Alcohol, my friend? - The Sixtieth Year: Day 293

a conversation

Dear Alcohol,

My friend, my drug, longtime companion of my people.

How do I love thee?

Actually, I don’t.

I don’t love thee, but you’re a dear and trusted friend, my longtime companion.

Maybe I’m just used to having you in my life.

You were there for me when I needed you - to escape, forget.

We don’t drink to remember. We drink to forget.

There was a time when my life was horrible. At that time I drank to forget.

That time is not now.

My life it good now.

In this time, my life-time, I want to remember, be remembered, be, live. In this time I don’t want to be numb. I want to feel.

I just learned to feel again. I want to feel the feelings.

You make me numb, alcohol. You make me dumb. You make me forget. You limit my ability to do - whatever I want to do - whenever I want to do it.

So what do we do about that, old friend alcohol?

Can I leave you behind in my past, with the other things that served their time in my life, things that I no longer need? Walkers and training wheels? Grammar books and dictionaries?

Should I leave you behind?

You helped me survive the misery that was my marriage.

Is it time to leave you with the tools of old?

I’m not sure.

It’s been good to know that I have you - close by.

Except…

Come to think of it, dear friend.

Were you really helping back then?

Or were you just an opportunist, a ‘tool’, who found a human struggling - and you figured that you’d offer “assistance”?

The way my abuser offered “assistance”?

Assistance with a side of motive?

Every suggestion was simply another step in his plot. The assistance was never meant to help me. It was always meant to benefit him. It looked like love to the unsuspecting heart, but it was manipulation - and it led to hurt - my hurt.

It almost broke me.

Is that you, alcohol? Are you just like my abuser? Are you in it for your own purposes? Am I just a pawn in yet another game?

Come to think of it, you didn’t save me. You didn’t help me. You numbed the pain and prolonged the suffering. You were a tool I could use to ignore the suffering.

You - and hope, but hope meant well.

You were a tool - used - against me.

I wanted real, and peace, and calm. I want memory and expression - wandering and wondering.

Do you offer any of that, alcohol?

Is any of that in that bottle?

I have all of that - in me - right now, right here, in this moment. All of that is in this living, breathing human body.

Do you add anything to the equation, alcohol?

Courage? Some people say that there is courage in that bottle.

I have courage in spades. I don’t need it from a bottle.

What else you ‘got?

What do you add to my life, alcohol - other than the illusion of a friend?

The illusion of company?

Alcohol?

Bueler?

Echo?

Anything?

I think I hear the answer loud and clear.

You were never a friend, just a tool like the others.

I was a fool.

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