NIPS and CHEEZ ITS and OJ oh my.

Have you ever craved something so much,
that to not get it makes you literally insane?
I am right there, right now,
in this very stupid fucking moment.
I want orange juice.
A big, ice cold, pulp free glass of minute maid.
I want to guzzle it non stop like a shot, a whole 8oz glass of it.
If my head were not hurting so,
I would most definitely haul my pathetic ass up out of this bed and drive to foodlion pronto.
Unfortunately, my head hurts so much to drive at night whilst in the throws of full on craving could end with me in a wreck,
and a wreck over oj = no good.
If not for the pain, I would be guzzling right now.
Lately, I feel as though I am either channeling my Papa's spirit or,
I am possessed by it - either way - he is in me full force.
It started about a month ago when I was walking through CVS and grabbed the goddamn NIPS from the candy aisle - again they were on sale and clearly I have not learned any lessons (if you read my blog you know that the "nips" cost me $5,000 in dental work)
I have eaten about twenty five boxes of chocolate parfait nips in the last month.
No lie, my jeans are tight.
At least a five pound gain from the NIPS.
He ate them allllll the time.
had a box of them next to his chair in the den,
my Grandparents NEVER ran out of NIPS.
If you do not know what a NIPS is, don't ever ever ever eat one - if you do - don't say I never warned you.
Consider yourself warned.
NIPS are a hard caramel candy that get kinda gooey when you get it in your mouth - sort of the same idea as a tootsie pop and we all know how that goes.
The melty hard candy turns to pure sugary bliss, in this case coffee flavored,
your mouth waters with more spit and becomes washed in deliciousness,
you suck harder and begin to consider gnawing on it - chewing becomes inevitable.
NIPS have chocolate silky goodness inside - better than a tootsie roll on any day.
You suck and chew and the caramel gets stuck to your teeth and you rue the day CVS put them on sale and then you immediately start unwrapping another one.
It goes on and on like this until someone loses a filling or your jeans won't goddamn button - in my case because I am a glutton for my own punishment, BOTH.
Ugh.
I blame it on Papa, he is clearly with me and it's all his fault.
Now you doubt me and feel like I cannot own my own problems and think 'poor Papa' she is selling him out -
Okay I feel you BUT....
He is in me and I know it, not only because of the NIPS but also,
yep there is more,
the ever lovin' CHEEZ IT's...
What in the hell is she talking about you wonder?
When Papa was not eating NIPS, he was eating CHEEZ IT's - no lie, I kid you not.
Three things always in the house - NIPS, CHEEZ IT's and take a guess, go on I dare you - MINUTE MAID ORANGE JUICE.
In addition to the NIPS, I CANNOT stop eating CHEEZ IT's, like I said in a previous blog - right now, the snack machine and the dollar bag of 3oz. CHEEZ IT's is the very best thing about college this semester.
I cannot stop - and here is the thing,
I don't really love them.
I mean yeah they are good, but not high on my snack food list until about a month ago.
And now today with the orange juice.
I tell you, I am possessed.
And I wonder what my Papa wants with me.
Is he hungry - or, is he trying to tell me something else and if that is the case,
what the hell is it?
Along with the food, I have a re-occurring dream of a highway that leads from the US into Canada, but when it does,
Canada becomes all wonky like Willy Wonka Johnny Depp version.
Everything about Canada is neon and exaggerated and just plain weird.
I have been to Canada - nothing weird about it - so.....I wonder why the wonky Canada and why do I call my Papa from a payphone and say "I did it again - missed the turn and I am in Canada"
He comes to retrieve me every time.
The dream is always the same.
Always the same - been having it all month.
My Papa died a year and a half ago - so what is going on?
I don't know what I believe - we all know that.
I waiver between believing in an afterlife and believing in other things, maybe even nothing at all.
So what is with the NIPS, the CHEEZ IT obsession, the new Orange juice craving, the dream?
I don't know what I think, but I do think,
it must mean something.
Whatever it means, I hope it becomes clear to me sooner rather than later.
If it doesn't I may go into diabetic shock from all the carbs and sugar.
This possession is making me hungry and thirsty for all the things he loved most.
I miss him.
maybe I just miss him?
I know I miss him - I think of him everyday - at least once a day I stop what I am doing, close my eyes and picture his face, try to hear his voice in my ears
"I love you kid"
I love you too Papa - so much.
And, I miss you.
Miss you a lot.
Maybe my Nan is getting ready to go?
Maybe he is hanging out with me to get me ready?
Maybe he is fattening me up to get me through a lean time?
Maybe the Lost in Canada thing is about being lost period.
God knows I feel that lately too -
Maybe it is all the math I can't do?
Humph wish I knew.
All I do know for sure is tomorrow morning, first thing, I have a date with the convenient store on the way to work -
I am going to get me some OJ and guzzle.
And with that I should go sleep and maybe dream of wonky Canada again - it will be good to hear his voice on the other end of the phone.
"I'm on my way Kid"
Thanks Papa and don't forget the NIPS and CHHEZ IT's.

