I'm so glad I don't drink any more
It's funny how actual sentences sometimes play in your mind, as if they're being spoken aloud by a narrator. Usually, my brain hosts a shifting thought salad of feelings, ideas and concepts: neat from the source, undiluted. Thoughts don't naturally take the form of words, but colours, feelings, notions, and knowledge. My raw material needs to be fractioned into something else before it can be understood by any other interface. When I write about the messages from In Here, they've been pre-distilled and fashioned to form proper sentences for export.
I’ve written about it before, but on many, many occasions over the past several months, one sentence keeps appearing in my head, pre-refined and ready to ship:
I'm so glad I don't drink any more.
Higher ground
I stopped drinking a good while ago now, and (much like everyone else) I legged the boat through the weird chemical-imbalance-darkness-caves, rose and rode the pink clouds (like Monkey, with a cool, cool diadem) and slowly, gently, alit again to solid ground to walk around like mortals do.
There's a kind of quiet on the ground. Once the active lows are done, and the active highs are done, I'm left with the stillness - and it can be a bit underwhelming if I let it.
Maybe it's just my magical brain, but a lot of events in my life that are meant to be these monumental freeze-frame fist-pump moments? They don't feel actively good. Instead, they feel like a negative force being removed, and while for other people that may spell happiness, that's not how I roll. My feelings don't function like Indiana Jones swapping out the priceless idol for a pouch full of rocks: instead of getting happy when sad is removed from the pressure plate, the loud absence that the artifact leaves is just empty space. It feels kind of nothing-y.
It's a good nothing-y though. And while I'm kind of used to it, there's only ever benefit in being mindful about how my mind works, because it helps me to strive to live my best life.
I like to remind myself that it's okay for the 'Active Happiness' option to be greyed out in my consciousness drop-down menu. With highs come lows, and I already have plenty of those; and while the highs do appear sometimes, there has to be middle ground.
But mine can be a higher middle ground than it was before.
When I notice the absence of feeling, and when it irks me, I remind myself that however I'm feeling (or not) is actually okay. I'm okay. Not being under the weight of negative pressures is good. It's enough. I'm enough.
At different times for different things, this can require effort on my part – but for alcohol it...simply doesn't. When the light aircraft pulling the I'm so glad I don't drink any more banner pootles across my consciousness, that's my brain taking charge of the lack of feeling. And I notice that it's slowly evolving into something else – it's telling me that my genuine indifference is becoming relief. Owning my lack of desire for poison. Noticing it, and noticing my gratitude for it.
Because yes, I am so glad that I don't drink any more. Truly, it's hecking great.
Most of the time...
Usually, I'm having a pretty good time. Sure, there's an ever-present anxiety and depression that lurks around the edges of my consciousness, (always has, always will - it's just part of the furniture) and you can't put me in a social situation without me observing plenty of things that a lot of people miss....which I can find bothersome, because people aren't as kind as they could be. But generally I'm having a pretty good time, all things considered.
Time was, I'd take aspects of myself and try to blot them out. The world will tell you that parts of you are defects, and things to be fixed. In a lot of cases, if you're suffering, that can be true. For some of us they're not fixable because they're just intrinsic parts of us - and that can actually be okay, thanks. You can't argue with science about which way is up, and for me, I can't argue with how I'm wired. I can manage and ameliorate the unpleasant bits. I can try all the fixes, but sometimes it's just best to know that my In Here isn't the same as your In There, and it never will be. Which is okay.
Just because you wander, doesn't have to mean you're lost.
A previous version of me took how my anxiety behaves when I'm around other people, and decided it was a thing to drown – and why not use the most readily available and socially-acceptable drug available, since it does the job?
It's not a method I would recommend.
