The (partial) Truth

Friday I drank alcohol on medication and fell.

That’s the truth, but only part of a much larger story that I, myself, don’t fully understand yet.

Saturday I attended my first AA meeting.
That’s theoretically true, but also part of a longer story I neither understand nor care to broadcast to the world.

If you had asked me in the last few months about my own drinking habits, I would have said this: I drank a lot as a young woman, but don’t drink much anymore.
This would be a lie in that it’s not entirely true.

I drink less than I did as a young woman, but have continued to drink socially. Occasionally. Far, far less frequently after I married Sarah, and less still after
my metastatic cancer dx.

And I thought I had this piece easily under control, but I don’t.

I am wearing my alcoholism on my face, the mark of Cain, later the scar that will be the mark of the universe when something bigger than me slammed my face into the concrete floor of our Tucson home and said, “Wake up!”

I never was a day drinker.

For many years, I thought the only “real alcoholics” were the folks who drank all day, who went to work drunk, who drove drunk; and while those people are, like me, alcoholics, I never identified with that story because it wasn’t my story.

My story was binge drinking. Friday nights, Saturday nights, holiday nights that are hazy at best. Not all Fridays or Saturdays or holidays, but far too many to count.

This past Friday night was my bottom.

The author in her office. Monday, March 8th, Tucson. At the start of recovery’s hard work.

Saturday I attended my first AA meeting in earnest.

Other attempts had been mere gestures, lazy nods toward a halfhearted attempt to address what I was not ready to admit: that I am an alcoholic.

I hate that word. I hate identifying myself with that word, but it’s the only word we have in our language to describe my specific addiction.

Even with cancer, even on medications, even knowing what I know about adding even the smallest bit of alcohol to my body chemistry — I am unable to just stop on my own.

So.

This morning, before I turned my camera on for class, I told my seniors/juniors (many of whom I’ve had a students since they were in 7th grade), “I fell on good ol’ Tucson concrete flooring this weekend. My face looks bad, but I am okay. No one beat me up.”

I told them the truth.
I left parts out.
Flagstaff is a small community, and I am a woman who refuses to live in shame.
Folks will know.
I am tired of living with shame.
I’ve been ashamed.
I’ve been ashamed because I was born female in a world that holds girls and women in contempt.
I’ve been ashamed because I am gay in a world that often makes gay people (less now, thankfully) feel like freaks.
I’ve been ashamed because I wish to present on the more “masculine” end of the human spectrum — I don’t look like many women, and I certainly don’t look like many straight women. If I am being myself, I don’t seamlessly blend in to most settings. Just don’t.

Yesterday, out running errands with my wife, a big dude approached me and said, “Who hit your little self?” (For those who haven’t seen me in some time, I am very slight these days — just a little over 115 lbs in a 5’6 body.)

“No one hit me,” I told him. “I did this to myself.”

He seemed uncertain. “No guy hit you?”

“No sir,” I said. “I swear to you, no one put their hands on me.”

And it was nice to know that there are men in the world who are still out there caring about the physical well being of womenfolk — even the womenfolk like me who are CLEARLY not straight women.

The truth is this was one of the darkest weekends of my life.

Broken, soul-bleeding (and head wound literal bleeding), godawful.

Bleak. So, so bleak. Metastatic breast cancer. Finally admitting to myself that I’m a fucking alcoholic after all these years of denying the truth and the mortification of having to present myself to the world with my true “biggest problem” right there on my face.

For some reason, I thought cancer would make this problem go away. I’d been “so good” about eating better and losing weight and taking my meds.

I’d been “so good.”

Yesterday, we went to see a friend. A strong, smart, butch lesbian woman who is a little older than Sarah and I.

I’d never met the woman before yesterday, and yesterday was a tough day.

So this woman and I met on both one of the hardest and most hopeful days of my life and we hit it off immediately (at least I felt so) and I told her before we left her home, “I feel like I was supposed to meet you today.”

Shit is happening all around us that is “supposed to happen” if we’re smart enough to notice and take heed.

This classic makes me, once more, feel seen.

All my life, I’ve been fairly good at recognizing what other people need from me.

All my life, I’ve tried very hard to do right by the people I love.

Sometimes, in all of that, I forgot to take care of myself, too. I got so busy looking after/worrying about everyone else that I completely forgot to look out for me.

That must change or I will quite literally die very soon.

Seriously. Through the years, this sketch alone has made me feel seen.

So my cynical self went to an AA meeting on Saturday morning.

I was assigned a sponsor.

For the next 90 days, I will attend a meeting every day and will call 3 people a day who are currently in AA recovery.

That’s a lot of work. Some people have asked me “how will you do all of that plus your job and your cancer treatment?”

To those people who question my ability to do this: at best, you deeply underestimate me; at worst, you don’t know me at all.

In Hannah Gadsby’s groundbreaking, essential one-woman show, Nannette, she concludes with the following statement: “There is nothing stronger than a broken woman who has rebuilt herself.” In this past year, I have been in the process of actively rebuilding my broken self in a lot of ways: physically, mentally, spiritually.

But I ignored that one piece. The piece about how every so often, of an evening, I want to numb out. I want to not feel all the thoughts and feelings I am positively buzzing with virtually every single day of my life. My mind has been my life’s greatest asset and my life’s greatest existential threat. Throw some alcohol on my brain, and it is impossible for me not to swim ever toward the anesthetizing effects.

