December 31, 2004
I am happy to report that I woke up about 50% less anxious today than at any other time since my release.
Call it self-psychotherapy, mid-wifed by AA. It is a tremendous relief to discover the anxiety I've suffered from is not a new anxiety, but an old anxiety that I never really grew through, merely medicated all those years.
This is not to say that growing older, in and of itself, did not have some impact. I was, after all, not high or drunk all of the time. But borrowed courage is not quite the same as the courage one develops free of intoxicants.
I do, however, have a task ahead of me. I need to grow up, to catch up. Hopefully I can do that somewhat faster for being 46 instead of 16.
I think of my father, who was no doubt equally petrified through most of his life. When he was but 14, his father killed himself, and his self-medicating began when he joined the Navy at 17. No doubt his reluctance to stop drinking, even when it became a clear threat to his welfare and the happiness of his family, was no doubt at least in part due to the same fear of facing the pain of that loss without a cushion. I am going to try to blog soon "Bloodless," my essay on the experience of his father's suicide by his family as imagined by me. Alcoholism, like suicide, seems to be a family disease. with ramifications over generations. The legacy of both have been potent in my family, and in writing about it I hope to shed light on its effects and grope for answers to a mystery that has haunted us for years.
This is not to say some of this anxiety is not hereditary from the other side of the family. My French grandfather was renowned for it. After every meal just prior to the second World War, when the storm clouds gathered over Europe, he would literally pace around the dinner table for some time, obsessing silently over the state of the world. In later years, he would recount tales of his experience as a soldier in World War I, acknowledging perversely that those were some of the happiest years of his life. For the simple reason that for the first and last time of his life, he had friends. The memory of that comradeship eclipsed the horrors of war.
I surmise that both my grandfathers suffered terribly from being part of a generation that reserved friendship as a luxury indulged in largely under the cauldron of war, or as an expression of unity against an enemy. Friendship is, happily, something I have managed excel at, perhaps in direct proportion to my shitty luck in the love department. I have unfortunately lost more than my share of friends, first to AIDS, then to substance abuse. But those that remain are many and precious.
So, to my friends, old and new, in good times and bad, drunkeness and sobriety, I dedicated this New Year. With my deepest wishes for a happy and prosperous and love-filled 2005.
MCO 2004
