Friends Don't Let Friends Blog Drunk

Fortunately, all my friends live far enough away to avoid their intervention.

So Tim is listening to Tripping Daisy, I Am An Elastic Firecracker. If you ever want to hear what 1995 sounds like in my head, listen to this album top to bottom. It's not only awesome, but it's awesome in a particular way which makes my stomach all butterfly-y. I can't explain it any better than that, but if you listen to "Motivation", which to me is the essence of the summer of 1995, you'll understand it. The funniest part is that I didn't even HEAR that album, other than two cuts, til at least 1998 when Tim and I first lived together.

I suppose it's time to hop on THAT bus, in honor of Firefly who sent me the following e-mail last week:

hey, did you hear about the princess diana concert ?
you know what that means?
that means i moved to CA 10 years ago
we quit teaching 10 "f"in years ago
can you believe that?

yeah. I can believe that.

On September 1, 1997, I called my mother and asked her for a ride back to her house, with my cats. I was in full-scale dopesickness and had just received a call from a friend of Lou, my roommate/lover/drug-buddy, telling me that Lou had just called her to let her know he'd been picked up at our favorite drug spot, driving my car, which I had given him, along with our last $20, to go score us some dope. Fortunately he'd been on foot when the cops picked him up, so my car wasn't impounded; unfortunately, he had the keys on him, so my car was stuck on the West Side til they let Lou go. I was broke and sick and I'd had enough; I called my mother and had her pick me up, along with my two cats, and let her take me back to her house and put me to bed.

It was the worst dopesickness I'd endured up til that point. I'd been through the skin-crawly feeling, the hot and cold sweats, the high-speed marathon carousel brains singing cartoon songs in my ear at warped-record pitches; I hadn't, though, yet experienced the puke-puke-puke anti-digestional imperative which demanded that--even though nothing was in my stomach--it would come out, whatever it was. (Watching the hot-dog eating contest today, I was half-tempted to feel pity for Kobayashi--but then again, his "reversal" ended in a minute or two. Imagine that for a WEEK and you'd have a grasp of what those first days of September 1997 were like for me.) The first or second night home, I remember Mom moving the TV into my room. One of the worst parts of dopesickness is not being able to sleep, and so I was in the middle of some late-night TV crap when the news broke that there had been an accident; that Princess Diana was involved; that she was injured; that she was dead. I envied her, a little, right then.

The media circus continued, and I watched most of it; in the end, I ended up in the emergency room--I can't even tell you WHICH emergency room, which hospital I went to--with an IV and a psych referral. We brushed off the psych referral--I had no insurance, and there was no way I would ever ask my mom to stake her home on my recovery, not then--and I went home with a sedative patch to take the edge off my symptoms, which only made me dizzy.

Ten years. That's a long-ass time, you know? And in many ways I've come a long way; about eight years, aggregated, of sobriety, interrupted by that little "issue" back in the winter of 2005; some long-term jobs, some professional credibility, a house. Yet in many other ways...I don't ever wish to be back then, you know--it was a horrible time, and I wouldn't repeat it for anything--but there are some things for which I'd like a "do-over". Remember do-overs? When you threw the ball and it went someplace you weren't expecting, and you'd call for a second chance because, after all, nobody had said "no do-overs"? There are some things for which I'd like a do-over, in the past ten years.

I'd like a do-over for any moment in which I trusted CR, especially that point in 2002 when I trusted him enough to marry him. In fact, I'd like a do-over for every moment starting with the one where I noticed him in rehab, back in October of 97, until the moment he left my life in May of 2002. But from that, I'd like to exclude the moments with Tim, the moments where I met the person who's become one of my closest friends. I have to give CR credit for that; I would never know Tim if it wasn't for CR, and frankly I can see Tim and I being roomies for the rest of our lives. I joke with him about our little house in Wisconsin when we're 80 years old; he says he doesn't plan to live that long, but I can tell he finds the idea entertaining. Being with Tim is like having a boyfriend, without all the expectations and landmines and crap of a Big Relationship; we talked about it some more the other night, and we both concluded that Yeah, we COULD go down that road--but it would screw up more than it helped, and we're both happy with things as they are.

I'd like a do-over for every dollar I gave to LJ, every moment I told him it was okay for him not to pay his way, every time I paid for something that was his responsibility. It's not that I hate him, but when I think back, I think that this house could have been saved if LJ had only pulled his weight--or if he had only never been a part of my life. I'm glad to have known him, and I learned quite a bit from him, but I don't think the learning was worth what I'm about to lose.

I'd like a do-over, if we're going to be honest here, for my entire life starting at age 16--and not for the reasons one would expect. I look back at that girl and I think to myself Baby, you don't know what your assets are. I look back and I think Somebody better tell that kid how amazing she is, how brilliant, how talented, how special--before she throws it all away somehow. And while we're at it, would someone please tell her that--despite all evidence to the contrary--in this one case her daddy is full of crap, because even though she's 16 and doesn't have any life experience nor any formal training, she is STILL an excellent writer, or at least has the beginnings of an excellent writer, and if she lets her daddy's stupid offhand sarcastic remark control her life until she's--oh, I dunno, THIRTY-SEVEN--she's going to waste a lot of energy and a lot of talent and a LOT a lot of time hating herself and doubting her abilities. Now THAT's a do-over I'd like, you know?

