Good to be Alive Right About Now
This week, I accomplished the impossible. I managed a feat that is rare—nay! Unheard of. I moved. By myself. I packed up, disassembled furniture, lowered weighty boxes from a 7ft loft, carried it all down a fire escape staircase, maneuvered it into a Hyundai sedan, and made (roughly 47) trips across town where I unloaded it all once again. I was very proud of myself. Firstly, because I was finally vacating what has become known as the “Punishment Apartment”, id est: the creaky 275sqft shoebox where I spent the last year studying, crying, licking my wounds, hating myself, loving myself, hating myself, and listening to drunk co-eds stumble down the sidewalk at 3am, while I calculated how many of them, statistically, would go out of for $1 shots one night and not stop again until they hit rehab…
Secondly, I was proud that I didn’t have to ask for help. I, alone, accomplished a task that most people pay 3 grown men to do. Just because the apartment was barely big enough for me and a cat, even without the volume of my former ego and the cat’s fourth leg, doesn’t mean there was not an abundance of my crap to move. Just because I am a girl/student/alcoholic doesn’t mean that the crap in question was all featherweight stuff, like empty wine bottles, make-up caboodles, and Ticonderogas. I lugged furniture: desk, couch, bookshelves, cabinets. Equipment that was simultaneously heavy and delicate: television, monitor, printer, three keyboards (I like a different button-feel for composing prose vs. poetry), electric kettle, coffee maker. And, of course, all. The. Books. Anthologies, translations, biographies, autobiographies, journals (mostly mine, some of Sylvia Plath’s, and a few versions of Anne Frank’s). Speaking of Nazis, there’s a reason why Hitler ordered all the good books to be burned instead of just stolen—books are heavy and hard to move.
To be fair, plenty of wonderfully kind people offered to help. But helping someone move is the most sinister clause ever invoked in a friendship contract and I can’t risk any loyalties right now; I gotta hoard that shit for the next (inevitable) catastrophe. I’m not trying to be funny. I ask for help as infrequently as possible, but when I do, its big, BIG help that I need. I’d feel like a distressed damsel all the time if I hadn’t lowered a 150lb coffee table over a balcony with a bungee cord, a scarf, and a prayer yesterday.
I think I jump at challenges like solo furniture removal because it’s something I know I can accomplish. Doing it alone means a little more sweat, a little more time, and a little more creative problem solving on my part, but I’d rather take on those miniature burdens than burden someone else. I also find it soothing to roll down the door of a storage unit, brush my hands together, wipe my brow and be able to say, “ok, that’s done.” Because, in my world, most problems don’t have a clear solution.
I acknowledge that my writing and my admissions can be overwhelmingly dark. My intent is not to garner negative attention, inflate shock value, or to scare anyone. I go to the dark places to show others that its ok to be honest about their own darkness. Additionally, I don’t want anyone who struggles with similar problems that I struggled with to think that they are strange, undesirably unique, or should be ostracized for their own darkness. Most importantly, I want to be an example of someone who hit the lowest lows, had the darkest thoughts, made the worst mistakes… and got through it. Now, I know that I spoke just last week about my struggle with depression. It comes and goes at leisure. Its part of my life, but that’s all it is: a part of my life.
I don’t write or speak much on my current life at its standard because I think its arrogant. Arrogance is an adjective I would prefer to avoid. Its also careless to brag, given the path of destruction that I left in the preceding three years. However, if I am going to talk about suicidal thoughts, divorce, depression, addiction, sexual assault, heartbreak, panic attacks, and other horrifying things from the recent past, I had better do it in a manner than inspires hope. Despite all that it entails, my story is pretty damn close to a fairytale. People who are struggling should know this. I was a victim. Then I was an alcoholic. Now, my life is wonderful.
