Tomorrow, it will be four months since I had my last drink. Tonight, I feel lost in the victory.
I’ve always turned to the Internet for help. Whenever I was experiencing anything, I could Google it, e.g.: “does jerking off to guys mean that I’m gay?” (age: 15); “maintaining high school friends in college” (age: 17); “fantasizing about throwing myself in front of train” (age: 20); “how to get over an ex” (age: 22); “heart palpitations after cocaine” (age: 24). There was always someone in my situation, and they always offered their advice. Maybe I was gay (I am), I’ve lost touch with most of my high school friends because we’ve organically grown apart, I was diagnosed with Pure Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and didn’t actually want to throw myself in front of a train, the only way to get over a past lover is time (I’m sad to say for any suffering the pain of heartache), and heart palpitations are normal in response to the trauma endured by the body after ingesting cocaine (likely laced). One of my last Google searches before I stopped drinking explained delirium tremens to me as I was experiencing them. We find comfort in putting a name on things. We find comfort in those similarly situated overcoming suffering. “We tell ourselves stories to live”, and we seek out the tried-and-true plotlines to tell our own.
So I type in, “loneliness in sobriety” or “boredom in sobriety”. And there’s all the results, but none of them resonate. “Boredom in sobriety at four months at 25”. And there’s a bit less responsiveness. And it’s still not resonating. Okay – Boolean connectors – (“Bored” w/10 (“sober” OR “sobriety)) AND (“New York” OR “NYC” OR “Brooklyn”) AND “25”. A Reddit form from eleven years ago comes up: “I quit drinking last year at 25, and now I have no friends. Where do I find new ones?” It’s by a user named IrishLiam. IrishLiam is between 36 and 37 now. He can’t be my friend, but it occurred to me as I was writing this that I should reach out to him and see where his life is now. Did he find new ones? Does he have the answers I’m looking for?
I don’t know. We do tell ourselves stories in order to live. But we also craft something original to find out what we’re thinking, what we’re looking at, what we see and what it means. What we want and what we fear. It’s funny because I remember that quote differently. I remember it as: “I write to know what it means to be me, right now.” But maybe I made that up, and perhaps that gets to my point entirely. While, in so many respects, we are telling ourselves the same stories in order to live, we are also writing our own. Though I can find IrishLiam’s post, and though his story is the same story as mine, we are not the same person. I am not 36. I am not sober 11 years ago. I am not, as IrishLiam seems to be, obsessed with map-making. I am 25. I am sober right now, in 2022. And I am, seemingly, only obsessed with my own loneliness at this moment.
And so I remember that some people died from delirium tremens. Some people died from laced cocaine. To put it more innocently, some people weren’t gay despite the fact that they watched certain porn. Some people stayed close with their high school friends. And everyone had a different experience in all of those things; creating something both totally unique and completely ordinary at the same time. “One of the mixed blessings of being twenty and twenty-one and even twenty-three is the conviction that nothing like this, all evidence to the contrary withstanding, has ever happened to anyone before.” What about twenty-five? What about somewhere between IrishLiam’s thirty-six and thirty-seven?
Two things can be true at once. Everything can be true at once. That’s called faith. The Father can be the Son; the Son can be the Holy Spirit; all can be living and dead. It doesn’t stop with scripture. When you’re in the midst of a nightmare, is it real? Is it inside of or outside of reality? Are the events somewhere outside and the physical response of your body to stress inside of it? Faith smacks you across the face in a nightmare. You’re forced, at least temporarily, to believe in disbelief.
Such is to conclude that these feelings are unique and universal. Such is to conclude nothing at all. Such is to learn to accept the act of being.
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