Since I stopped drinking, and my brainpower is slowly resetting to what it should be, I now realise just how, even before my alcohol abuse became A Problem, what it was doing to my brain was a problem. Not one that anyone would diagnose, or notice, or capitalise for stylistic effect, but one that I now see was just a darn mistake, on a really low level, for...well, ever. As the isolated, frozen systems in my brain flicker back online and I start to notice how I can do things I never thought possible (simple things like suddenly just knowing the chord progressions to dozens of songs) I see how alcohol was holding me back. Blotting out my inherent awkwardness with even low levels just sidestepped the issue. I am incredibly, internally awkward around most people, and I...kinda like that about myself. I'm good with it. Putting anxiety off for another day just builds it up, making me sub-optimal, and sad.
Noticing my noticing
On top of those private, internal triumphs with the sharpness of my mental saw, there are plenty of reminders from elsewhere. It's summer in our sleepy town, so I'm noticing how glad I am that I don't drink, in basically all places, all the time. Alcohol is literally everywhere, and the expectation of society is that you'll take it (probably in excess) whenever you're given the opportunity. It's shorthand for a good time. It's on billboards, on TV, at social occasions and family events. It's touted as the solution to nervousness for performing. It's the subject of long-winded conversations at parties. Truly, alcohol and the effects of it are everywhere. Especially in summer, summer, summertime.
At a recent family event, I noticed I felt kinda strange at points. It's okay, that's how these things go, but I knew it was different than usual. Normally, being around people drinking doesn't really register, or bother me, in the slightest – but this was the first time I had ever felt uncomfortable at an occasion where people were drinking. Peculiar. Kind of...bored? On talking with my Kind-Eyed-Boy afterwards, he'd felt exactly the same, and we slowly pieced together the why of it all: many of the folk there were on a mission to get drunk and not just drunk but proper-rat-arsed. They weren't there to celebrate (while also drinking because natch, right?) but to get drunk. Getting drunk was the activity for the day. It was the pastime, and if you weren’t doing it, you weren't really able to be involved.
It took a standard family event from, 'we're different people so it being weird comes with the territory', to something where I felt pretty out of sorts. I assumed it was 'just me' at first. It wasn't.
It happened again, and again. It seems the bigger the occasion or milestone, the more likely people are to be On A Mission, and the more out-of-place and kind-of-bored I am likely to feel. It's nice to see people and catch up. It's lovely to be included, and I love my family and friends. But heck, does that aeroplane fly past with its banner every five seconds when DRUUUUUUUNK is the aim.
Because here's the thing: super drunk people are actually super boring. At a certain point, even my best friends, those who are the most sparkling conversationalists, transmute into weird booze-ghosts of themselves. Often people don't realise how fast it happens, or how noticeable it is. It's not so bad when you're slowly becoming steadily more drunk yourself – but when you're the happy sober person in a roomful of happy drunk people On A Mission, it's going to spell an okay time at best. That's usually the point I leave now, if I haven't already.
The aeroplane flies high
The flying banner hasn't just been out at big ticket events, it's not just flying low and fast when some guy (whom we now refer to as Drunkle Football) heckles a speech at a once-in-a-lifetime event, and you smile politely through his egregious behavour. That little plane is high in the sky, moving slooowly from sea to shining sea, most all of the time.
It's good to be clean, and I'm hardly short of reminders as to why.
I notice I'm glad when I go to the county show and see the dozens of stalls selling artisanal poison. Good for them, not for me though! I notice when I learn something new about myself, or master a tricky technique. I hear that sentence play when I clock my brain do something I couldn't do before, or just didn't get with such ease.
It's pretty sweet to be glad you are the way you are. In the past I've not spent much time doing that. I'm grateful for it, and so relieved that I don't have to drink to feel good.
You just have to weather the storm.
Do the work.
Do it for your benefit, not for anyone else.
It comes, in time, and it's easy when it happens.
There are so many things I never would have done if I'd kept on drinking, and since moving back to the UK I'm experiencing them in cascades. I never would have understood how sharp and fast my brain could be. I never would have built up the moxie to perform in front of strangers. I never would have drawn my first scene in Photoshop. I never would have started creating again on the level I have been this past few weeks.
It's a big deal, and I am here for every moment of it.
Love always,
Fay
xXx