My success is no accident. Sometimes, bad things happen for no reason. Good things never do. Good things have to be earned. I’m not suspicious of my current happiness because I earned it. Yeah. I said it, I EARNED IT. I earned it the hard way, and I earned it the right way. Some people think that I should live in the “Punishment Apartment” in my head a little longer, but their attitude is wrong. My addiction was torture for everybody involved. Nobody was happy, everybody was miserable. I was miserable, my family was miserable because of me, my friends were mostly just confused, but regardless, it was Hell. All around. I did not enjoy or leisurely bask in being an alcoholic. I wanted out so badly. If addiction were a coffin, I would have bloodied my fingertips down to the bone trying to claw through the pine wood lid.
I know I haven’t said it explicitly enough to all the deserving people, but I am sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I am so Goddamn sorry about the last few years that it makes me physically ill to even graze the thoughts of what I put people through. I would walk a thousand miles and a thousand miles more if I could take away even a second of day that I ruined for someone, and I ruined years. I spend more time regretting how I negatively impacted other’s than I spend breathing.
Regret fixes nothing. Apologies fix nothing. In fact, this is one of those situations that can’t be fixed—it just is what it is. It came to a point where I could do one of three things: I could keep drinking and lose everyone and everything I loved for good. I could cut out the middleman and just end my life in one swift motion. Neither one of those options gave the people I care about what they wanted. They didn’t want me drunk, they didn’t want me dead, they wanted me. The real me. The sober me. I could give up or step up, and I finally stepped up.
The father away I got from alcohol, the clearer it became that sobriety was not enough. Just the act of being sober was not good enough for these people. They deserved everything—they deserved the world. I’m neither wizard nor God, so I can’t give them everything that they deserve, but I can give them my best. That’s what I’ve been trying to do. Don’t get me wrong, I fail a lot. It’s the effort that counts. With each passing (sober) day, the more I am able to accomplish.
Anyone who has ever snored through an AA meeting knows that life is supposed to get better, or whatever, once you quit drinking. The problem is that you hear that from people whose lives are, honestly, sad as fuck. Nobody is driven to get sober just so they can work at a Kirkland’s, live with their mother at the age of 40, stress eat store brand ice cream, and go to AA meetings every night of the week. That’s horrifying. I’m sorry if I’m being a bitch, but truly, that is a nightmare. I knew I couldn’t get sober for that. I’ve found that what you achieve is in direct correlation to what you want and how hard you are willing to work for it (compounded with the resolve to stay sober).
I have almost everything I have ever wanted, certainly more than I believed I would ever have, and this is only year one of my life without alcohol. I have my relationship with my family back, I have a nephew that I get to snuggle whenever I so choose (but I also get to hand back when he screams or poops or just… is two). I have a full academic grant to study my passion at a university that I adore, which means that I have nothing but hope and inertia for a career that will fulfill me and make me so happy. I have resilience that can only come from a trip to rock bottom and then back up. I have incredibly deep hurts that are still fresh, but they remind me that I need to treat people with the respect they deserve and never take anyone for granted ever again. I have a new confidence that has allowed me to gracefully let go of things that are not meant for me, not matter how badly I may want them in the moment. Additionally, that confidence lets me be a little smug when I think about the things that I deserve, now that I know what it means to earn something. I have people that I can call when I need to talk. I have shoulders to cry on. I have places to lay my head if I ever need to. I have people investing in me: emotionally, financially, existentially. Most importantly, I have love in my life. I have a wonderful family. I know that it could all fall apart tomorrow (even if I stay sober…) and I have a mother, a sister, a brother, and friends that would grab my hand and just say, “don’t worry, I got you.”
It’s not arrogance, it’s a testimony. If you are in that place where you don’t know if you should keep drinking, end it, or step up, you should step up. Ask for the help you need. First we start by getting sober, then we get to the big leagues: moving furniture. I’ve been to the place where I didn’t want to live. I’ve been to the place where I didn’t know how to quit. I’ve been to the place where I wanted to live and wanted to quit, but I had no idea what I would be doing either of those things for, because I didn’t believe that having a good life was possible. I’m bragging because a good life is possible. I can prove it, because I’m the proof.
