Right this very moment, there’s an email sitting in my drafts folder that I’m afraid to send.
Once I send it, I can’t undo it, and it’s potential damage could be huge. It could mean financial disaster for us, this month. It could mean that my daughter never sees her father again. It could mean that he shows up at my door, angry, drunk and needing vilification. It could mean going to court, with a list of his offenses, dragging his name and self-esteem through the mud to get a judge to see that at this point in time, he’s unfit to be more of a parent than an alcoholic.
I’ve been putting off writing it all day, finally getting down to it when I knew not doing so would cost me more, in lost work time, in emotional pain.
Today, I sent her off for her last visit with him and didn’t tell either of them, and I carefully planned to have an email waiting for him tomorrow morning, stripping him of his visitation, as soon as he woke up.
By doing so, I will have given someone an extreme case of the Mondays.
I know that I shouldn’t feel guilty, and that I’m doing the right thing and I didn’t race into this decision whatsoever. It’s been all of her life that his drinking has been an issue, and that her well-being has been at risk. But, the guilt-feeling, extreme-moralist in me can’t help but feel like I’m about to ruin his life.
Note, I didn’t say that he has.
Why yes, I will be attending Al-Anon meetings. Why do you ask?
Ultimately, it comes down to this: I don’t want Zoë to grow up like me. I don’t want her to think that if someone’s nice to you part of the time, then they love you, and if when they’re drinking they’re nicer, you should just accept it. I don’t want her to not be able to trust people and lovers, to never give herself over to another person, because she’s aware all too well what happens when they decide not to be there, anymore. I don’t want her to pick up a bottle and see salvation, healing for every moment when she thought that she wasn’t enough, or for the anxiety she feels, or the abandonment she faces even when she’s not alone.
Basically, the goal is is preserve this for as long as I possibly can.
Even if it comes at a great cost to me, and to him. She doesn’t owe us anything, and we owe her the world. I have the clarity of that mantra – I know that without giving her everything that I can, she’ll miss out on something (and still might) – but he doesn’t. And I can’t try to teach him anymore, when it puts a tariff on her emotional well-being.
This is not a post about my ex. But this is still a post about alcoholism.
103 days.
That’s how long it’s been since I’ve had a drink. More than a sip. That’s how long it’s been that I’ve considered myself sober.
I don’t think I’ve ever, really, written about being an alcoholic. I’ve written about drinking. About substituting drugs or men with booze. About partying when I was younger. About my ex. I haven’t written – but my archives are too long and self-indulgent a thing for me to confirm this, so I could be wrong – that I am one.
I’ve talked about being bipolar, and the drinking that came with it – because it made the high reach superhero-heights. Being depressed and the self-medicating of it – because it soothed the lack of soul. Being free for the first time from the child that had been under my watchful eyes for nearly a year and a half and overdoing it. About replacing food with alcohol – it keeps you warm, while starvation makes you cold. I might have even mentioned that I first learned how to make myself throw up with a few pounds of cheap vodka.
But never this.
I’ve been every kind of drunk there is. I’ve woken up and finished off the bottle from the night before, looked in the fridge and found more for breakfast; I’ve been the person who could (and would) drink you under the table; the girl who got the giggles after a rye and coke; the one who refused to drink beer; the one who polished off a 12-pack and then walked to the liquor store; I’ve stashed mickies in the toilet tank, in a large-sized Ziploc, and only drank from it when the shower was running (I took a lot more showers, then); I’ve sat, at some points, and drank half a bottle of bitch beer in two seconds and then savoured the rest over an hour, enjoying getting slammed by the buzz, all at once; I’ve waited until Zoë was tucked in, kissed her forehead, told her I loved her, and walked to the fridge with a dish towel so that I could silently open the single drink I would allow myself.
I remember my first drink, my last drink, and some of the drinks in between. I remember the fights and the fucking and the smeared eyeliner that was left the next morning as proof. I remember sitting in the bottom of a tub and crying because all I wanted was a drink, and I couldn’t because I was pregnant and had been lecturing the ex about his drinking. I remember puking all over myself, and multiple hangovers that lasted for days, and that time I did that thing that I’m still ashamed of, and alcohol poisoning. I remember stating clearly to my father when I was eight that I would never drink, do drugs or smoke. I didn’t keep that promise for very long after that, in the way that grown-up years seem to pass so much faster.
I was an alcoholic the first time I intentionally drank. Cocaine, heroin, cigarettes (once upon a time) could all be annexed so easily, but knowing booze so intimately, it being knitted right into my DNA, made me done-for.
Anorexics have weird eating patterns. That seems like an understatement, but what I mean to say is that if you really observe an anorexic during a meal, you’ll notice little habits and rituals they must go through. A big time fun one is the measuring or counting of food. Have you ever counted out 100 no-name brand (plain) cheerios and then made them last for an entire day, from morning to night? I have.
I’ve drank like that, too: measured out specific amounts, with specific time frames. Because if you only drink the equivalent of a third of a shot every hour, it doesn’t count. Especially if you drink it out of a medicine dropper. I’ve denied myself the urge to drink. Not because it was a problem, but because it had more calories, and because anorexia imprints you with the need to do without things that make you happy, healthy or sane.
When I’ve quit drinking before, it’s been because I was growing someone, or I was eating away at myself.
Now, it’s been 103 days. And I could go through so many differing stereotypes of what it’s been like, or what’s changed, or how hard or easy it’s seemed. I could be strong, and project myself as someone owning this beast I’ve caged for all of those squares on the calendar. I could lie, outright, and tell you that when I walk past the liquor store with Zoë, as we do nearly every day, I don’t think about walking in, running my fingertips over a bottle of vodka and telling myself that I don’t have a problem.
But I don’t lie. And that would be quite a feat of self-betrayal, to join in the same rally-cry that the ex has used.
“I’m not falling down, I get my shit taken care of, I have work, I have a place to live, and my kid is happy. I don’t have a problem, you do.”
Yeah, buddy, you’re right. I do. And I stopped feeding it 103 days ago. When will you?
