Comfortably Numb

Seattle, October 2, 2012

It almost happened without me realizing it.

I'd always despised it in other people, drinking when they were upset, or bored, or alone. I had never been one of those people. I never drank by myself. I never followed the phrase, "God, I could use a drink," by actually drinking. I'd say it as a joke, then quickly dismiss it as such. Many evenings, Peter would open a bottle of wine, and I'd drink a Coke instead of having a glass with him, to quietly prove to myself that it was a choice, that it was always a choice.

"It's a false comfort. Whatever's wrong is still going to be wrong in the morning. You deal with it or you don't, but getting shit-faced isn't going to magically set everything right." I tried to drink myself to sleep the night that Molly was killed, but, in truth, I only got through a beer and a half before stopping myself. "It's not going to help. I'm just going to wake up in a few hours and be hung over as well as horrified. I need to feel this."

But something in me cracked last year, after losing Mol, and Uncle Warbucks dying, and the stress of being awakened at 3:00 almost every morning for work, and the aftermath of what I refer to as "The Montebello Incident." It was a helluva summer, and I dealt with it on my own as best I could, given that I couldn't talk to Doc about any of it, because, as everyone saw coming months before I did, Doc and Peter had started dating.  By the time October rolled around, they were in the middle of a long, romantic trip across the south of France.

Sitting in the hotel bar in Seattle while Hardt attended several days of conferences, I quickly became very comfortable with drinking by myself. I'd drink waiting for him to finish for the day, and we'd have a drink before falling into bed, asleep before we could even say goodnight to each other. I'd wake up at three in the morning, work for an hour or two to fix whatever had broken, take a nap, get up after Hardt had left for the morning session, and start over again. I drank because I was stressed, because I was bored, and because I was all alone and far from home.

That particular morning, I took my computer down to the restaurant with me, because I had to do yet another writeup of the Montebello Incident. ("We were sitting at a table in the hotel lobby, and he suddenly reached across the table and asked if he could kiss me. When I told him no, he did it anyway. Yes, it made me uncomfortable. No, I didn't tell anyone right away, because we had work to do, and I needed him there to do it, and I'm a professional.") I ordered a Bloody Mary, because it seemed like the thing to do. When it was finished before I'd completed my writeup, I ordered another one. I'd ordered the first one because I thought it would be a funny story - enjoying a drink that had so much garnish on it, including three olives and a couple of cocktail shrimp, that I could barely get a straw through it, while typing out the ridiculous encounter from a couple of weeks prior. One Bloody Mary made for a funny anecdote.  But there was no good reason for ordering two.

I don't remember if Hardt and I even saw each other that day. He might have gone to dinner with other members of his leadership class, while I sat in the bar and drank Salty Dogs and the beer pictured above. I know that I paid for all of them myself, because we were there on his company's dime, and I couldn't charge anything to the room. I could go back and look at my credit card statements, because everything I personally charged while we were up there was liquor, but there's no point. I know that it was a lot.

The next day, after downing several vodka martinis while Hardt grew increasingly distant, I fell apart completely. Total emotional breakdown that culminated in him telling me that I should take Ambien so that I could sleep, because I was "turning into a little crazy person."

"I'm not crazy!" I wailed. "I don't want to be crazy!"

He stood at the foot of the bed while I curled into an anguished ball, then walked away. There had been no comfort in the drinking, and now, frustrated and pissed off, he wasn't going to give me any, either. We broke up not long afterward, for a number of reasons, that day being a big one, at least for me. I was so ashamed of where I'd gone with it.

When I got home from Seattle and looked back at that trip, I was mortified. I hadn't done anything like that before, and I haven't done anything like it since. I have a full bar, thirteen cases of wine, and three kegs of beer in my house, but I rarely drink more than half a pint of ale a week. I don't even joke about "needing" one anymore.

 Comfort, No Joy

 

My mother is an alcoholic. For as long as I can remember, I've been disappointed by her unwillingness to acknowledge it, and her inability to do anything about it. My childhood friends tell stories about her drunken proclamations that they were like daughters to her, and they laugh when they tell the stories. I laugh along with them, although it isn't funny to me. They haven't been around it as adults. They haven't seen her get mean. The last time she got drunk in front of me was the last time that we spoke. It's been more than a year.

So much of my life has been spent trying to be different from her, trying to be what I think of as stronger. But I can see how it would be so easy to let go of the reins.

It almost happened without me realizing it. Almost.

