Give Thy Thoughts No Tongue
Our priority is to remain sober. It does not negate the fact that addicts have reasons and explanations for how they were gobbled-up by addiction. I have seen many, many alcoholics stand a podium and vomit their entire life’s story for the equally alcoholic spectators and, let me tell ya, I fully understand why they drank. The catalysts for alcoholism are bad enough, but if you stick your head into a Narcotics Anonymous meeting, you’ll hear origin stories that the Executive Producers at ShowTime wouldn’t purchase the rights to. Rape, neglect, abuse, more abuse, jail, asylums, abuse. More abuse. More abuse.
Interestingly, the abuse and assault that are crucial to some stories, are not the incidents that the recovering addicts are finding impossible to parse. It not easy to get over—most are working every day to process the lingering trauma, but sober, rational addicts can grasp the fact that a person who puts their hands on you, is not a person at all. They are vermin. Vermin don’t get room in our psyche to do anymore damage or make us question ourselves. Vermin get exterminated.
No, when addicts talk about the moments that gnaw at their hearts, the moments that make them desire drinking binges over consciousness, they talk about the words. Words that destroyed them. Insults that ran them over. Rejections that poured concrete around their ankles and pushed them off a dock. Criticisms that entered through the ear then settled in the brain and grew like some Amazonian parasite.
“I hope this doesn’t upset you, but I don’t think I ever loved you. I didn’t realize what love was until I met her.” - Alcoholic’s ex-husband, while explaining why he wanted a divorce.
“You’ve made it impossible for me to ever be proud of you.” -Alcoholic’s father, minutes after she walked at her college graduation while 8 months pregnant.
“You are not my son anymore. If this is your choice, then I don’t have to worry about tolerating being in Heaven with you for eternity. You won’t be there.” – Addict’s father, reacting to his son’s announcement that he was in love and getting married to his male partner.
I could go on for five more pages, but I won’t because it’s heartbreaking and it’s causing me pain to quote my dear friends in this context. It also causes me pain to speak of the travesties that words are complicit in committing, because words are my passion. My life revolves around words. Actually, my life revolves around the musings of long-dead men, but I obsessively study their words because their words are all that’s left.
Paraventure is one of the words I had to research to find its meaning. It was borrowed from the Anglo-French phrase par adventure, literally meaning “by chance.” Geoffrey Chaucer wrote in Middle English, where paraventure was used as a verb. By the time Shakespeare was composing, the language had evolved to Early Modern English (often referred to as Elizabethan English or, aptly, Shakespearean English) where perauenture operated as a noun.
The Bard also opted for the alternative use of the letter u, which was interchangeable-ish with the letter v. Actually, u and v were technically the same letter at the time, with v being used at the beginning of a word to form the sharp consonant sound and u being used in the middle of a word as a round vowel. It wasn’t until the 17th century that writers and printers began separating the two letters, making v an official consonant and u a distinct and official vowel.
My vocation is titillating, isn’t it? Etymology isn’t even my kink, it’s just part of the process when your heart belongs to the literature of a retired language—which is how I found other gems like meschaunce, meaning “misfortune,” and jolitee, meaning “pleasure; passion.”
If Middle English is too cutting-edge for your taste, I can dish-out prosaisms from a deceased language:
Barba non facit philosophum- a beard does not constitute a philosopher.
Deo volente- God willing.
French is my current muse and one of the distinguishing qualities of the language is that it has contains words and phrases for nuanced human experiences that other languages leave in need of an explanation.
Un exutoire- an activity that helps you rid yourself of an unpleasant feeling or memory. (Leave it to the French to label and emphasize the reason why American women go blonde after a break-up.)
L’esprit d’escalier- “the wit of the staircase” is the literal translation, but it refers to the frustrating phenomena of thinking of the perfect retort after the argument is already over.
Why am I boring you with all of this? Partially because it’s Christmas Break and I need to fill the void in time and space where I used to bore my students. Mostly I just don’t know how else to express my deep, consuming love for words. Great writers take those words and stitch them into lines and stanzas that evoke our delicate human conditions, then explain them back to us. Every once in a while—not often enough—a writer from centuries past will have felt exactly what ails you and written about it. If by happenstance, or fate, you read it the moment when you need to know that some heart, somewhere in time, has been in the same condition as yours… it feels like more than magic. It feels like prophecy has arrived on a Coast Guard helicopter.
So, I take it personally when people use my beloved words in their armament. Chaucer wouldn’t like it. Neither would Khayyám. Shakespeare would be pissed—he’d come up with a tragic, yet creative way to kill you off. Or lead you to kill yourself under the guise of silly misunderstanding. But the boys and I are reasonable people, we know its hard to resist using words as a weapon when they are just sitting there, all sharp and nifty, awaiting the chance to defend your battered honor. I have found a way to circumvent the anger I feel toward words when they come for me like an assassin. Part me would like to be enraged at words, and words alone, for forming the sentence: The only feeling I have about you leaving is relief. But in my heart, I know that was a user error. In fact, words have only ever truly hurt me in one way.
When words come at me in the form of hatefulness, it stings. When words come at me in the form of indifference, it maims. But when words cannot design what needs to be said, or when the words I need simply don’t exist (and never existed, I checked the first dictionary) it makes me feel like dying. Because I still owe some apologies that a-p-o-l-o-g-y isn’t potent enough to handle.
I hurt people.
I hurt the people I love the most. It’s been years, but centuries won’t change the fact that I once chose my comfort over theirs. I chose drinking over being civilized in their homes—in their hearts. I watched them cry, and beg, and supplicate until they were out of breath. I told them I would stop. As I was saying it, I knew for a fact I’d be drinking again at 5:00.
I put them at risk. I cost them money. Thousands. I ruined their parties. I ruined their weddings. I ruined everything.
So, words? What words? What useless, pointless, fruitless, insignificant characters from the Greek alpha to the archaic izzard could be arranged in a syntactic, synergistic grandeur, befitting of how Goddamned sorry I am?
I put paragraphs to addiction all the time, but this is where my passion and my mission have deviated because there are no words. Not for this.
Part of me hopes the words will never come. If they did, it would mean that somewhere, somebody else with a pen and regrets has felt the futility of desperately wanting to make right of something that cannot be made right. I hope it stops with me. No new literature about it, only old literature. I prefer old literature. I want to be the dead writer who felt it and scribbled about it so the coming generations can read about the cautionary tragedy, forgive themselves, and be happy with the endeavor to stay sober and be the best person they can for the best people they know. I owe it to other addicts to do for them what Chaucer did for me— feel it and write about it well enough that whoever reads it knows they are not alone, waiting for a Coast Guard helicopter.
Sholde biforn the peple in my walkyng
Be seyn al bare; wherfore I yow preye,
Lat me nat lyk a worm go by the weye!
Remembre yow, myn owene lord so deere,
I was your wyf, though I unworthy weere.