Robin, Vegas and a chair.

The strings they twang,
they sing lust.
The high hat rattles,
it sings sexy.
The voice it coons higher than high should go,
it sings desperation.
The base it thumps,
it sings touch.
The sounds culminate,
they sing the song.
My body it moves,
it dances the lust.
My body responds,
it dances sexy.
My body is sound,
it dances out ecstasy.
The base drum thump,
my head goes back deep,
hair tickles my shoulders,
Oh no,
watch out now.
I go higher and get as high as you.
Oh no,
watch out now.
You may not be able to handle this.
It gets bigger,
the swell of the sounds,
the swell of the hips.
Oh no,
breathe it in,
can you take it?
Head drops and rolls.
Arms up and over,
Oh no - and I mean that,
oh no - watch out now.
"and I say you oooh oooh oooh oooh"
from behind,
dip and roll,
shoulders pinch,
blades come together hard,
"you're my only love"
ooooh baby - you're my baby
oooh oooh oooh oooh oooh.
I could have made fistfuls of cash in Vegas.

Don't drink the poison.

Here I am again, like what twenty minutes later?
I am giving my poet a chance to do her thing, taking turns with the blogger.
I have skipped school again today, feel my education taking a back burner to my real life -
I feel frustrated with myself and yet, see myself very much like my son Kevin.
I just got a call from his high school English teacher "Kevin is missing way too many days"
Sigh,
my son and I are the same personality type in many many many ways - not all mind you - but many.
What we have in common is the artist angst - the creative fire.
He is a musician, I am a writer.
Who has time for high school English when there are rifts to write that may change the world?
I get it as I sit here blogging when I should be in class....
I have an excuse that is valid though - my head STILL feels like it may explode.
This is day seven of the worst, continual headache I have ever had.
Maybe it is a sinus infection - my eyes are swollen and the passage ways that circle around my face do look very much like a puffy road map - my skin is gray and raised all around my nose, eyes and forehead.
I am suffering from a culmination of distraction factors.
I feel like shit and I simultaneously feel like the real world exists here in my quiet home in front of my laptop, rather than outside my front door.
It is a seasonal thing for me too.
I am pissed off that summer has ended and I am mentally full of fear for the winter months.
I don't think that any one factory is capable of making enough prozac to get me through the dark, cold of Winter.
I hermit inside, hibernate emotionally, but still have to get up and go to work, exist in a climate that is unhealthy for a sun-goddess.
Sigh.
There is a lot going on in this head of mine of late - a lot going on in the outside world I really don't want to be a part of.
The sun is out today and that is good, although I didn't rouse from sleep until two hours ago and the day is half over if not more - at least when it comes to time to really accomplish anything.
My bed is made - I count that as an achievement, "look kids Mommy made her bed!"
They so won't be impressed....
A lot of my life, I spend wondering - am I normal?
Well wait - I don't strive to the "norm" - what I mean is,
do other people feel this angst and not talk about it openly like me - or am I just a very specific, select, unique brand of nut job?
Mary says it is my artistry - all artists have this angst - this turbulence within - this discontent - this fire thing that burns in my core.
I mean, I agree with that whole heartedly, when in doubt - I go to Dave.
Confirmed - feel less alone - move on.
But, is it just that I am an artist? A writer, a poet, a dancer?
Is it just that I am made that way and that is what makes me so deep and full of angst?
Or is it human nature that we all experience and some (like me) are more capable or needy of sharing it openly?
Because I am surely not the only one that relates to Dave when he is bereaved or contimplative - I am not the only one that reads Emily Dickinson and goes 'Whao - Em's I feel you girlfriend.'
Right?
