2005-05-07 - 10:25 p.m.

i was hung over again today.

i went to work on a client and it was a group of these sober friends from a while ago. all now married, kids, lives, organized places of stay. friendly, fresh, kind, perky.

i want that. i miss that sort of community of wide alive people.

i'm scared.

i just keep hoping, thinking that my roudy behavior is just a re-entry stage, re-entry into drinking. catching up. and enjoyment of something i suspended for so many years. nearly seven, six? six years without a drink, puff or a pill. imagine. and i like the person i was, in general. but it wasn't entirely authentic for me. i was in that space to make others happy, to have them like me, to feel loved. accepted. i feel like i've been ferociously exploring my truth, but i feel as if i'm playing with a flame. a bonfire and if i get too close i get singed.

i just want to break myself of that role, that, i'm broken, fix me role. of crawling back and needing, and getting filled, instantly. i feel like i need that blanket around me. i just remember how warm it was. how surrounding. i'm jealous, i miss it. i miss the specificity of that community. granted with it came a whole box of cereal i couldn't eat. a whole list of irritations, limitations that just gyrated my core. my beliefs. about conformity, groups. joining, saying words over and over and over and over to fit in. doing it "the right way." i felt slightly suspended from real life. sometimes in a safe way and most times in a very argueably wrong way for me. but there was a lot of simple joy. clarity. hugs. crystal, bright eyes shinging through every bit of the ups and the crashes and the wild ass adventures i've taken myself through....completely sober. around the world.

when i was little there was nothing more terrifying to me than my dad's drinking. he wasn't a mean drunk, just a disappearing drunk. a silly drunk. an emotionally drowning drunk. a sit on dad's lap so i can slur over how much i love you and maybe cry into you. while alone on vacation together. while i was too old to sit on dad's lap and feel close.
after my emotions and trust had already been severed. after the crust over the repeated disappointments formed over the small space left for love. all through dinner i would stare at the drink, wondering if there was alcohol in that one. wondering how drunk he might be.

i wanted nothing more than to be close.

than to have this amazing, artistic, sensitive man be just..there. i was always counting drinks.

i was always terrified in the car. i held on tight. wondering if we'd die.

i was wondering if he'd come home. where he was going. if i'd get picked up today at the after school art class.

and there was that time that my mom got violent. anger spilling over onto my ears, my bare skin.

and i threatened to leave. to go to dad's. he had moved into his own condo. a tall, splintering wooden condo with powerlines that spoke of a consistent humming buzz. i hated the large empty spaces of the place. the loneliness. i worried about him. i sat with the well of this inside of me. his indian artifacts hanging on stark white walls. a kitchen with out the basics. empty rooms with nothing but carpet.

i threatened to leave so that my mom would stop her lashing, so that she would pull me in and ask me to stay. so that i could feel wanted. and she told me to go, screamed at me. tearing through me with pinpointed eyes and lifted shoulders angling towards her ears and so much rage. so much rage. i felt hated. i felt devasted. unwanted.

i went to dads. i brought my things for school the next day. dinner was forgetful. what i remembered was that he "went out" that night. and i was alone in this place with a feeling of vast, empty, terror inside. that i was wrong. i called my mom and still in her anger, she blamed me and said that i should now deal with it, that i dug my grave and had to stay in it. i guess she felt rejected somehow. or relieved?

i probably stayed awake as long as i could, waiting up, listening. i didn't hear him come home. but when i needed to go to school the next morning i tried to wake him and couldn't. i tried to find the keys to the car, i found half of it, broken off, still in the ignition. i felt everything spinning, out of control.

i don't know what to say. i don't hate them now for what was then. i just don't know how to unwind what was done. i don't know how to excavate those imbedded sensations that i felt i was drowning in. barely surviving. just needing to get through one more night in that family. just needing a hug. a grace. one belief in me. just one. just to be held through a scarey night.

shit i get now why i have to "lift" the mood of lizard when she's down when i'm down. becuz i was constantly trying to lift up the enormous weight of my mom. just so that i could have one day.

