The Mule Was Only An Intern
It’s frustrating to be an alcoholic with zero credibility when something bizarre happens. You can do your damnedest to explain the situation, but nobody is going to believe you when you try to tell them that a mule hit your Ford Windstar—which reminds me of the time that my dad was driving around Charleston when a mule hit our Ford Windstar.
It was a Sunday afternoon and our family getaway in the most beautiful and surreptitiously racist city in the South was coming to an end. The day before, my mother had seen a small porch statue of a pelican in a gift shop and had made the mature, responsible decision to walk away. If she still wanted it the next day, she’d go back for it. She did and she did. My sister and I joined mom in the store while my dad offered to go retrieve the van from the parking lot and pick us up on the street corner near the shop—that way, we could head home after mom snagged her souvenir and she wouldn’t have to lug a concrete statuette five blocks to where we left the car. Two birds, one stone pelican.
Bird in hand, we walked to the end of the block where dad and the minivan were parked and patiently waiting. As we got closer, the three of us noticed that something was a wee bit out of place. You see, ordinarily, the back bumper would be attached to the rest of the vehicle but at that moment, it was not…as much… attached. My dad, much like myself (falling apples and whatnot), was a vodka-in-the-coffee-thermos kinda guy for a period of time. Up until that point, his drunk accidents had been limited to chef’s knives and his own appendages, but alcoholism tends to escalate. So, when my mother asked, horrified, “what happened?!” and my father replied, “I got hit by a mule,” there was no belief in that account whatsoever. Remember what I said about alcoholics and credibility? Zero. Zip. Zilch. …Rightfully so.
Twenty minutes later, after dragging our fiber glass bumper across half a mile of the former confederacy, we were standing in a barn that smelled like manure listening to a man in suspenders profusely apologize while shuffling through the pages of their most up-to-date insurance policy. Mom couldn’t believe that dad was telling the truth and dad couldn’t believe that this had never happened before in a city with such a high mule-to-minivan ratio. As we left, the manager apologized one last time, saying that the driver of the carriage was an intern doing his first solo tour. Dad, being dad, asked if the intern was “the guide or the mule?”
No harm, no foul. I mean, it was a Ford Windstar—the mule kinda did it a favor. Shit happens. Sometimes minivans get hit by livestock. Alcoholics sometimes tell the truth. Life is controlled chaos until it’s just absolute chaos with no bumpers. And I have met many an alcoholic who will use that existential supposition as a reason to keep drinking, rather than doing what us boring ol’ sobers have done and harvest all the reasons we have to quit.
Fact: admitting that you have a problem and that life has become unmanageable is not the first step of addiction recovery. Nay, nay. The sentiment is kin to the correct one, but wording is imperative here. On any given day I could open my mouth and say, “I have a problem and my life has become unmanageable,” and it would still be 100% true even though I’ve been sober for almost four years. The first step of addiction recovery is admitting that you are powerless over alcohol and (with implication to the former) it is the reason that your life has become unmanageable.
So, if life is a mule that is going to kick you in the hatchback regardless, then what is the Grand Canyon-like divide between having an unmanageable life due to alcohol and having an unmanageable life due to… life?
Living. Living is the answer.
I have had the pleasure of trudging through the chaotic existence of being an alcoholic. I’ve also had the displeasure of battling through the chaotic existence of being a simple human woman. There are absolutely times when being sober just means being able to recall and list all of the reasons why life is a dumpster fire… but… that awareness goes both ways. When I look back on the years I spent in active addiction, I just see waste. Pure waste. Fallow hours. Grand experiences with deficit memories. Messageless fables—tales of what not to do with no corrective example. Worthless chaos, no bumpers. Moments that should have been beautiful, brilliant, apexes of happiness were crumbled like shortbread in my quaking fists. I’m not even talking about moments that belonged only to me—I’m talking about moments that I ruined for everyone else. Not just moments, but major milestones. Entire vacations. A marriage. My sister’s wedding. I mean, yes, life is going to include some chaos, but does it have to be that chaos? No. It does not.
Chaos can have a purpose but wasted chaos is just wasted chaos. We’ve all been through phases in life where it feels like we are constantly putting out fires. It’s hard—it feels impossible—we get through it—we consequently become better at putting out fires. Smother it, starve it, extinguish it, DO NOT add vodka to it. Smokey the Bear said that, I think. If you walk through fire sober, you learn things about yourself. You learn things about other people. You discover your capacity for pain and your depth of resilience. You learn who in your circle has your back and who will run at the first sign of trouble. You learn about insurance companies that cover small animal husbandry businesses dealing in the tourism industry. And thank goodness, because when things in life are going well and there is a calm in the chaos… you become complacent. You become comfortable. You stop reaching upwards. You stop blogging about your very specific affliction of being an under 35 female with a serious drinking problem. You rest on your Oxford laurels. You choke on unsolicited criticisms. You bend, and strain and, saw-off limbs to fit in places where you are barely wanted, then stay contorted there until you realize… nobody is asking you to stay. It is actually hellishly uncomfortable to strive for a life that can only be described as comfortable.
More than one of my therapists told me that the catalyst for my addiction was anxiety. Not only did I drink to feel comfortable in the midst of chaos, but I drank so that I would be the chaos. The false logic that I harbored was that, if I was the problem—if I was the chaos, then I could control the problems and the chaos. If I was the thing that plagued my own life and the lives of the people around me, then nothing else could sneak up and hurt us. God wasn’t going to give my family an addict for a daughter/sister/wife/friend/cousin and then also give them a disease. Or a home invasion. Or bankruptcy. It would be too much. I was helping, you see?! If I do another shot of Fireball and ruin this bat mitzvah, then nobody I love could get cancer. (I’m not joking, I was that delusional.)
As a sober, logical person, I now know that the goal is not to prevent chaos. You couldn’t even if you tried. The goal is to understand that chaos has a purpose. Chaos forces you to grow, and to cope, and to prepare. Like a Ford Windstar, chaos is a nonideal vehicle for getting you where you need to go in life. And if it seems like this 1400 word essay lacked a real story… it’s because we’re only getting started, folks. Welcome back to (not) The Last Bottle.