But then - I take into account people I know (unnamed to spare them embarrassment) who sing the words to songs and have no idea - have not spent a moments time - putting those words into context - deriving the meaning, but still listen and love it just the same...
See, in my mind - those are the whacka dooodles and I am completely sane, completely complete and intact.
I had this long and drawn out convo with Mary about this topic the other day - we stretched it out, flipped it around, turned it inside and out trying to come to a resolute answer that we were comfortable with.
Thing is - I get the "she's crazy" A LOT.
I have mixed emotions on that label.
Part of me is like "well that is cause you don't get it and sorry for you that you don't - your flat line is while you have a pulse - yuck"
and then part of me is like
"Oh really and what the fuck makes you sane - your inability to 'go there'?"
Part of me feels sorry for the label slappers and part of me wants to debate them openly - have a forum to really explain myself and microscope their judgment.
Am I crazy for saying that there is not a factory around that can produce enough prozac to get me through the winter months happily - is that crazy or just humorously bruttaly honest?
My wide open nature gets two reactions with very little middle ground.
Either "You are fantastic" Or "wow you are nuts"
I like the fantastic idea a whole lot more than the nuts idea - I'd say all in all it works out about even.
The "fantastics" are usually people I want to hang with immediately
The "nuts" are usually people that, internally when I am around them - I feel a little uncomfortable.
Are we really that divided as humans?
I have a really hard time believeing that we are.
History shows me that we are always in search of answers.
It also shows me however, that the people who seek them out openly are often condemned (even put to death) for their evil, question asking ways.
Take Socrates for example...
He is my homeboy - I am just like him.
I ask a question and then do the verbal - okay - let's strip this sucker bare - truth by untruth by truth by untruth.
Let's cross shit off that doesn't apply and get down to the core.
I also admit, like homie - I don't know shit.
I am here to learn about it not claim I KNOW anything.
He was executed - executed for corrupting the youth and going against the gods.
I think I could be accused of similar violations - even today in the year 2011.
Before I went to college and studied the works of Plato and Socrates, I felt more alone than I now do.
I feel like philospohers are often condemned in their time and then raised to brilliant status long after their lives have ended.
I wonder is that why I feel such a need to write all this shit down?
Do I feel that one day, looking back, people will say "man that Deb, she was some kind of brilliant philospher?" instead of "man that Deb she's an odd bird" ????
I crack myself up.
Does any of it really matter to anyone really?
Do people just slap labels on others to divert attention from their own?
I don't know - I KNOW a whole lot of nothing - I just like to ask and think it all out.
And most obvioulsy, write it all out.
Mary said she "wishes it didn't bother me so" - the whole "she's crazy" thing -
she wishes that I would just remember that those who accuse me of that are the same people who don't ask themselves what Dave's "would you not like to be - okay okay okay?" really means, they just sing the words loud with their car windows down unafftected by the gloom and doom that is pervasively attacking the human spirit daily, unmoved to change anything and everything.
I know nothing - I have no answers.
I am not even sure what I have said here - as usual....
And with that...I really should go eat more advil sinus and attempt to do something that seems normal - what the hell that is IDK.
What is that lyric?
"and maybe I'm a little crazy, but laughing out loud makes the pain pass by" ???
I love you Dave and Mary and all of you who don't think I am a loose cannon of crazy.
And if you do - well, I love you too and I am sorry for you that I make no sense.
The socratic method isn't for everyone - clearly or he wouldn't have drank that poison.
Oh my Deb-or-ah, oh my.
Peace.