i don't know. i didn't drink then to chase anything away. if i was away, then i couldn't be sharp to the blows and fights about to land. i needed to stay alert. i remember running to my room in a fight once and grabbing this italian bottle of liquor i kept as decoration and opening it and swigging down a sip. it was horrid and i stopped there. but the act of rebellion felt powerful. it was always just something that scared me. i was always on gaurd, on watch.

and now. now i'm perplexed with wonder.

could i have a problem? i know i didn't ever before, i had a problem with living. i was flailing in all directions needing some containment. needing blankets to hold me together. so i learned. i've fought for every inch that is me today. i've fought for every new sense of self, every inch that i've believed for a second that it was okay to have good things in my life. i don't know what is just some pattern burned into my skin, this pattern of falling apart so that i could get love. so that i can be irresponsible for my life. so that i don't ever have to grow up, be accountable. so that all i have to worry about is pummeling to the center of the spin. falling.

i've had tastes of differentiation. of my truth. and it's also clouded with the burning sensation that i like to drink. i like to wisk away. i like to feel the rebellious burning rise up and act out. i like to tear through it. i like to lose myself. i like the joy. the floating. i like the chase. i like leaving. and the next morning, every next morning i ask why. i ask myself why i had to go there and now feel like this. i have to sacrifice my entire day for repair. and at night, it's all amusing to think of a hangover, like i'm in some movie where the girl wears dark glasses, is chided by friends the next day as she inhales coffee to sooth her. i feel in the moment of the night the sensation that i accept i might be a problem and i just relish and sink back and succomb wildly and joyously. thinking i might escape the next day.

i'm sick of loosing my next days. i'm on the cusp of going out tonight. to a great event. a private party for a musician. and i want to let it go. i want to drink. i want to have a few. then i'll have to drive back across town as always and feel the guilt and worry. but tomorrow. what about my tomorrows? i was so isolated and tight before, but now i feel muddied by the option. the temptation and the salacious, delicious fufillment i get.

i won't admit defeat. i do not think that is it true for me that there is some extreme and that there is some dramatic climax where i go crawling to a help program and enter the blanket and get told how to live. i want middle ground. but on the cusp of a night the want for the fun, the high, the elation, the lifting is the pumping in my cheast, the taste in my mouth, the twist in my eye, the secretive smile on my lips.

i want to balance this for what is right for me. i want to want to love myself more than i want to live on the edge of the extremes that i've been used to for so long. i want to just be. i don't want to be some big story of the girl that tore herself down. or died.

i had to be truthful. i feel embarrassed. like everyone is watching me,judging that i have a problem as i chronicle my nights. as i write through hangovers. all the nights slightly inebriated or nearing complete abandon.

i want us all to help me just let the pendulum swing into the middle. i've never lived in the middle. that is not what my body knows. my body knows the violent extremes of passion and screaming and dead silence and ferocity. my body knows of rebellion now. of wrecklessness.

i want to swing delicately into my authentic middle.

please don't judge me or say i have a problem. there's this craving to have someone care, in that way, to have someone "stop" me. mom, stop me from leaving. stop me from going to dads.

and there's that part of me that can't be defeated and refuses to have someone claim it, place words and notions over me. don't tell me. don't infer. don't hint. don't suggest.

there has always been this part of me, where i've romanticized the root of me errupting into this wild, disasterous drunk, raging, flailing until someone stops me. denying it against everything they say. because that will feel like love. that will be those satisfying moments where i get to push away as others pull in. pull me in. i was always pushing my mom away to test for an ounce of love. it was the only way i could wake her up long enough to feel touched by her. to feel alive. i have this fantasy of burning down in a rage, driving drunk, drinking all night alone. others getting hints of the secrets living inside. the secrets i've siphoned gently off from everyone, protected. just so that i can feel that final moment of love.

there is that other part that wants to survive, wants to break free, wants to be brand new. doesn't want to depend. wants to succeed. wants my business. wants my independence. wants all my dreams that are sometimes barely breathable.

so tonight. again. i'm faced with the sensation of wanting to run the energy out. wanting to burn something down. wanting to get vicious. and there's this taste of tomorrow in my thinking and this logic of only having two drinks. the difference between the dark veil of night and the blazing light of day.