Alcohol makes my brain quiet when I want my brain to be quiet: at night, when it can be so very loud, particularly these difficult days.

There is no other medication that can do for my mind what alcohol does.

There is no pill. No drug. No painkiller. No food I have ever pursued ceaselessly to my own detriment — except alcohol.

The way I described my drinking to my sponsor yesterday was something like this: I hate drinking. I loathe it. But then a Friday night hits. And maybe it’s been a stressful week or a stressful month or something set me off and I say to myself, “Well it’s Friday and surely I can have one glass of wine or one beer like every other American during this horrid fucking time.” But this is not true. I cannot have ONE glass of wine. I cannot have ONE beer. I cannot have ONE drink. Not one.

This has taken me over twenty years to admit to myself.

I am working through the shame and profound regret I feel for not seeking help much sooner in life.

This weekend, as I contacted my close family and friends to give them the ugly particulars of Friday’s alcohol-related accident, I expressed this regret to a longtime, close friend. I wept and said, “Why didn’t I do this twenty years ago?”

“You weren’t ready twenty years ago, kiddo. You’re ready now.”

(This is a woman who was a professor of mine in undergrad and has known me since I was 18. She has borne witness to damn near my entire life. Hearing her say that to me made myself feel a bit less guilty, but the heavy lifting of forgiving myself is going to take a lot of time and structured help.)

I got lucky on Friday.

I got a black eye and a gash.

I could have killed myself.

Many alcoholics DO die this way.

Many young people, who binge drink in college, who are perhaps
not alcoholic yet, die this way. I’ve known some of both stripes.

I didn’t die.

I’m not ready to go.

Not before I get this piece sorted first.

I have some business to tend to in this life yet.

I need to get this piece sorted.

This wrinkle smoothed.

This crack patched.

And then maybe I’ll get some real peace.

Maybe I’ll get a taste

of what it must feel like to not live with the darkness of alcoholism/alcoholic tendencies weighing my poor, little body, mind, and spirit down.

I’m done living like that.

I wish I had been done living like that years ago,

but I just wasn’t.

Some people — even some people I love very much — are not fully comfortable with me being so candid about this.

But here’s the thing: writing is how I understand my life.

Writing and living is how I learn and I don’t believe the knowledge gained from learning is simply for having, but for sharing.

I have a human problem.

Three actually: cancer, Chron’s, alcoholism.

Quite the fucking trifecta, but there you have it.

Did I mention terrible eyesight and balance even without the destabilizing assistance of booze? This morning, when I told my kids I fell, I referenced the many times they had seen me trip ridiculously over cords and desks in the classroom while I paced and spoke to them. I’m a clutz. I don’t even need alcohol to be sloppy.

I do shit like this (not quite) even without being altered.

What I’m saying is that I fall on the reg even when I haven’t had any drinks.

When I first moved to Flagstaff and was trying to impress my new bride with my mad snow shoveling skillz, I somehow tripped on a trellis and fell so hard against the car that I had a hematoma the size of Texas on my left thigh for about a month.

Like that’s the kind of falling I do SOBER.

Toss some alcohol on that and I am playing Russian Roulette.

If I could “just stop,” I would.

Drinking isn’t fun for me. Hasn’t been fun for a really long time.

So that’s why there’s AA and countless other self-help sobriety programs because tons of ACTUAL HUMANS have these problems. So this is why I don’t give a fuck if I talk about this on my blog or on social media. I don’t care who knows. I’m telling you, as I’ve told you many times before, reader, about a problem. Another tough, fucking problem. I wasn’t ashamed to “admit” I had cancer.

I’m not ashamed to admit that I’m an alcoholic.

I’m not ashamed to admit I’m on the road to fixing myself.

Maybe you’re reading this and you see yourself here.

Maybe you are here or almost here.

You don’t have to broadcast it or blog on the matter, but I am here to tell you that I felt no sweeter relief in my life than the relief I felt when I logged onto an AA meeting Saturday morning, with my busted up face, and said, “My name is Allison, and I am an alcoholic.”

I breathed more deeply, in that moment, than I ever knew was possible.

It was comparable to the relief I felt when I finally came out to everyone in my life.

Felt good. Took some shit off my shoulders.

So I’m taking more shit off my shoulders.

If it inspires you to take some shit off your own shoulders, that’s the best I could hope for.

That said, while I will surely chronicle this journey on Medium, I’m not going to be playing all the salacious cards. That’s not the kind of writer I am. Despite my seeming openness, there’s a lot that only the people who have borne witness to my life know. I intend to keep many such things that way.

Privacy is a virtue. Privacy is a boundary.

Share what’s comfortable, speak your truth, but don’t merely turn your life into a slab of raw meat in the street for the sun and wild animals and maggots.

I have homework.

I have to attend a meeting every day for the next 90 days.

I have to call three people in AA every day.

And I have to work.

And manage my cancer treatment.

And . . . and . . . and . . .

But I’m from Iowa stock; Chicago stock

— people who know the value of some hard work.

I know the value of hard work. I’ve been working hard all my fucking life in one form or another and yeah, this is a moment of self-pity (which is really gross, but let me just have this fucking moment).

This is going to be hard work, but good work.

The Eternal Footman can “hold his coat and snicker,” but this bitch?
I’m not going down without a fight. And I’m certainly not going to allow myself to take myself down. I want my end to be the fault of something beyond my control: a cancer cell, a bus with the brakes out, old age. But not alcohol. Not that shit.

More to come.