yesterday

I spoke of you yesterday,
to a stranger.
We mused about growing old,
that one day an old crock pot burned brown on it's edges would be the most important treasure one would rescue from the rubble of memories imploding.
I thought of you then,
in so many stages of my life.
Forty one years of change.
I thought of you bare and asking with desperation "please, could you close the bathroom door"
me watching on,
as no one listened to the crazy old woman who knows not of what she speaks,
your dignity stolen from you right before your pleading eyes.
I thought of your hand and it's softness, how I skipped to keep up with you as you walked on so swiftly,
you the original "go green" - you always brought your own bag up-town for errands to the long since gone "five and dime."
I thought of your kitchen and your cast iron pans,
the printed aprons of occasion,
the wire whisk you would hand me,
you taught me how to make the meanest gravy around.
In the memories, time had ticked on - winds of change had blown through.
What was, became a new, and a new and a new,
and an old.
An old you and a much older me.
The stranger she indulged me,
she listened as I went back,
how the plastic baggie of plastic bunny heads had induced the freak out that I had staved off in the chapel as I begged God to take you,
like you begged the girl,
"please shut the bathroom door"
"Please God, end her suffering"
Our dignity entwined you and me.
The strangers eyes moistened,
she had not intended to cry today.
And yet,
here we were bawling.
It comes down to the soup tureen and the baking dish turned brown from all the years of bubbled over cheese.
My two tangible pieces of us that prove we once existed.
I will say
"See those brown marks burned on the crock Emma?"
And she will indulge me like the stranger,
"yes Mumma"
"Well those are the marks from the cheese, from all the years when Nana made me my favorite dish, her famous Mac and cheese"
And Emma will watch my eyes fill up,
thinking that her Mother is so sensitive,
and I will rub my hand that misses yours along the markings,
and remember when I turned ten,
when it was bitterly cold outside,
the year the USA defeated Russia in Olympic hockey
the times when mac and cheese seemed the only plausible choice.
I said to the stranger, "worst part of getting old, losing the constants"
She smiled from behind a veil of her own loss and grief,
"you are a wise young woman," she said.
I touched her then,
she put out her hand for mine.
I held it in brief
and imagined selfishly,
that it was yours.

The prompt asks for a title and I laugh - as if anything could put a name on me or this mood. Proceed with caution ye faint of heart or laden with morality.

