Winter Yacht Club

soberly aware

Being sober is strange. I hadn't realized how much I liked being hungover, slightly dopey, slightly indifferent to the world at large. I would leave my apartment, miss the bus, shrug my shoulders and simply wait for the next one while reading a book. I would have more time to read! Or more time to watch people wander past my view. Or less time at work.

I think for the last two years or so I have been drinking at least every night of the week with perhaps three months or so of random days that I have not. That's a really long time. And of course, I never just had one, or two, but often six or seven or more. Some of the best times I've had in the last couple years were centered around alcohol, the consumption of it, and whoever happened to be around.

Being groggy the next day, being half unaware, being out of it meant I never had to listen very hard to anyone, I never had to really care about anyone because half the time I was too worried about getting food in my system or trying not to puke up the booze from the night before.

Everyone has an opinion. It's pretty rare that my opinion and someone else's actually matches, which means I often have to either swallow my opinion like a bitter pill while the other person goes on and on about what they believe they are right about. Oftentimes they are trying to convince me that I don't know what's best for myself. Or tell me how I'm feeling about something.

Sometimes I value these opinions, especially when I solicit them, but for the most part, being sober has made me aware of just how much people talk and how little I listened.

give me a break.

It's funny. The sight of me bragging, really truly bragging about staying up until dawn, drinking myself into a drunken stupor, smoking so many cigarettes that just the sight of one the next day makes me want to vomit, which happened three times last week in comparison to this week, where I've completely stopped all of my bad vices in an effort to cleanse myself and taking up the lemonade diet once again (for the previous bout two years ago, see these entries) vying for the outcome of a better body and better health.

No one batted an eye, looked twice or cluck clucked at my drunken verve. No one looked concerned or made fun of my overdoing it with drinking and going out. Why then would my friends, the people who love me, the people who supposedly care for me balk at the idea that I'm doing a cleanse that requires me not to do any of those things that were literally torturing my body?

I would like to imagine that my feathers just don't match everyone else's when I decide to go on an extreme diet, and it makes everyone else feel a little guilty about their own hedonistic ways: ice cream for breakfast, a pack of cigs a day, that extra serving of dinner, the visit to the bar for "just one" that becomes a ten hour binge of drinking and drugs.

So I say to them, fuck you. I don't give a shit about your fucking concern.

I've always been of the mind that I know what's best for me. I'm the one that has to lug this fat carcass around. I'm the one that has to look in the mirror at myself every day. I'm the one that has to feel the impact of long nights of drinking and smoking and lack of sleep.

What I'm always wondering is are people really for me or are they really for what I make them feel? I feel like I might get some answers regarding that over the next few weeks as I attempt to restore myself to a fully functional human being again. I have been spending more time at home, where I'd normally be at the bar. And it's been interesting to notice who seeks me out even though I cannot eat or drink with them.

I understand that food is everywhere. We need it to survive, to be, to live. What I think this diet forces me to see is how much it runs my life, how much it runs everyone's life without even the slightest realization. People eat everywhere, the remains of their on the go lifestyle are littered on the streets, crunching chips on the bus, organizing friendships around food. I feel apart and above all that right now and it feels like the worst part of this. I miss my friends. I miss hanging out with them and figuring out which cuisine we haven't had in a while. But I also know there will be many more days of eating in my life, so to sacrifice a couple weeks of them isn't the end of the world.

by the way

He finally was able to discuss things with me, moving out of the category of lame jerk and into the realm of fucked up by relationships more brutal than I can imagine, so I'm glad we talked about it, I'm glad we were able to look at it all and see that what we were going to miss out on in each other was the best of what we had to offer, but what we were afraid of was just too big.

coming to my senses

Last night I put things back to normal, declaring to him that I did not want to care about him anymore and that I wished nothing had happened between us. He had no objections to this rather melodramatic outcry, and I expected nothing. My life was just fine before he tumbled into it, the drunken ambusher, him. I had no hopes for the future, no ideas of children and family, nothing beyond making it through the end of the day.

The whole thing was doomed from the beginning anyhow. I could never imagine us actually being together, in the life I have now. My friends don't really like him because he took home two of them over the last couple years. There was always the potential for awkwardness, if we happened to encounter anyone else, and he was not responsible enough to just face the music, he was always trying to duck any weirdness. He needed way too many reassurances for someone who is fairly successful in his professional life and is over ten years older than me. And most importantly, it was not a given that he actually liked me.

I will give him credit for not totally disappearing. He twice ignored me for a day or two, but he always sauntered back in with an innocent sounding, "What?" Given that everyone accuses him of pulling the disappearing act (because he always does it) I guess I consider myself somewhat special.

