Faces of Cancer

Why I Don't Drink Alcohol

So I'm 25 and I often have funny reactions when I order water every time I'm out.  There are questions either in words or awkward glances when I'm out with my friends at dinner or at work parties and events or even when I'm just relaxing at my friends houses after a long week. My friends for the most part have stopped questioning, but when it comes to people who hardly know me, I'm certainly an abnormality.  I am happy to have my glass of water and rarely have I actually answered the question. I usually don't need to, a side glance or "it's a long story" usually does the trick.  But I guess eventually everyone needs to come out with their problems.

I don't drink because of my mother. And my father.  I don't drink because of my past. I don't drink because drinking is in my blood. Addiction is rooted as deeply in me than my brown hair or my green eyes, my freckles and my awful mood swings. Since I was just a little girl addiction has played a part in my life, when I was younger it was more subdued. I was "kept out of it". I was just a kid and no one talked to us kids about it.  But I remember it. My stories are not the kind you hear when you think of "adult children of alcoholics".  I was never without shelter, food or guidance.   One or both of my parents was always with us.  But there was fighting and there was stress. There was "where could your father be?" and "Mom, why are you acting so weird".

My dad cleaned up his act when I was about ten and his interactions with alcohol since have been minimal, annoying as hell, but minimal. But my mom, she has a problem.  She has been working on it for years.  But she does have a problem.  My mom self medicates, with alcohol and anxiety medication. Regularly.  She is a very stressed person who carries her anxiety around like it is a a tumor, and alcohol is her chemo. With years of study of psychology and a few of my own couch sessions under my belt I can understand that this is a coping mechanism, that she does this to help herself feel normal, less stressed.   But she is blind to the fact that it makes her anything but normal.  It takes her quiet, beautiful demeanor and makes it a little too... bubbly, a little too... chatty, a little too... loud and a lot too not my mom.  She seems to think I have a superhuman sense for telling when she's had a drink but it's not super at all. It's a curse. I can hear it on the phone, in the way her voice bounces up and down just slightly too much, and octave too high.  I can see it in her eyes, a little more empty, a little less soulful.  It hurts me so much when she drinks because no matter how many conversations I have with her about it she can't seem to walk away.  And then the hate pours from me, bubbles like an angry volcano with just a bit too much pressure under the cap.  It starts with a crack and before I know it I explode.   My mom is my best friend but in those moments all I see is black. Because as much as I love her when those chemicals are in her veins I don't know her anymore.  She becomes someone else and that someone brings someone else in me out.  A hidden being that I've kept under wraps since my own age of self medication.  The times after I left college when I snuck to the bathroom every night and threw up.  And before that when I'd wait until it was dark at night before I pulled out my razor from whatever hiding place it was kept that day and drag it along my limbs.  Never deep enough to mame, just enough to make the pain go away, to burn the pain away. I think that's probably the same way she feels when she has a glass of wine or a Xanax.  Like in those moments theres some overwhelming belief.  But those were the most pained, dangerous, times of my life. They were times when all I saw was black all the time.

When my Mom comes out of the black, when I come out of the black... we are back to normal.  But in those moments, for those hours or nights, I've lost my best friend. My most precious being. My sanity. And I feel like every moment I spend in the black I miss a moment in the amazing lightness that is my mom. I wish I could explain this to her. To make her see it like I see it. To make her see why I hate the chemicals, not her, I hate her in those moments. Why all I see then is black. Why there's no empathy or caring or love in those places.

But those are the reasons I don't drink.  Because every time I drink I think of the hatred I pour out on my mom when she does and I just can't be that hypocrite.

Tonight is one of those black nights but I just wish we could meet somewhere in the grey and be together in our pain. 

Lessons Learned

And every tear that had to fall from my eyes,

And everyday I wondered how I'd get through the night,

Every change, life has thrown me,

I'm thankful, for every break in my heart,

I'm grateful, for every scar,

Some pages turned, Some bridges burned,

But there were lessons learned.

And all the things that break you,

Are the things that make you strong!

You can't change the past,

Cause it's gone.

And you just gotta move on,

Because it's all

Lessons learned.    

                                           -Carrie Underwood, 2005

     Lately I have had this song on repeat and I could not figure out why. It has always been a staple song but lately I have needed  it in a why I hadn't in a long time, not since it first became a staple... 

When I was seventeen and applying to college I got stuck on this song, fell completely head over heals for it and wrote one of the most important essays of my writing life about it.... dun dun dun... my college essay.  I had a really rough time in high school and at the time I took that song in as a sign of hope and a reminder that things were on the up and up, that I had truly learned my lessons and moved into a new chapter. Boy I was wrong.  Seventeen year old me was an idiot if she though that her lessons were over.  

     I wrote that essay all about how hard high school had been, having suffered from severe depression for much of it, and about how much one person meant to me, how she had fixed everything.  Apparently my life was perfect again because one 24 year old youth group leader had stepped in and made me a priority, made me feel valued and safe. Little did I know that only a few months later I would be in my first semester of college crying on the bathroom floor  of my dorm with an empty stomach and another razor in my hand. Fighting the same demons that had run my life since  I could remember.  Little did I know then that the same person I had boasted about in that essay would be absent at those times when I needed her and was not her charge, that the relationship I had with her was fragile.  As the years went on there is so much that I would have loved to share with that depressed, scared girl.  Lessons that I learned painfully, beautifully, with my whole heart and through other people's actions. 

Lessons I've Learned Since 2007

• I've learned that people are not always going to be there, sometimes your own words are the only ones that will soothe
• I've learned that NOTHING turns out how you think it will but more often than not that's a good thing
• I've learned that scars are nothing to be ashamed of but nothing to boast about either, they are the private reminders of your darkest moments
• I've learned that there is no such thing as a "cool" person or "not cool" person, there is just a spectrum of awesome and everyone falls on it at a different point
• I've learned that you have to be your own advocate, things do not just fall in your lap and people cannot read your mine
• I've learned that you don't have to know everything about someone to be their best friend, everyone needs their own secrets
• I've learned that family is the one constant; time, distance... it doesn't matter, when you come back together everything is the same
• I've learned not all change is bad, although I still struggle with this one on a regular basis
• I've learned that there are some songs that will change your life and some that you will forget in two weeks
• I've learned that we are all changing all the time without even knowing it and a year from now remember who you used to be is nearly impossible
• I've learned that a dog can make a place in your heart in no time and stay there forever
• I've learned that learning is so much more important than I ever gave school credit for
• I've learned that life throws curveballs on the regular and all we can do to prepare is keep our eye on the ball
• I've learned that my favorite politicians are not always right 
• I've learned no one, with the exception of my mom, is always right