I am in a bad place.
Skipped school today to sleep instead. My fucking head has hurt for days.
Thing is this - I am sick to death of all the darkness.
Sick of the literal gray that surrounds us, the rain that won't let up.
I feel connected to the weather as of late, like it and I,
we are the same.
Metaphors are my strong suit and the sun, well it peeks through the clouds much like my emotional reprieves from the black.
I am faced with all my demons - I hate them all and love them too.
I struggle within myself to find what is "right",
all I knew has changed or at least I think it has.
I am no longer sure I believe in anything "correct"
I may be becoming selfish somehow.
I won't get what I want, I never do and yet....
I want it goddamn it,
even though it is wrong on so many levels and right, on far more.
I speak in tongues today - I have been like this for a week.
The poet in me is alive and hungry.
And I don't give a flying fuck about anything else.
I am drowning in clean laundry that begs for a proper home. The dishes in the sink sit now in cold murky slime.
I sit here in my nightgown, hair up in a clip, I can smell my own discontent.
I don't care.
I know I need to refocus -
Stop eating poison.
get on a schedule.
Find sleep.
Be organized and methodical.
Get my ass in the school game again and get my shit together.
My seams are all burst apart and I find no happiness in anything that I do -
OTHER that THIS.
I just want to be left alone.
I want the world and all it's needs to go need someone else for a change.
I want to seclude myself in a remote cabin somewhere at the end of the friggen world and be with myself and my words.
I want to be forgotten for real because I feel like I am everyday, so - okay then...
let me be.
I am angry.
Angry for being walked on and treated like shit for those I contort into positions for that literally hurt me - like literally
stretch me to places that are painful to get to.
Over and over and over.
Suck the life force straight from me, swish it around in their mouths and then spit it in my face.
I want to write.
I want to write it all and then...
I want it published - bound in seams that cannot be broken.
Printed on paper that is owned and cannot be bought away.
I want it to be the manual -
how not to fuck up your daughter.
how not to destroy your wife.
how not to abuse your mother.
How not to be quiet in a world that begs us to only talk pretty to your face and talk shit behind your back.
So much.
I listened last night, listened to Dave.
On my porch in the humid dank darkness.
His piano how the keys hit so hard and fluid.
Out of my hands for now.
"I feel like I'm crazy" - I became those keys.
And I feel that way.
Crazy and like music.
Like rage and like beauty.
Like secret sex put off for years because of its wrongness, tension built like a wire turned and turned and turned.
I want to snap so bad.
I am famous for saying all the things that people think in the silence of their "too good" minds -
I never behave because I am real and ugly is as real as beauty.
And to me, more beautiful somehow.
It is in the honesty I think.
Honesty is brutal, brutality of that form is most human - therefore most attractive.
No conforming to "shoulds"
I digress - lose all of you I am sure of it.
I am outwardly ranting the fluidity of the thoughts that swirl about the cyclone of my mind.
My poet is alive and well.
Ahhh how I love her.
She is so strong that I wonder why she doesn't fight for more air time.
She is sooooooo good at what she does and yet, she sits in the background like soft music in a chaotic house.
maybe it isn't a novel I should work on, maybe it is a piece like Toomer's CANE.
A little bit of this and a little bit of that.
I have been writing erotica lately - don't get all holier than thou on me now - the world is overpopulated for a reason.
My erotica is good stuff - classy and raw - like me..
hahaha, you doubters and haters shake your heads if you must - I am so used to it you have no real effect.
Ask my Mother.
It is sexy and smouldery and makes me realize that I am untapped natural resource.
A weapon of Mass DESTRUCTION.
And I am laughing for all of you who read and think "she needs to be institutionalized"
You nay sayers would like it the best - cause it would speak to your dusty dungeon or high pedestaled fortresses.
Take your pick - either way, I know you would like it.
It's not smut - it's beautiful sexuality.
It is my poet and my blogger come together in collaboration.
It is visceral and sensory - like me.
It is my fantasies I guess - the heroine is written for me.
She's a bad ass and playful - she's a poet and a dancer and golden and smart. She teases gently and playfully, she is wicked and uninhibited, she is soft and yet longs for someone strong enough to give her callouses.
She is a great girl that erotica me -
I thought about posting one or two short snippets - but what would you all do or think (after your cold shower)
can you all handle that????
If you can let me know and I'll put her up here - DEB DOES LIFE EROTICA.
I am thinking that this may be the way to make money that will afford me the opportunity to write novel after novel
Novels for the sicko's in secret and outed.
There is real money in it - ask Anne Rice.

Where have I gone?
Where are all the intended productive moments of this day, taken to re-group?
I have no ducks liked up, pretty orange bills in horizontal linear perfection -
everything is still a mess and my poet is giggly.
Ahhh me, why such complexities???
Why oh why was I made this way?
Surely there is a good reason.
Surely there is a good reason.
Oh wait, I said that....
Blogger and poet - on the same page.
Ah Deb you're a head case and you amuse me so when you open the latches and allow the contents to spill out everywhere, just because you can.
You go girl.
There is a cabin in a dark wood somewhere and it calls to me.
For the first time in a month I miss my cell phone.

