[any man would be lucky to be in your bed]

It began this way: a simple exchange of two people who needed the joy of another person's appreciation and nothing more. It ended after a couple years with a million words between us, but we both knew all along that we weren't the one for each other, just the person we needed right then. I taught him that he could be loved. He taught me how to relax.

When I lost those words to a careless oversight, I figured, that is okay, I don't need to see them again. No need to retrace the steps of our dance, the movements ingrained in my heart, the moments we shared still erupt in my mind periodically. He was that huge in my life, a cosmic occurrence; I held the moon sometimes in my hands is what it felt like to go up those winding wooden stairs to his place, to sit in his room and let him show me his stuff, to exist with him.

I had to let him go.

It is hard to let someone go. Being in a relationship is a strange magic, a walking of so many lines, a crossing of the street for the other person, even when you like your side just fine. It is even stranger when the person pushes you away and pulls you toward them (yes, love is sometimes loving the unloved, love is sometimes braving the balance of yin and yang, he would not have been so alluring with all cheerful encouragements, but he never lied about the rest of it, that it wasn't me and he couldn't make any promises, I wouldn't listen.)

When I heard about them, I had to chuckle; I was part of the reason they became one, I was partly responsible for opening their eyes to each other, which I don't resent, somehow, because I see that they are good together.

Every so often, in our innocuous attempt to stay in touch, that thrill we shared in each other despite our best judgment prevails and we are buoyant and delighted. He worries about it, and wipes things away. I understand. I know what it looks like to everyone and I know it is hard to explain that just because you find someone attractive doesn't mean you want to steal them away.

He hated doing that to me and I would hate to do it to him.

So it was with a strong note of caution in my mind and a careful tone in my words that I responded to him, to that breach in our world, despite the circumstances (he was simply making sure I got what I paid for), because that is how it began, oh so long ago, and I don't want it to begin again.

missives from the drunk tank

I've spent the last two weeks mostly sober (I fell for the "just one," joke for like the thousandth time last Saturday afternoon and plunged into daytime drinking on the patio at the dirty bird, which was quite pleasant and lovely until three hours later when I was drunk and hungry from not eating lunch and received an instant hangover; wallop!).

Imagine that you spent your life feeling personally assaulted by everything unkind people did (such as a piece of litter, a cigarette butt on the beach, a plastic bag stuck on the limbs of a tree) and there was a solution to your extreme sensitivity, but in solving it with alcohol and wasting time with people and trying to search for someone who understood exactly what you meant to the depth that you meant it, you made yourself numb to the world at large. Ah, alcohol. How does that saying go? The solution to and cause of all of life's problems.

I never liked drinking much. It took me a long time to warm up to the idea. I was a fairly active teetotaler until I was twenty-six or so, even back then it took a while for me to adjust to a houseful of heavy drinkers. I practiced drinking in moderation. If I wasn't hanging out with him [the love of my lifetime] I didn't drink at all. It was under the guidance of his functioning alcoholism that I learned to drink to the point of puking (the night I woke up in a pond of my own red-from-cranberry-juice vomit was particularly frightening; I could have died! from drinking!), drinking to excess and sleeping until absolutely necessary to roll out of bed and get to work.

I remember the day I realized that he had a problem, it was a day I worked early at the cafe and arrived home to him, on his day off, in his robe, smoking cigarettes and drinking a strong mixed cocktail at noon, like it was no big deal. And I better not make a big deal out it, I could tell. And I began to notice the first thing he wanted after work or after anything was a drink. Two to make him normal and cheerful, six to make him belligerent and mean, eight to make him pass out and forget the world.

I tried to keep up with him. I don't know why. I can romanticize it and say that it was because I loved him so completely I wanted to support him and be there for him, I wanted to know what he was experiencing, I wanted to understand him. I never did understand him. I tried.

I got sucked into the vacuum of daily binge drinking. It was very innocuous, you see, there was always something to celebrate or surrender to, and we never counted the days, it was just that day, getting through that day, we lived for that day, we survived that day. It always seemed like a surprise when another one began.

When we finally broke up, I noticed that I did not have the same thirst, especially not at home, alone, but I found cohorts who enjoyed drinking to the point of drunkenness to fill his space. Or they found me.

Because I am a big girl, I can drink a lot. And when I met them, I was still wound a bit too tight, still didn't trust them or anyone, so it took a lot for me to get drunk. Often, they would be wasted and I was just slightly tipsy. It was under their tutelage that I discovered drinking until blacking out. We spent several nights a week forgetting the world, reveling in each other's thoughts and ideas, and most importantly, drinking. The first time I blacked out, I'd passed out on someone's bed in someone's apartment. I remember being woken up to leave, but after that, I don't remember the elevator ride or walking the two blocks until I came out of it.

The next time was my birthday and it was a bad one; I drank to forget. We had a bottle of whiskey we drank outside the bar during cigarette breaks. I was holding my own and doing well until a friend who is the most boring man to talk to on earth showed up and I lost about two hours of time. There are pictures of me and I am smiling and interacting, but I don't remember any of it. I do remember stumbling out of the bar in the arms of my friends and sloshing into a cab.

These were the most damaging parts of my drinking career, despite the heavy drinking I did with him (he often passed out early into the evening, which means I would give up and drag myself to bed). With these cohorts, they never wanted to stop, because stopping meant facing the prospect of being alone with themselves and they had to drink until they were going to pass out so they wouldn't have to see that face.

So on top of being hungover, I began to spend my days sleep deprived as well. And, not to mention, I was drinking like a twenty something when I had just crossed the line of being a thirty something. Something had to give.

Except, then he came back into my life and it was like a dream.

So I drank again with him, this time more skilled at longer bouts of drinking, often out-drinking him and his friends, wanting more, being used to staying up late and drinking it all, until it was time for the bar to close and them to yell, get out! go home!

I tried to prove him wrong for a whole year and I drank myself into a stupor nearly every night of that year, barring nights with the kid (and still sometimes I drank around him or after he went to bed) and three weeks I spent in London. I drank to forget all the checks against me, I drank to forget all the laziness he exhibited and he did the same. Eventually, he drank himself into the arms of another woman.

After that shock, I kept up a pace of three times a week with the cohorts, some drinking at home by myself, finding it harder and harder to miss any more days of work or find any sympathy from my employers about my physical exhaustion. In short, I was a mess.

What saved me was moving away, our bar closing and one of my cohorts moving on to other people, and then I only had my buddy to contend with, who could still wile me into "just one more" more times than I can count. I feel some strange allegiance to him; as well as being the last one standing and knowing how everything ended, knowing the ending seemed very important then. Lately, he has moved on to being drinking buddies with someone else and I see that it's possible that I might not be one of those people who drinks to get drunk, I could actually have a normal and healthy drinking habit, for the pleasure of it and not the head bashing, brain cell murdering numbness.