Last year a good octogenarian friend of mine took a fall. He bore the impact on his shoulder and arm. The arm ended up in a sling and my friend got some new meds.
I was worried and I called a bit more than usual. To my surprise he was more conversational, more lucid, quicker than he'd been in years. The major difference was that he'd stopped drinking for the meds.
Lately I've been down. There are logical reasons, work, the economy, New Jersey, American foreign policy, weight gain. But those alone shouldn't have the gravitas to trump what there is to feel joy and hope about. L. & I have a new son who's healthy, who's bright-eyed and loving, whose life opens wider every hour. We're both employed and we live within our means. The world brims with music, movies, and books. We have friends who love us. We have a furry fat grey cat who's stopped trying to kill us. We have each other.
When I say I've been down I mean I'm losing my shit and for the past few years it's gotten worse. I wake up feeling slow and without control. I become overwhelmed by basic tasks. I wade through it restless and hyper-caffeinated. I can't look people in the eye or even look near their faces. I burrow in lame tasks. I feel suicidal urges that I sublimate into slow ways to achieve the same end. All the sugar I can eat, red meat, fried food, diet soda, cup after cup of coffee. And it never feels time to reach out. Emails from people I love I've been afraid to answer for months.
All ways to be unconscious, secret ways to disappear, and all that before the sun went down. By night I'd drink. For a while I thought the drinking was the natural salve for all the craziness, something to cut the edge from it and bring me a bit closer to calm. But I started to wonder if drinking were the cause of some of it. At the very least, if drinking were amplifying my special place on the DSM-IV.
In a real Lenten move I've given up drinking for 100 days. It's been two weeks, and I feel better every day.
I took a long walk this morning first thing. Gray light by the pond, the way drops of water collect in rhythmic full beads along branchlets. Headphones mixing on the fly with birdsong in loose sync. Walking fast, picking up litter as I went.