untitled

I stood looking at my portrait,
startled by all the things he caught in the caricature of me.
I was,
truly, larger than life.
The swell of my breasts,
the curve of my hips, the haphazard of my hair.
The beauty in absolute repose.
My spirit unhinged from the force of chains.
A shackled beast making love to the air.
I knew then, people watched me discovering myself,
through the eyes of one who was my very breath.
He came to me then,
the boy who had been with him at the end.
Touched so gently,
so longingly,
with great need of a place to bury his pain,
my arm - his fingers grazed the goose-pimpled skin at keen attention of truths,
He looped his soft, strong hand around the crook of my elbow.
He said his name,
now I forget,
his eyes I will never,
how they seared through me,
down into my soul and found a haven there.
He told me what it was,
how it had been,
I was the one who would need the words - he knew.
And in the confession, the telling of that fateful tale,
he would release himself from alone-ness, shackle up with my brazen beast.
His words came broken on staggered breath,
the syllables fighting to connect
"He (break) (broken breath sound) was (exhale of agonizing air) calm"
he said -
"until the very end"
"breathe" I said with my eyes,
"hold me" I said, tremored hands clasping both of his.
My back to what was,
She/I loomed in the foreground,
8 feet of nakedness,
the tuft of hair in between my legs growing out of my shoulder.
I felt her there,
her red hair held up behind her head in come hither,
her hip cocked in a pose of wanting.
we shook, we three in unison,
I could feel her desperation weighing on my shoulders,
covered now in a pretty dress,
those wanton hips squared and fixed high,
on dainty feet in dainty heels.
The tale continued.
Such darkness and murk,
like cold mud diluted.
Communication came in garbled words that sucked in sludge,
people threw flashlights,
he sprung up from springs of need,
dove back down his hockey player thighs being tested by endless volumes of melted ice.
He did this a thousand times it seemed.
I believed him.
His handsome eyes drowned in guilt,
salt caked in the corners like a Boston street after too much snow, too much weather, too many crews trying to pave a reasonable way to work.
His eyes and mine.
"I should have been with him", I said -
"it should have been me"
Final moments together in the small pocket of air we should have gasped in together.
"You were with him" the kind consolation prize, the parting losers gift.
He looked, beyond me then
to the naked red head on the wall.
"That's you?" a question needing no answers.
We turned and held hands,
faces dripped off like a bad acid trip,
skeletal remains of people who were.
"Yes" I said.
"In the flesh"
In silence we married our pain on an alter of what was.
"You're beautiful" he said hesitantly - I was nude and raw and sexual.
"He thought so" I said - seeing the super hero gather her feminine awe, her raw power culminating in an arc, pulling back a tight bow ready to release a well aimed arrow.
"he is right" he said then, pinking the flesh which hung weary from his cheek.
I think I laughed then, knowing in the recesses of my mind I would never make love again,
"if you say so"
No space between his and mine, "I know so"
He told me that day, that boy of eighteen,
that my love had been calm and then screamed.
Panicked finally when his lungs burst for all the murk.
That he had hit the glass, kicked through the water to a steel frame unmoving,
a sinking treasure - mass and volume and math I can't do.
Then in the end all was quiet - like the womb.
He gave up the fight while they treaded around him, water angels, mermen with no fins.
The beams from the flashlights surrounded him like stars in a seamless night,
he sank lower,
became limp,
all that hair up around his open desperate eyes.
All these years later I wonder,
do you give up with resolve?
Or do you go quiet in a rage that needs no sound and motion?
Does your soul speak a language that transcends human words?
Does your body become pointless as you meet the answered end?
I arc, my neck back,
my dyed blond hair a mass of curls.
I position my hips in desire,
place my feet firm,
I let the chains rattle with movement,
my song...

Bartender one more drink...better make it strong cause I don't need to think.