More than anything, I'm just tired of always holding up more than my end. I'm tired of explaining myself or even needing to when it comes to guys. I'm tired of chasing them, of wanting them, of needing them. Short of joining a convent, I just need a break from them all. So it's goodbye to him, the drunken ambusher. Goodbye to the quiet french major (who I have not seen or heard from in more than six weeks).

I may resent always being the single person at the table these days, but there have been more days that I wasn't single and longed to be.

new phone

I finally got a new phone. I basically haven't had a phone since New Year's Day when I observed with some panic that my phone stopped working after taking a dunking in the toilet during a particularly reckless night of cele-libations on New Year's Eve ($2 drink parties are always hazardous to my health and well being). Of course, it is no surprise that it was him I was hoping to hear from, and him that drove me to constantly have my phone in my hand that night.

My old phone was one of the remaining elements of my ex boyfriend that lingered as a constant reminder of what had been. He bought it for my birthday to rid me of the ancient (or as I called it, "vintage") Nokia phone that was my first cell. The poor thing was held together by hope and a prayer. If it happened to fall, it would do a Matrix style shattering that involved five pieces of the phone separating into a line on the floor. I could scoop them all up, lay them on top of each other; battery cover, battery, guts of the phone, rubber number key, front cover and by some miracle the phone would be just fine. It still works and I had been reluctant to send it back to Sprint, for the just in case scenario.

It seems strange that a phone could be some barometer of my slow, steady crawl into adulthood, but I noticed that I did not want to reinstate my old Nokia, that I absolutely had to have a new phone. I had twenty bucks to my name the day I realized this, so I waited patiently for the money from my many jobs to come in and bought my new phone. I suppose the one thing I lacked in this process was the search for a cheaper alternative, but it didn't really matter to me. The time I would have spent trying to find something fifty to seventy dollars cheaper wasn't worth it to me. I could have bought a cheaper phone at the store, but I wanted a camera, which is the one thing that makes my Nokia phone useless to me. I did it right, is how I put it to my friends. This phone will last as long as it will and then it will be a new phone sometime in the near future, if my track record is any indication.

Given that I rarely purchase new things for myself (mostly shoes, a pair of jeans here and there, and the occasional item on sale at Urban Outfitters) I think it is fine that I spent nearly two hundred bucks on a phone. Besides, maybe that's the consequence I needed to keep my phone in my purse where it belongs and not in my hand poised to take a dive into the toilet.

flourescence

It was bound to happen. After a month of being in such close proximity to his apartment I've had to resist the urge to become a stalker, stop scanning every face on the block, and try to pretend I'd imagined the whole thing, I bumped into The Drunken Ambusher at the grocery store.

By some coincidence, we were both headed to the same place at the same time. I was with my friend Val whose food prediclictons are too powerful to ignore and she wanted ice cream. I headed to get some salad. If I'd ignored that urge I wouldn't have seen him at all.

I said hello and he turned. He offered his arms in a wide embrace which I fell into with great relief. It was awkward after that somehow, because my brain would not work. I stammered and muttered and drifted away. He did not detain me.

My brain was distracted by his obvious oldness in the glare of the flourescent lighting. Most of what's left of his hair is gray. His skin seemed pallid and wrinkled heavily. His posture was stooped and the weight he claimed to have put on seemed more evident. I was struck by the sheen of my thoughts this past month was not only not true, it was just the fantasy, the booze, the lie I wanted to believe.

Suddenly, my urgency to capture his heart has dwindled and I'm not fretting about his abscences from my world. I'm embarassed that once again I've let myself get swindled; by myself.

mercurial

Every day yields a different direction. Some days we're up. Some days we're down.

I don't know what's going on and that makes all the difference. There's no tangible ground for me to stand on.

When he needs me, I'm there, telling him what he wants to hear. When I need him, he's absent, a mystery, a figure of my imagination. Everyone has a different opinion, everyone thinks they know what's best. I'm glad for that, because I have no idea what to think.

To her, the seat stealer, he is clearly interested in me. In fact, the only communication they've supposedly had was about me.

To my best girl friend, he is a member of the String Along Gang. He simply likes the attention of my attraction, of knowing there's someone out there pining for him, but he has no intentions of actually making us an "us."

To my best guy friend, I'm the problem, not patient enough, not relaxed enough, too pushy.

All I know is that when it's good, it's like electricity is running through me, I smile for no apparent reason, and I feel alive.

It's been nearly a month since he ambushed me and it looks like that may have just been a random thing that will never happen again. So once again I've leaned on a seemingly fantastic guy who is just a cardboard cutout and I've fallen.