I'd like a do-over for the eight months I spent at my mother's house after JP died and before I left for North Carolina. Not that I would have done any better on my own--in fact, it's pretty much a given that I'd have done WORSE--but if I'd stayed out on my own-- if I'd avoided the terror that led me to call her from that hospital phone, the terror that led me to answer her worried "Hello?" with "...Mommy?"--I think there are pieces of my real, true, honest self which could have been saved if I'd surmounted that temptation. I was not strong enough. I know there are those who say it was the smartest thing I could have done for myself, but in some ways I have to think that those are the people who never knew me when I was with JP. All I know is that when I walked in that door I was proud--sick, shocked, horrified, bereaved, but PROUD of who I was inside--and by the time I came back to Chicago after my year in Charlotte, I was an entirely different person--deferential,fearful, "straightened-out" in all the wrong ways. It's taken me nearly ten years to get myself back to where I want to be--all my little quirks and kinks back to nearly where they belong--and it's frustrating to know that after all that work, there's a fair chance I'm going to end up back in EXACTLY the same place I started out. I mean, I can understand the need of it, and even see its potential benefits--but there's an irony there I can't get past. I fought for eight years to get back to the place I felt I belonged--to the West Side, to a neighborhood in which I felt comfortable--and now, through nearly-no fault of my own, I find myself being forced back to The Absolute Last Place On Earth I Should Be. Tim and I talked about it today in the car; to leave this house will be to renounce at least half of my identity. I LIKE being "That One"; I like the inquisitive look I get in interviews, where employers read my address back to me and say "And where is that, exactly?" I like that the answer to that question speaks volumes about me, challenges all the preconceived notions of a long-haired fat woman wearing no makeup who turns up in their office, all submission and deference, looking for a job. I'm more than you see, that address tells them; I'm far from the simple soul you're expecting. It's going to be very hard to give that up; it's going to be even harder because there are so few people who understand it. My mother certainly doesn't; she'll be glad to get this "phase" behind me. When I talk about my future, I talk about a better house, something closer to what I had planned on back in 2003; she counters that with "What's wrong with right here?" I cannot begin to explain it; there's nothing "wrong" with it, per se, but it is NOT ME; it is the opposite of who I am, writ large. Just because there is no longer JP to throw it into sharp relief, just because I'm no longer driven night and day by a rage that leads me to walk for blocks and miles just to be MOVING somewhere--just because I am a "settled" 37-year-old instead of the 24-year-old I used to be--none of that means that I am fundamentally changed. Quieter; more wounded; softer, a little, perhaps. But when I stand in front of that house, it is as little like my true self as it ever was. I don't belong there. I can't say why, because I don't know, but I don't fit in and never have.

Underlined, eleven times, with asterisks and bold-faced type and bleeding-daggers, in 94-point type to make the point:

I DO NOT WANT TO LOSE MY HOUSE.

And yet it looks like that's what's going to happen; if this job doesn't come through by Saturday, I'm going to heave a heavy sigh and drive over to the U-Haul store on Cermak, and buy myself a mess of packing boxes so I can pack up my kitchen and bedroom, my books and knick-knacks, my pots and pans and little bits of life. I will pack them up and label them with all the wisdom that comes of twenty moves in fifteen years, and hire a mover and take them to my mother's basement. And from there we will see what becomes of me; what becomes of Tim; what becomes of any of us. I know I, personally, will be fine; I know I have a roof over my head as long as I want one, me and BadCat and Snickers; I worry more about Tim. He MIGHT be okay, but I would rather have things stay the way they are, where I can keep an eye on him and help him be calm and reasonable. I'm glad Nicolette can watch out for him, but there are moments I question how long she's going to put up with him; I, on the other hand, not being his girlfriend and having a 10-year history, will stick with him as long as possible. I hate that on some level, this will let him down.

Mostly, though, it's this simple: I WANT TO KEEP MY HOUSE. I want my cats to have gigantic windows to sun in; I want myself to have morning sunlight to wake me up. I want to feel as though I've accomplished something, in my thirty-seven years on this earth, and not to feel as though I'm living in my mother's basement, jobless and useless and economically unwanted.....

Foreclosure sucks. Unemployment sucks. Not having someone to bail you out--sucks. Yeah, I KNOW--that's how 99.9999999999999999% of the world lives. It's just hard, to have your first encounter with Real Life come at the expense of the most important material possession you've got.

(the next morning)
I wanted to hold this post til I was awake and beerless. I only like beer in the summer, and the only alcohol I really like is beer, so I don't think there's any raging danger of incipient alcoholism here. (Also, I'm a lightweight--hey, at least I'm SOME kind of lightweight, you know?) I will say, though, that I write differently when I'm drinking; more loosely, more relaxed, more playful-with-words. Not BETTER, necessarily; just different.

I woke up this morning at 5:30 and drove Tim to work, then went for a Krispy Kreme donut run. At that hour, the expressways were nearly empty, and it felt just SO awesome to be driving fast through the cool air, with my windows open and the radio on and the sun behind me...

I would have to say, even with the joblessness and the threat of losing the house and everything else, that this has been one of the best summers of my life; certainly, it's been the best summer since JP died. It reminds me a lot of that last summer with him--minus the heroin, of course--but irresponsible and free and entirely self-willed. I know all summers like this one have to end--I learned that in 1995--but I'll be sad to see this one go.

Now I'm gonna go eat a donut and watch cartoons. It's good to be me.