The beast

My brother died alone, in the fetal position, with an eviction notice taped to his apartment door, and when people ask me why I don’t drink I want to describe his final struggle with alcoholism. But that wouldn’t be the full response.

 

The fact is I never really liked the idea of drinking alcohol. I wanted to think I didn’t need a drug to have fun. I also didn’t want my thinking to become hazed up, even for a little while. Our time on Earth is short enough; why throw an alcohol blanket over our perception of it? And the more people pressed me to drink, in high school and college, the less I wanted to do it. (Peer pressure has a primally negative effect on me.)

 

Which isn’t to say I haven’t dabbled. The types of drinks I have had can be counted on one hand. (How Sex on the Beach made it to that exclusive list I don’t know.) But I received nothing from the experience: the drinks were expensive, tasted bad and made me less social (which is a bad result for an eternal introvert). So a habit that never formed was beaten further into the ground.

 

Then, eight years ago, we found out my brother was an alcoholic. He was taking money out of an ATM in Cub Foods when he collapsed amid withdrawal seizures. He was trying to get more money for booze. Anyway, the hospital told us the truth of his condition and his cover was blown. Realizing he was an alcoholic felt like a relief at the time, since the red, puffy face, gray, chipped teeth and skeletal body made us think he had advanced-stage cancer.

 

Then I stayed with him the night he was discharged from the hospital and found out what alcoholism meant. It meant losing your job because you were increasingly unreliable and not being able to even look for one for half a year. It meant needing to water down your wine because you couldn’t stop sipping it and you already finished a three liter bottle every day. It meant getting so sloshed you couldn’t get to the toilet quick enough to do a number two. Believe me, I could go on.

 

Then he died, a few weeks from being kicked out of his apartment. My sister and I cleaned his place. It took three grocery cartloads to move all the empty three liter bottles to the recycling bin. The trash can was filled with smoking detritus (butts, cartons, ashes) and one emptied can of Hormel chili.

 

We thought it could have been suicide but it was a bad heart, probably caused by smoking. Which begs the question: was it better that this proud, talented man died in his sleep rather than fighting advanced-stage alcoholism, including, very possibly, a stint as a homeless person? I can’t think that death was preferable, but it’s a reasonable question.

 

Which leads me to my point: I find it infinitely laughable when people ask me why I don’t drink, that they find it the odd choice, knowing as I do what a monster alcohol can be. Mind you, I don’t judge anyone for their choice to drink, and I know plenty of people that can do so with moderation. But I also know plenty who can’t, plenty in my own family, good people in a death grapple with the beast.

 

So if you see me at a gathering with a root beer in my hand, or a juice, or even a water, it’s best if you keep your questions to yourself.

A Christmas thanks to my comrades in arms

Here’s my Christmas prayer: that all of you may win a meaningful battle against your own personal demons.

 

My older brother reminded me of my own demon yesterday when, out of the blue, he told me how full of myself I was as a child. This is the first time I’ve heard this. In truth, it comes from a man who has struggled with a lifelong inferiority complex. And really, how well could he have known me? Fifteen years my elder, he spent at most a few weekends a year at home. So why allow myself to get irritated by what he says?

 

Because what he said was laughable, so laughable that it traveled beyond funny into The Land of Not Funny at All.

 

A lack of confidence has always been my demon, even from the very earliest of ages. In first grade I missed a week of class due to laryngitis, and when my Dad escorted me back to class I was so overcome by the fear that I could never catch up that I cried, right there in front of all my classmates, all their white eyes locked on my weepstorm. My Dad had to drive me home where, over the coming days, my parents worked on my confidence, reminding me how good I was, how smart, how successful.

 

I was in first grade, for chrissake! The only homework I had that year was a Thanksgiving assignment to decorate a two-dimensional turkey. And here was little me, creating a pitiful spectacle in front of all my friends.

 

Did I learn from this experience? Did I realize that I had nothing to fear, that I had the tools necessary to overcome adversity? No, because that’s the nature of true, honest for goodness demons: they can’t be wiped out; we must struggle with them our whole lives until we are buried, side by side, in the cooling ground.

