Content Warning: alcohol abuse

Did you know I didn't mourn my Dad's passing for four years? I was sad, for sure. I had some bizarre dreams with him for a long time, I talked about him all the time. But when it would get to be too much, which was very frequently, I would get drunk.

I spent a lot of time laying around in bed dreaming about a better world. One in which I was working out, one in which I had a new adventure every day, one where I wouldn't feel like drinking. All hours of the day.

I had some problems with alcohol in the past. After a few months of drinking when my life fell apart the first time, I decided to be sober. It became a good part of my life, though lonesome in some ways. It was annoying to repeatedly get asked "it's okay if I get drunk around you right" and it was fine. I had made the decision and it didn't bother me.

Someone I would eventually fall in love with looked at me one day when we were talking about my sobriety and prepared to ask a question. I braced myself for it, but instead she asked "does it bother you that you can't get drunk with your friends?"

Nobody else had asked me that. It was definitely true. I think that's when I first starting falling in love with her, though I was definitely attracted to her before that moment.

Later on, when my world collapsed and I gave myself to the bottle, I got drunk with my friends many times. It was actually nice, everything I'd hoped for really. But it wasn't about companionship by then, it was about being numb.

And while condemning myself to this numbness, I dreamed of a world in which I wasn't. One where I could take the slings and arrows that had finally broken me. It'd lull me off to dreams of terror and horror that I still preferred over the nightmare reality that was this post-apocalyptic universe I had to step through.

It was a pretty dark time. I gained a lot weight, stopped liking to see myself in photos, strung out and sad. I injured myself a few times in my futile attempts to keep up with my exercises, and despite my endless well of anxious energy I lived a pretty sedentary lifestyle and was getting slower all the time.

So why'd I quit? Well- I had to mourn. Four years to the day of my Dad's passing. Four is the number of death, y'know. I dreaded the fourth anniversary for that superstitious reason, despite the fact the worst had already happened.

The worst had already happened. I found myself having held onto my dread as a last souvenir from him. There was no hope though. He was gone and he'd be pretty disappointed to know I'd fallen apart so thoroughly.

He told me once, a very long time ago when I was still a kid, that the world does end once in a while. And when the world ends, life goes on. With or without you.

So here I was living in this post-apocalyptic world and it was four years minus a day since my Dad had passed and I was so sick of being drunk. I was sick of the hangovers, I was sick of the puking, I was sick of how morose I was all the time. But mostly I was sick of living in a world that had ended.

I asked myself if I could quit. Asked why not today. After all, the worst had already happened. So I stopped.

And that's when all hell broke loose within me.

Who here is familiar with alcohol withdrawal? I've been through it a bunch of times. The first time was probably the most painful, so this wasn't the worst.

The first thing that happens is you start shaking here and there. Every little movement of your body hurts, but somehow it hurts more to stay still, not that you are capable of staying still, mind. Some people describe the feeling of crawling under the skin, but that isn't my experience. It just kinda felt like... like my body was a big elastic band and it couldn't help but vibrate, and that band was attached to every sad feeling I ever had.

My brain brought up every awful thing I ever did. Every selfish feeling. Every missed opportunity. All I had to do to stop feeling like the loser I had somehow both become and had always been was pop open another bottle and go back into the numbness.

But I'd made the decision.

Somewhere in this mess, while I felt like my soul was melting off my body, somebody taunted me and told me that I couldn't save my Dad.

And that gave me pause. Because I had saved him. I just couldn't save his life, he'd made his own decisions long before.

A few years earlier, when I quit drinking the first time, my Mom decided to give quitting smoking a try and encouraged my Dad to do so. He'd been a smoker since he was around 14, and had relied on it for his own numbness for virtually his entire life. I was visiting my folks at this time, and my parents were stressed about something or other, a fairly petty thing that would be okay eventually. They were fighting and my Dad muttered something and went walking toward the door, grabbing his keys and wallet.

I asked him where he was going, and he said he was going to go get some cigs and I told him not to do that. He turns to me and says "you have no idea how much I want a cigarette right now" and I shot back "you have no idea how much I want a drink."

He stood there glaring at my sad face, our eyes locked. Then he tossed down the keys and wallet and took his jacket off and went to somewhere else in the house to fume.

He stayed cigarette free for the rest of his life. He said it was one of his proudest achievements to be able to go to the grave as a non-smoker.

And so I felt him there, at what was almost certainly my worst moment, a crescendo on four years of addiction and self pity. He looked at me knowing I was stronger than him, and that gave me the strength I needed, and in that moment I believed in him for believing in me.

So I made the decision. And it's been a struggle as the rest of the world looks to be gearing up to end again and I've stumbled. I fell apart a couple times and had to put myself back together again. And I'm getting pretty good at it.

Y'know, I always wanted to learn to juggle. I just think the movement is cool, and I kinda wish I was a clown sometimes. Plus, I feel like it could be another charming quirk to add to the pile. So I got some balls and started with just one. There's a lot of technique in it that just can't really be learned without a lot of repetition. I wondered a couple times if maybe I was too old to learn new tricks, but I'm at three balls now. Not very good at it, but I'm a thousand times better than when I started just a few weeks ago.

And I figure why not learn the guitar. I had an acoustic in my basement that was a gift from a girl as an apology for not being able to schedule time to sleep with me before she left town. It's a funny story, I'll tell it sometime. It's a lot harder than I figured it'd be to be honest, but it makes more sense than the keyboard to me. I'm just doing some exercises and learning the melody of a fairly simple Steven Universe song that's been on my mind lately. Thinking about doing a small open mic night at this witchy bar I've found myself at a lot lately.

As I've rejoined the world slowly, I found myself a lot more confident in speaking to people. I've become my old socialite self again, celebrated in all my circles and agreed to be "the hottest piece of ass in the old north" which is nice. Though I gotta say I'm a little perturbed by the sudden thought that I am attractive after losing some weight. I felt I was charming while I had a little more meat on my bones, though maybe things have changed for me more than I can see.

So I'm going through this transformation right now, and it's making me go berserk in my head. My whole body feels like that rubber band again. It feels like I'm in uncharted territory, somewhere I'm not supposed to be. Like I've managed to glitch into a part of the world not meant for me: being a person I am proud to look in the eye in the mirror.

A friend of mine asked me a question last night that made me evaluate the concept of having faith in myself. And I replied that you only need to let yourself try the things you want to do, success or failure be damned.

My Dad went to his grave having faith in me, knowing I would be alright and that I could weather whatever's coming next. He thought I was stronger than him, and I don't know if that's true but I do think I'm strong enough to survive the end of the world again.

After all, life goes on.