Nothingness

I think it’s kind of ironic that I have every one of my drunken stupors seared into my memory.  Maybe not every detail of the actual stupor but certainly the details of the following day(s).  Every one.  From puking at frat parties to disappearing into oblivion for hours.  There are too many incidents to count and they’d just be the same-thing-different-day so I won’t bore you.  How was that fun?

After flunking out of college I spent my twenties working for a furniture store, learning how to use my “sparkling” personality to sell things.  And I got married.  He was a very nice guy.  Met him at the bar I worked at.  He was responsible, owned a house when he was 18, had a good education, and the perfect person to take care of me.  And he drank.  The marriage only lasted two years.  I should have known something was up when I cried like a baby on my honeymoon–for hours.  One time, we went on a trip to montreal and got so wasted we physically attacked each other–not in a good, fun, sexy way but in a I want to make you bleed way.  It was ugly.  After that night, I swore I’d never drink again.  That lasted about a week.  Looking back, the relationship was filled with events like that.  Total drunken messes.  Mostly me.  The marriage ended and I thought my parents were going to disown me.  They LOVED him.  He was their Knight in Shining Armor.  He would be the one to save their daughter from herself.

I always had this feeling that although my parents loved me, they were a little skeptical of my real genes.  Like, anything great I’d do they were proud I was their daughter but my fuck ups meant I didn’t come from them.  I lied and told them the marriage ended because he was addicted to gambling.  Which I suspect he was.  But more so, I was addicted to alcohol and was spiraling down a very dark hole but that thought NEVER occurred to me.  It was him.  Not me.

I continued to drink through my twenties, dabbled in cocaine, and lied to myself and everyone around me.  I was deathly afraid of something.  I did not know what.  I had no sense of who I was.  I had spent my entire life trying to be someone else for my parents, my friends, my co-workers.  I remember waking up one day not being able to get out of bed.  The doorbell rang and I couldn’t even open it.  I spent the entire day in bed crying.  I had no identity at all.  I was a shell of a human being and the shell was filled with black, empty space.  I was nothing.

Author: soberyoginow

I am a 56 year old yoga instructor who chooses not to drink alcohol any more. View all posts by soberyoginow