“So we shall let the reader answer this question for himself: who is the happier man, he who has braved the storm of life and lived or he who has stayed securely on shore and merely existed?”
It’s been three year since I’ve written anything on here. Three years since I’ve felt the need to visit this page. Three years since I’ve wanted to sit down in front of a computer, or use the annoyingly small touch screen keyboard on my phone. Three years since I’ve felt like I had anything to say ... actually fuck that. If I’m gonna write anything, I might as well be fucking honest about it ... three years since something hurt enough that I needed to get it out.
When I first got sober, I used to write all the time. I carried little notebooks around in my back pocket just so I had something at hand. My hands covered in ink from leaking ballpoint pens, shaking from too much coffee. If I could find those notebooks now, I’m sure the handwriting would be illegible.
I was a raw fucking nerve. Without the booze, everything filled me with overflowing emotions. Feelings that’d been dulled and drowned out for years. Everything felt new. Felt weird. Alien. Uncomfortable. Writing was the only thing I could do to stop me from going completely crazy. Get it out of my head. Look at it from a different perspective. Try and make sense of it.
Over the years life got easier.
Life got different. I learned how to cope with actually feeling emotions. Learned how to be a decent human being. Learned how to function relatively well in polite society.
I worked the steps, had a sponsor, sponsored other. Meetings, conferences, book studies. I walked the walk, and the need to write grow less and less.
Every now and then, something would come up and I’d think about writing, but inevitably other life things would happen and that feeling that I needed to get it out would fade.
These last 12 months have been a cunt ... I never said I learned how to stop talking like a sailor.
Last September, my mum when into hospital for surgery, after being diagnosed with bowel cancer.
Kai and I flew back home as soon as we found out, so we could be with her as she came out of surgery and recovered in hospital.
Seriously dealing with the idea of your parents mortality for the first time, is an overwhelming experience.
I mean on some level, I think we all expect that we’ll outlive our parents. But it’s the sort of thought that hangs out in the back of your head, just lingering. You don’t put much weight, or connect too much emotional baggage to it. It’s just there ... it’ll pop up every now and then, but you don’t take it that seriously.
But having that thought sit down in front you, and windup for a firm open palm slap across the face ... that’s something you can’t really ignore.
It’s the feeling you get in your stomach as you pass the crest of a hump on a rollercoaster. As you start the descent, and your stomach is fighting against gravity ... doing everything it can to occupy the space in your chest where your lungs belong.
But on a rollercoaster, gravity catches up to your stomach and wrestles it back into place.
The realization that your going to have to accept your parents mortality doesn’t believe in gravity. It doesn’t accept Isaac Newton knew what he was talking about. It doesn’t allow gravity to do any of the wrestling for you.
I’ve spent the best part of a year trying to wrestle my stomach back into place.
It doesn’t work. That feeling doesn’t really go away. It ebbs and flows like the tide.
Over the last 8 or 9 years, I’ve really tried to work on my relationship with my mum. It wasn’t always the best, but it was a hell of a lots better than it used to be. Prior to sobering up, I’d effectively cut off all ties with any of my family.
I felt guilt and shame for the way I was living my life. For the things I was doing, and for the women I was doing it with. For being so far from home. Although looking back on it now, there’s absolutely no way I was able to recognize any of that at the time.
Fuck no. I was far too caught up in feeling self righteous. Full of justifiable anger. Piss and vinegar.
A handful of years after I got sober, Kai’s mum passed away. I saw first hand, what loosing a parent looks like.
I knew I’d experience those emotions personally. That slap in the face. That feeling of my stomach ignoring gravity.
It was watching Kai go through that, which prompted me to start to rebuild some relationships with my family. My mum, my dad, my brother, and sister.
It wasn’t nearly as hard as I had imagined it would be. In my head there was a huge expanse between us. Some medieval wall dropped somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic. A height that I’d never be able to scale.
It was all bullshit. A twisted joke my head likes to play on me, to make me feel terminally unique. To isolate me from anyone that really cares about me.
Back when I was drinking, and fucking my life up, it was a defense mechanism - a means of not letting anyone get close enough to hurt me. But now ... now it’s just bullshit. Something from my fucked up brain that I have to ignore.
My family didn’t care about the past. They didn’t care about the shit that was in my head. They just wanted me back. Their son, and their brother. And over the years I’ve been able to do that. To be a son again. To be a brother again.
On Monday, July 29th my mum passed away.
She couldn’t keep up the fight any longer. She was the most caring and compassionate person I’ve ever known, and my heart is broken. These past few week, the distance between me and my family has felt great than ever.
Today, Kai and I are getting on a plane to say one final goodbye to her.
August has been a difficult month. I can’t wait for it to be over. On Tuesday, I got word that a friend of mine had overdosed.
Barb ... you’ll be missed. You were there when I first got sober. You were one of the first people I met when I uprooted my life, and moved to Wisconsin. Your laugh. Oh god, your laugh.
I’m one of the lucky one. On August 8th I celebrated 13 years of sobriety. But I know things could easily have turned out differently. Fuck ... they still could.
But today, I don’t want to drink. I don’t want to self destruct. I have an amazing life, despite some really fucking shitty things happening. I have a relationship with my family that I cherish, a wife who’s been a rock and with whom I couldn’t my life without, and some truly amazing friends who have become family. Stuart, Rachel, James, Ryan, Nina, Lizz, and Nate - I don’t know where I’d be without you.
I am Responsible. When anyone, anywhere, reaches out for help, I want the hand of A.A. always to be there. And for that: I am responsible.
Alcoholics Anonymous; 1965
