Deerlands

Honestly, I was a little scared to be
back up the mountain. Scared because
of what this place means to me,
and my life’s history: beautiful
and frightening and foreign
— but mostly beautiful, mostly warm,
mostly good.

And this trip has been exhausting and exhilarating —
spiritually, emotionally, intellectually, but
I would be hard pressed to name another
time and place in my life when
I felt quite so absolutely seen and honestly loved.

Friday night, after a student performance,
my friends and I went for a bite to eat.

The waiter was an earnest, puppyish young man
(likely an NAU kid), and he told me
they didn’t have iced tea.
They also didn’t have
diet soda.
“So just water?” I said.

Chad asked the waiter if he could fix me something “nice” —
i.e. tasty — that was non-alcoholic, and as my friend made this request
on my behalf, there was a hit of recognition on the waiter’s face. Maybe
he had a recovering alcoholic relative or friend, and he truly registered why my friends and I were being so insistent that I be served a non-alcoholic drink that was slightly better than “water.” Once he implicitly understood why
I was being so fussy he cheerily offered to make me a soda water with cranberry juice and lime.

A few minutes later, a different waiter comes by,
drops a beer in front of one friend,
Sake in front of my other friend (she’d ordered wine),
and a small drink in front of me.
Cranberry, for sure, but
there was something about the hue of the drink
that seemed boozy, and I say this as a true alcoholic who
can tell a glass full of vodka from a glass of water on sight.

I slid my drink across the table to my friend,
like Henry VIII having some peasant,
taste test his food to check for poison:
“Please taste this and tell me
if there’s alcohol in it.”

See, here’s the thing:
I cannot have one drink.
Not a sip.
For me, to drink is to die:
spiritually, physically, intellectually.
And I cannot,
I simply cannot, stop
my alcoholic brain from wanting more if
I taste any at all.
In my world, there is no such thing as “one drink,”
and there’s something about my “variety” of alcoholism
that feels primal, old, rooted in my genes:
an intractable, ancestral darkness
that is momentarily alleviated
and perpetually worsened by
alcohol.

If I’m being honest with you, reader,
drinking was not
always terrible. Some really happy,
fun (and funny) memories
from my youth and adult life
involved ridiculous amounts
of alcohol.
I mean, I really don’t think we would have burned that couch
on the beach were it not for Captain Morgan —
and the couch burning is a good fuckin’ story that I’ll tell you
some other time.

This was true for me. Beginning around age 19, I totally tossed my youth into the cosmic toilet. Or perhaps the universe tossed my youth in the toilet on my behalf. I’ll never know.

I bonded with many dear friends over beer, wine, gin & tonics, Maker’s Mark, margaritas, tequila shots, martinis in Chicago, Flagstaff, and Milwaukee bars.

What I mean, is that just like any former lover, all my memories with alcohol were not “awful.”

Sometimes, alcohol was really fucking fun.
And I am envious of Actual Adults
who can drink in a non-destructive manner.
I would be lying if I told you
I never miss the taste of beer,
or the foggy burn of whiskey at the back
of my throat: the first warm swallow
of my own undoing.

At the restaurant, Betsy took one sip of the suspect drink,
I had moved in her direction and said, “Yup.
There’s definitely alcohol in that.”

Close call.

“Trust your fuckin gut”
for the win.

The puppy waiter
was so sorry. He corrected the error.
My friend got her wine.
I got my soda water.
The music was too loud.
I wrapped up day 70 of my Active Sobriety.*

*Active Sobriety is a term I use to distinguish my current sobriety from the many times I attempted to “quit drinking” in the past. Some people can “just stop” drinking. I cannot. I need rules. I need homework. I need a program. So I have the altruism of AA. For that, I am beyond grateful. My alcoholism is not something I could have tackled alone. Asking for help, asking for what I need, does not come naturally to me. I do not think these things come naturally to any woman in a patriarchal society which is to say these things — asking for help, what we need — do not come naturally to any woman because we live in a world that disabuses us, from the day of our girl-child birth, of any illusion
that this world gives one single fuck about our “lady feelings”/needs. On the contrary, the world tells girls and women, “fuck your feelings.”