When I was a teenager my Mother decided that it would be a good idea for me to attend Alanon.
Is that even how you spell it?
Apparently the biological Father that I never knew was an alcoholic, and back in the 80's when I was coming of age, the concept of genetic pre-disposition for addiction was exploding all around me.
At the time I thought this was the most ridiculous idea that I had ever heard of - "Wait, what??? You want me to weekly meetings to listen to children and family members of alcoholics, go on and on about their experiences EVEN though I have never met my Father the drunk and you don't drink?????"
WHAT?
Of course what I didn't realize then, and....what my Mother did not take the time to calmly explain, is that not only is the genetic pre-disposition valid, but that she was an adult child/survivor of a alcoholic herself and was terrified that "the drink" would ruin us all.
My Grandmother had a major drinking problem when my Mother was growing up and from what I can piece together it was ugly and my Mom took the brunt of the pain/responsibility/clean-up/parenting - that my Grandmother left behind after she was long since passed out.
Hard for me to imagine my Nana that way (she got sober in my lifetime) BUT, I CAN imagine it when I allow myself to set aside all the wonderful things that she was for me.
I think part of the reason my own Mother hates me so much is because I got in my sober Nana, all the things she didn't - but I jump light years ahead...
Back in the day of my restless and rebellious youth, my Mother was the last person I felt any camaraderie with - but, I went to the damn meetings because she forced me to....
What I remember most, was all the crying.
That, and the shame that every child, adult or teenager at the time, SELF INFLICTED.
Every child there was fractured, ripped right in two because of their parents drinking.
There were common denominators to every equation of who is to blame, why is it this way, what did I do to deserve this for my childhood and how do I get my parent to stop abandoning me for the bottle?
Those common factors were these.
My dad would kiss me goodnight and his breath was stale beer.
My Mother left me alone to go out to the bar.
I feel like I am walking on eggshells because I never know if she is the happy drunk or the violent, raging drunk.
He said he 'could' stop - but he doesn't stop.
My parents scream all the time.
My Mother finally left.
I love him, but I hate that he chooses it over me.
He hit my mother.
It's always the same.
She abandoned me.
I cleaned up the puke but couldn't carry him to bed.
On and on and on....
I sat and listened, week after week to broken human beings recount the stories of their secret hell that they managed, while also trying to do their homework, trying to be strong for Mom (or DAD) and trying to develop some sense of self esteem.
I must admit it made me violently ill...
And knowing that it is the existence of millions of lives today, right now, it hurts me to my core.
Back in the day - sitting there in Alanon - I realized how many people I myself knew that were living this.
My boyfriends Dad was a drunk and every one of his siblings and himself and his Mother were mortally heart wounded because of it.
The healthy them died before they even had a chance to live.
I was amazed at how many familiar faces I could inject to the stories I heard from strangers.
It had a huge impact on me.
I decided then, that I would NEVER become an alcoholic.
And don't get me wrong I am Irish and I like tequila a lot - and I have the genetic pre-disposition and let's be honest, a fairly addictive personality...
I easily could have become my Grandmother (before the sobriety finally took hold.)
I drink, sure. Once in a while. And, if I am "partying" - there is always a cut off point - when I begin to lose my sense of control and moral compass.
I am a pretty harsh judge of drinkers.
I will admit it - I see no excuse for it - period.
You want to use alcohol to dull your pain rather than learn appropriate "coping skills" - in my mind you get a big red X on your character - if you have kids - that X, X's out your parenting completely.
Don't fool yourself to into thinking that the sober you in "functioning" hours makes up for the drunk you - it doesn't.
Harsh you say?
Yeah no, maybe you drink???
Unfortunately for me, I made the fatal mistake of marrying not one, but two men who I also consider alcoholics.
Neither one of them would EVER agree because neither one of them are "twelve pack or fifth of Jack a nighters."
They were (are) the social drinkers gone bad - the ones who end up sleeping with strangers on drunken business trips or spends their kids crib money on a binge at a bar or drinks themselves into stupidity because they socially feel awkward or gets behind the wheel of a car slurring their words and walking the curvy line.
When you use substances to dull or negate or make something difficult seem easier - you have a problem.
I hate it all....
Today I am feeling angry at both my husbands, my Grandmother, My Father and all the drunks I know that have ruined lives, rather than get themselves the HELP they need.
Yeah it is a disease - one I fight every day.
Childhood leukemia is a disease too - one without a choice......
The thing is for a drunk - there is ALWAYS A CHOICE INVOLVED AND ANOTHER WAY.
You ruin your kids life and then throw back the bud light to dull that reality for YOURSELF - than in my mind you are scum.
If you take offense to that - go to a mirror.
If it applies, get the newspaper find your local AA meeting and stop fucking up everyone's life.