Inversely, I needed these people. I couldn't love myself so I tried to use the affection of others to fill that hole that was in me. And no one could. So instead of looking inside of myself for the answer I collected people. I searched for the person who would be the missing piece. I figured eventually someone, the right one, would come along and fix me. The unconditional and unwavering affection of my wife wasn't enough. So I would transform myself into whomever I thought you wanted me to be. If I gave you the altered version of me then maybe you'd become the person I so desperately needed. If I got your seal of approval then maybe I was a worthwhile person. But I didn't give anyone who loved me's opinion any credibility because if they loved me something was wrong with them. It's strange how when I was in that ever spinning cycle of approval and disapproval the insanity of my process was completely unbeknownst to me, and with only four months of clarity and sobriety it is so obvious. But I relied on the affection of others to temporarily satisfy my thirst for self-esteem, using people up, and then discarding them with no regard.

I wanted my wife and my employer to know that I comprehended the severity of the situation and that I was essentially punishing myself so that they didn't have to. I wanted them to beleive that I was beaten up enough about it. I wanted to extinguish the fire I had started before it burnt my life to the ground. But there was also a part of me that was aware that if I continued drinking the way that I was that things would get worse. That this would be my first DUI but not my only. That I would continue to blackout and that I very well could put myself in worse situations. That I had been lucky enough not to hurt anyone this time, but maybe not the next. I knew that something had to change, and because alcohol was clearly the reason I was in this situation, the only feasible solution was to eliminate alcohol.

So as I waited outside of jail to be picked up I thought about what I should say in order to evoke sympathy as opposed to disappointment. I had always thought that I was made of teflon, so nothing could stick to me, and although this DUI was clearly the exception, I could still manipulate the people that I had let down into feeling and thinking the way I wanted them to. Their anger and contempt couldn't stick to me. So I held back my tears until my wife was arrived so that my feelings could serve a purpose. The idea of having emotions without ulterior motives was a foreign concept to me. My feelings had to serve me in order for me to acknowledge them. And this day was no different.

As soon as she pulled up I let the tears flow and hit every point I thought she would hit upon before she could. I made my oath to not drink. Stated all of the reasons I thought she would use to tell me I needed to stop drinking. I stated a plan of action. I apologized profusely. I denigrated myself so she didn't have to. And although I was saying all of these things to save face, they were all true. This was the first time I said real things in recent recollection. And I meant them, which surprised the shit out of me. I thought that I was so good at my bullshit that I was fooling myself. I was so unfamiliar with the concept of unadulterated honesty that I didn't know that I was having my first moment of clarity. For a drunk master of manipulation all of this was so uncomfortably alarming. I felt so raw and vulnerable. And now I didn't have alcohol to lull these thoughts away. I had just sworn to eliminate the only tool I had and yet I somehow had to figure out how to reassemble myself. The most difficult part was that I was coming to realize that I was a total loss. I was not going to be a quick fix. I had to start to rebuild myself from the ground up. Without my only tool.