The Onion has been a constant in my ability to laugh at /process the darkness in this world.

See here’s the other piece.
Not only am I a recovering alcoholic,
but not unlike most other alcoholics,
I’m also a trauma survivor who carries around
a preponderance of anxiety and depression
more than perhaps is “typical” for humans
spared of acute trauma.
And trauma notwithstanding,
I come honestly by my mental health issues:
hundreds and hundreds of years of anxious people
(who were probably also alcoholic) led to this iteration
of the brain between my ears.

Is anyone’s brain easy to inhabit?
Certainly not.
Each person has their madness or madnesses;
their malady or maladies. And we all, every one,
just by virtue of being human have our share
of pain.

Prom in a Pandemic. In the middle of this circle, I dance with my 2021 Prom Date, Betsy.

Last night, totally spur of the moment,
Betsy and I decided to dress up and go to prom.
I wore a dress for the first time in well over a decade.
I could hardly recognize myself.
At one point, in Betsy’s bathroom, applying eye makeup,
I turned to Betsy and said, astonished, “I’m quite pretty.”
“You are beautiful,” Betsy said. See, these days,
whenever I have a choice, these are the people I choose:
those who are gentle with my heart, who understand that,
right now, I am, we are, so fucking fragile.

So we crashed prom. Hung out with the kids for about an hour or so.
Danced, laughed and took our leave.

I went to both my junior and senior proms in 1993 & 1994, respectively.
No me gusta. Too much drama — exterior and interior. So last night, with the help of Betsy’s wig, costume, and makeup collection, I dressed myself as I might have for prom in 1994 — had I the sort of “presentation” choices then that I have now.

I mean . . . yeah, this was a “one time” deal.

One of my favorite things about sobriety is this:
every morning, even the bad mornings, are pretty fucking good.
I open my eyes, feeling clear and mostly content, no pain in my body
or my soul, and am able to move about my day confidently, comfortably, because my nightmare of alcoholism is over. The spell has been broken.

I love morning.

I love waking up feeling strong and clear.

I did not know I could live this way and be “okay.”
I did not know I could find anything, outside of a bottle, that would quiet my very loud, very intense thoughts and feelings. I did not know that I could, through sobriety, learn how to channel my intensity into projects, activities, and conversations that serve me first. It sounds awful, but until about 72 days ago, I was careening through my life carelessly. I did not know my own worth, and I did not fully believe I was worth saving. By the grace of God (which is not a man, not a woman, not human, not flora nor fauna), I am alive.

I know my limits.

Seventy-two days ago?
I had zero limits.
Zero boundaries.

I used to say that my “classroom personae” was the “best version” of myself.
Now?
I am always the “best version” of myself. Not just in the classroom. I am the best version of myself for myself and for the people I love — be they friend, relative, student, or spouse. And I say this in no way to diminish the significance of advancements in cancer treatment on my quality of life, but Alcoholics Anonymous was the best fucking thing that ever happened to me.
True story.

This morning, after breakfast, my friend’s son diverted our attention from scrambled eggs to a young deer drinking from the bird fountain near the deck.
Deer in Arizona look (and behave) quite differently from deer in the midwest. The deer out here seem a little “sharper,” a little more scrappy,
a little less delicate than the Bambi’s of my youth. The deer in Arizona
look like they could kick your ass whereas the deer in Illinois look like
they might make a really cute, stupidly nervous, pet.

Those who know me well know I have a thing for deer.
I love them.
Kangaroos are scary, and hippos are scary, but
deer are so quiet and gentle (at least in my experience) and for me
they are so beautiful and not even a little bit scary.

When I see deer in Arizona, I always think of my states of origin: Illinois, Iowa, Wisconsin. Deerlands. Betsy, an easterner, and I both agreed this morning that midwest and east coast deer are infinitely dumber than deer in the southwest. All things, even people, need to be a little sharper and wiser
to really thrive out here with the big mountains.

I wrote for a while this morning, and when I emerged from my guest room,
my friend Mike was sitting at the kitchen counter laughing and talking with Betsy and Chad, and it felt so good to emerge from a room alone and have them there, in real life, snacking and chatting, being our singularly weird selves together.