 

No, the lack of confidence became bolder as the years passed. It’s why I skipped a voluntary math aptitude test my senior year in high school. Mrs. Ihrke, my calculus teacher, was pissed that one of her best students rode out a test that helped determine government funding of her program in the coming year. And boy, did she let me know it, right in front of the whole class. Sorry, Mrs. Ihrke. I was worried that I’d fall short, that my score wouldn’t live up and that everyone would know me as a failure. The lack of confidence is why I didn’t date until well into college. I could see no earthly reason why a girl would want to spend time with me and feared that just one rejection would stomp my fragile ego into fine dust. It’s why I was 25 before I drove a car regularly. I took for granted I’d bumble the experience and crash. (As it turned out I was right; I caused an accident two weeks after buying my first car, a shiny new Saturn SL-1.)

 

I’m 39 and I still struggle with my confidence. I’ve lived a full life, I’ve gathered a dragon’s hoard of wisdom, and yet even at my calmest, happiest moments I can hear fear and doubt muttering on my shoulders. At such times the voices sound so foreign and disembodied — i.e. like a demon — that it makes me laugh. The voices wait for my laughing to subside and begin talking once again.

 

Now, as demons go, a lack of confidence is not a bad one. If, before I made the great leap down to Earth, God made me choose a demon from among the many, all crouched and growling inside small pens, then I chose well. After all, the Lack of Confidence demon doesn’t compare with, say, Alcoholism or Clinical Depression on a scale of ferocity.

 

But this never stopped my Mom and Dad from boosting me up whenever I needed it. Even as I crept into my 30s and they unknowingly lived the last years of their lives, they made a point of reminding me how much I’d accomplished, how many gifts I had, what a good person I was. They were the only two people who fully understood the demon I fought, and who took up the sword and joined the fight. I never took the time to show my gratitude, so let me take this opportunity, in front of all you good folks and on this holiest of days, to say it once and for all: thanks, Mom and Dad.

What Pablo and I have in common

A few years ago in the butthole of winter I underwent my Blue Period. That is my half-mocking name for what was a sad but very productive moment in my creative life. Like the young Picasso during his more famous Blue Period, I was feeling down, as down as I’ve felt for years, and it lasted a month, which is strange for me. I won’t tell you the reasons for my feelings (okay, it began with a girl) but I will say that the poems I wrote during that period rocked.

 

I’ve never written so crystal clearly about how I felt. It was still poetry, mind you, it was still filled with metaphors and more fanciful turns of phrases, but there was no beating around the bush: I felt like shit, I was mad that life had turned out the way it had, and I wanted it to change immediately.

 

Today I look back at that month with something like affection, not because I revel in pain or have some screwball, old-time Romantic view of melancholy, but because I wrote such good poems. Life for a month gave me lemons and I made lemonade. Fresh squeezed, mind you; none of that Minute Maid crap.

 

Many people wouldn’t understand why I wrote those poems. They are the same people who ask why I watch The Sopranos or Schindler’s List. Why watch such depressing shows? they ask. Life is hard enough. Art is there to help us forget this awful mess, to help us be happy.

 

First of all, I don’t think life is such a mess, for the most part (the occasional Blue Period notwithstanding). But I would agree on one point: Happiness is swell. Couldn’t say enough good things about it. But quality in entertainment gives me the most joy, and the fact remains that Tony Soprano and his “family” were some of the most intricately developed and interesting characters you will ever find on any size screen (up until the moment their brains were blown out). It’s the terrible shows that depress me, the Everybody Loves Raymonds of the world. Watching even 10 seconds of that makes my brain feel dirty.

 

But that’s another matter. The fact remains that darkness is part of life. None of us is untouched by it: unrealized dreams, unrequited love, the occasional loneliness, the death of those we love. To avoid thinking about it gives it a strange power. It festers and becomes the monster lurking under the bed, waiting to consume our flesh.

 

And besides, I have spent far too many years staring at blank pages to edit my inspirations. That’s literary suicide. If darkness is what reveals itself in the mind’s mirror, than darkness it shall be.

 

I’ve shown those Blue Period poems to only one person and perhaps I’ll never show them to anyone else. I simply couldn’t stand dealing with the well-intentioned concern or the questions about my state of mind. And that’s too bad, because they are some kick ass poems.