Misty and cold again, housemate left at 5am to travel over the mountains to see her patients. I took a long bath with foamy bubbles and a book. The oversized dog had an abandonment crisis and howled outside the bathroom door until I gave up and went out to reassure him.
Dog: The Biscuit Queen has left the building! Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone, Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone! She’s in there alone with only soap for company! The Dog is an orphan without a biscuit for comfort! The stars are not wanted now: put out every one; Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun. Somebody come to the aid of the quick brown dog!
Mary (hair dripping and wrapped in towel): Why are you howling like that, you silly bloody animal!Be quiet, or I am going to put you out in the garden.
Dog: Not even a line of poetry? My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song; I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.
A funny and revealing conversation last night with an old friend who knew me as well as anyone could know me in my 30s. She said as we had coffee and shortbread at the kitchen table: ‘You were more blurry then, a bit pathetic. Drifting through life. Now you have this fuck-offness.’
Not a tactful friend, but that is accurate enough, that is what I was like. I wanted life with its sharp edges and pinpricks to go away. I liked to drink away the long afternoons and evenings, feel the most pressing of concerns become inconsequential and float off down river. Day after day, life dissolved into hours of solitary drinking. I wanted life to go away — and it did. Every now and again I’d wake up in a cold sweat late at night, heart thudding, filled with dread and terror, wonder what was happening to my life, so promising, so uneventful, draining away down the sinkhole. Those painful moments of realising something is terribly wrong are precious and rare, opportunities to save what is left of our allotted time.
And assertiveness (fuck-offness), clarity, hard-headedness, directness do come with sobriety and change, It’s not so much about feeling happy or peaceful or sad as it is about decision-making and acting and discernment — what to do next, what might be the right thing, what will strengthen relationship, what will get money into that bank account, how to earn a living in ethical and creative ways. Choices and actions, new habits, new understandings leading to new behaviours.
And the inspirations of those who lived life life to the full. I am reading poet and translator David Harsent on the Greek poet Yannos Ritsos:
This extraordinary productivity must, I think, be seen as heroic given that it was achieved in the face of personal tragedy, persistent ill health and systematic persecution: first by the Metaxas regime, when Ritsos’s books were burned; next during the Greek civil war, when his allegiance to communism led to internment; and then by the Papadopoulos military dictatorship, when he was again imprisoned, almost certainly tortured, and subsequently sent to island prison camps. During his time there he continued to write, even though writing was a proscribed activity. He would put the poems into tin cans and bury them around the compound.
Clay: 37
Yannis Ritsos
Metal on metal
hammer on anvil
wheel on rail.
In between each clang
is a bird
not yet killed
coming from the other side.
Oh, love your definition of assertiveness, aka fuck-offness. I feel that way after the trauma of the last decade. It was an earth shaking and life changing time for me…and I had to write about it because it stayed with me for so long. I’m a different person, learning to live a new life (new choices, actions, and habits). Only someone who knows us very well sees these changes. I have a few close friends who knew me then, and know me now, and understand the magnitude of the inner transformation.
Your ability to express the universal sameness and differences of our very souls is such an amazing gift, Mary.
Thanks so much Lou — and the more I read you, the more I glimpse the magnitude of your transformation. There’s no going back, the change is so definite.
There is no one in my new home who has ever seen me drunk. Coworkers will see a segment on the television at work about an addict and tsk tsk in pity and gasp in horror at the train crash that is their lives. They have no idea that they work daily by the side of a former train wreck.
The Chef gifted GCP with a large bag of ham bones from the restaurant last night and now that dog has no use for me. He will decide I am worthwhile again once the bones are either picked dry or buried.
Here’s to fuck-offness….
I deal with publishers, editors and other writers who talk about alcoholic train smashes the same way Kristin. Sometimes I try to correct the misunderstandings about alcoholism, but often I just let it go. If they ever need to know more, I would be there to share my story.
Oh and that spoilt giant cow puppy!
I wish I could talk to someone who knew me before I got sober. It would be wonderful. I only know people now who assume I am always fine and no one should ever worry about me. HA!
Some of those friends now might need to know about the vulnerability perhaps and to have you share more about that, Mary Christine? My relationships back in the bad old days were turbulent and superficial because I was hiding, ducking, diving, a stranger to myself as well as others. It isn’t possible to really get close to an active alcoholic.
Amazing poem.
Having clarity about the next right thing is a very empowering experience, isn’t it? Another reason to celebrate where you are today.
Thanks so much Allyson — my emails keep bouncing back from you — would you try this email? mla5073atyahoo.com?
@Mary Christine my husband of twenty-five years watched me drink and do my drugging and sowing oats from the sidelines, wondering if I would ever get sober. Well, I did and he came calling a year later after being sure I was serious about sobriety, education and motherhood. He reminds me of what could have been just by his quiet presence in my ordered life. It is very handy to have someone around who remembers with me.
A relationship through thick and thin Lynda — he sounds a remarkable man to have waited for you so calmly.
All hail to the Biscuit Queen! Such a very literate dog as well, so dramatic!
And let’s hear it for fuck-offness. Although never an alcoholic, I too was blurry, pathetic and drifting, until very recently, day after day dissolved in drama, mostly other people’s. I know all too well that very feeling of waking up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat, that dreadful moment of clarity, that sense of life getting away from me. Feeling much more hard-headed now, more present and productive. I never thought I could. But after all, it is just a habit. Something you do one day at a time. Some days are better than others.
I adore that dog, Invisigal.
And I hear you — some days are just better than others and I think we stop feeling that each day should be like that.
I love your description of life swirling down the drain, solitude and thinking. I am all too familiar!
Also, fyi, new blog. Carrots was clearly still reading the old one.
Thanks for these words: “Those painful moments of realising something is terribly wrong are opportunities to save what is left of our allotted time”. They’ve become my new refrigerator inspiration.
My sharp edges have been softened and my ego has been placed in perspective now–not living with false bravado, but actually taking off the mask that I hoped would fool everyone into thinking that I was fine. I was actually not fine but messed up because of alcoholism. I remember being so far down that there was no where to go but up. Thankfully, I got some help.