Forty-Two

I turned forty-two on Monday.

To celebrate, I served up a plate of homemade mint chip ice cream for myself for dinner. I’d thrown a big party over the weekend, with Big Guy, The Engineer, Doc, Peter, my beloved Hardt and his boy Gothic, and many friends and neighbors filling my garage-turned-alehouse with laughter and energy, but now the party was over, and it was quiet. As I stood at my kitchen counter and ate that artistically arranged dessert, it occurred to me that this would be the first birthday in my life where I’d climb into a bed in an otherwise empty house, where I’d fall asleep alone.

I slid the Fostoria plate gently into the sink, then shuffled over to the sofa for what I hoped would be a mind-numbing night of television. It was too early to sleep, but I was done with anything more than that. It was warm, even at dusk, so I wasn’t able to convince Winston to climb onto the cushion next to me. There wasn’t so much as a second-rate Law and Order marathon to be found. I stared at the DVR recordings list until the cable box screensaver came on.

Hardt had called earlier, just before heading out to buy groceries for the perpetually hungry Gothic. I chatted with him for a few minutes, doing what a lifetime of experience and habit had trained me to do. I listened and laughed as he told me about his hectic day. I love his stories, love listening to his voice. It wasn't hard to pretend to be happy, because I was only halfway pretending.

At the same time, I had a conversation with him entirely in my own head, where we decided that he was busy that night and shouldn’t have to worry about me. “You have to get back from the store and cook dinner, then get Gothic ready for work in the morning, and get to sleep yourself, because you must be exhausted from having to manage all of that. You sound tired. I’m having a rough time, but it’s just a day. I’m strong enough to take care of myself. It’s just a day.” He heard none of this second conversation, because, like I said, a lifetime of experience and habit has made me very, very skilled at keeping the parallel thread to myself.

When he called back a few hours later, I willed myself to unfix my gaze from the AT&T logo burning its way through my television screen. I put a smile on my face and some false brightness in my voice. "How was the store? What did you have for dinner? Oh, my day? You know, the usual. Not much going on. No, no cake. It's O.K. Nobody's in the office this week."

The veneer held up for a few minutes, until he asked how it felt to be forty-two. I pulled my phone away from my face, clapped my free hand against my mouth, and started crying.

“Sweetie?”

It’s almost 10:00. He has to get up so early tomorrow.

“Honey?”

And I’m being an asshole, because I had a great weekend, and all I am is let down because it’s over. It’s a normal feeling. I should suck it up. It’s what I do, after all, and I’m better at it than anyone I know.

“Baby?”

And this is a totally temporary thing, just until we can figure out how to get Winston and Gothic’s cats together so that we can all be in the same house, so next year won’t be like today, and birthdays are arbitrary anyway, because I should have been born two and a half months later than I was, so today doesn’t mean much, if I think about it. It’s just a day. It’s just a day.

“Suzanne? Are you O.K.?”

I’m proud of what I did next, because it’s something fairly new for me. I was open, unguarded. “...no...I’m alone, and I don't know why it's getting to me, but it is, and I feel stupid for it, but...”

The response wasn’t what the lifetime of experience and habit had trained me to expect. Hardt didn’t try to convince me that I shouldn’t feel down, or tell me how tired he was but that he’d try to see me the next day. He didn't remind me that I’d just hosted a big party two days earlier, or suggest that I go next door and see what Lazzie was doing. None of that happened.

“Come over,” he interjected.

“But I have this stuff I told them I'd do for work...”

“Do that, then come over.”

“...and you have to make lunches for tomorrow, and...don't you need to sleep?!”

“I can do that with you here, you know. Please finish your work, put on your driving glasses, and get in your car. You don't have to be alone. You don't ever have to be alone.”

My instinct was to tell him that just the offer had made me feel better, so I didn't need to put him out by going to his place. I would then hang up and cry myself to sleep, thus saving him from being burdened with me. It has never served me well, that self-sacrificing instinct, but it comes so easily.

I took a deep breath and said, "O.K., I'll just do this one thing and then I'll head your way. You're sure you'll be awake when I get there?" Giving him every possible out.

"I'll be up, baby. Drive safe."

When I got to the intersection near his house, it looked as though all of the lights were off. I almost turned back for home, six miles away, because I still thought I might be imposing. I inched forward a few feet, and the porch light, previously obstructed by a tree, shone into view. I started crying again, just a little bit.