Yeah, so I'm back. I haven't posted for awhile because my fucking MacBook died. Did you know when the battery in a MacBook dies, it starts to swell until eventually your keyboard swells up like it's going to detonate, or start spewing lava or something? Because it does, and you don't realize it until everything starts going all weird and kinky and you can't do anything on the damn thing, and eventually you can't even close the lid all the way.
Fortunately, no one was killed.
So I took it to our local Mr. Fix-It guy who explained all of this in very reasonable tones ("OMFG GET THAT THING OUT OF HERE BEFORE IT KILLS US ALL!!!" like it's a propane tank on fire.) After it was scanned by our local bomb squad and declared only marginally dangerous, my guy ordered up a new battery and now she works good as new. Anyhoooo, all of this is to explain why I've been gone for a few weeks and now that I don't have any excuses I guess I'll have to start annoying all of you with this shitty blog again. Admit it: You've missed me.
I've been struggling with the concept of "help." Giving it. Needing it. Accepting it.
I am not good at these things. In the telling of my story, the biographers will not be kind to me in this regard. Until recently, I have been very stingy in offering help to those in need. I was helpful if an old lady fell in a parking lot, of course, I was right there to help her up, because not doing so would make me an asshole (ahem.) But in other less obvious situations where people needed help? Not so much.
It wasn't because I didn't want to help. I did, really I did. But at those times, I withheld my anemic urges to help because... I don't know, maybe because they hadn't asked, and who was I to presume? Maybe they needed money I didn't have, even if a little might have helped. Or maybe just because it was awkward. Them needing help, and me not knowing how.
But having now shifted from a lucrative (and sometimes glamorous) career, to one that is entirely unglamorous and focused entirely on providing help -- real help, immediate hands-on help to those who need it right now -- I'm coming to an uncomfortable truth:
We all need help. If not today, trust me: Tomorrow.
When I first started working with elderly clients who need help for the basic things -- bathing, going to the toilet, eating -- I was uplifted by visions of the gratitude I would win from them. Thank you! they would gush in my fantasy. I don't know how I survived without you! For some reason, I was surprised when they seemed to resent my presence in their bathrooms. I was there to help, after all. It took me awhile to understand that while they did perhaps appreciate the help on some level, nobody actually likes that they need my kind of help. Truth is, I don't always like having to provide it. But here we are, together, that person and I. Helping, and being helped, like it or not.
Asking for help is so difficult for me, and accepting it even more difficult. I resist it at every turn. I'm going to be one of those old clients of mine, the ones I secretly love the most, who slaps the hand away, the ones who can and will do it for themselves. But I hope I'm also one of the ones who can acknowledge what I cannot do, even though GODDAMMIT I hate needing your help.
Accepting help Is. So. Fucking. Hard.
But as someone who is now on the giving side of that thankless equation, I recognize that it's also not easy to offer help. So before I descend into my usual miasma of self-pity, I just want to say:
Thank you. It may feel like a thankless job helping me on this path to sobriety. But I do need your help, and I appreciate you more than I can sometimes say in the moment. To paraphrase a famous nun: "I may resent your help. Help me anyway."
As usual, the Beatles⃰⃰ say it best:
When I was younger, so much younger than today,I never needed anybody's help in any way.But now those days are gone, I'm not so self assured,Now I find I've changed my mind and opened up the doors.
I mentioned to my doctor the other day that I'm apparently the only person within a 100-mile radius who's on Antabuse, because the pharmacy always has to order it special. She looked puzzled and said, "Really? I can think of at least three people I know personally who take it regularly. So no, you're not the only one."
I suppose this makes me feel better. But who are these people? Shouldn't we start a club or something...?
This depresses the hell out of me. Like millions of other latch-key kids in the 70s, I would watch him on The Partridge Family on TV after school. He was never able to get a handle on the drinking, and it killed him. Eventually, it does, either by some crazy drunken accident or escapade or, in his case, multiple organ failure. Sobering is hard for a drunk. I imagine it's even more difficult when you're famous and being hounded at every turn by the eternal gossip machine. I can't imagine what it must have been like for him, struggling with this his entire life, in and out of rehab over the years, being dogged by coverage like this, and this, and this. The price of fame, blah, blah, etcetera and etcetera. But it's still really depressing. RIP David.
"This morning I woke up with this feeling I didn't know how to deal with and so I just decided to myself I'd hide it to myself and never talk about it..."
Someone emailed to congratulate me on 8 months, but also mentioned that I should perhaps give thought to what this blog is doing to my "personal brand." Ironic, since one of the more esoteric of my many job titles over the years was "Brand Manager," which mostly entailed screaming at our ad agency and telling people they had to move our company logo .0002 microns higher on that 3-fold brochure. Worst job I ever had, and that includes retail.
Anyway, I'm not entirely sure what "personal brand" I've been projecting to the world all these years. Would that be the "Getting drunk every day on my lunch hour" Brand? Or the "Funny, likable guy who goes home from work seething every night" Brand? How about the "Has three drinks too many at the holiday party and calls his boss an insufferable prick" Brand? Or maybe the "Jonesing for his next drink every morning, with DTs and shaky hands" Brand? Look, I sincerely appreciate the concern. I get that the stuff I post here might make some people (myself included) uncomfortable, or even angry. But I'm no longer in the business of projecting some idealized version of myself to the world. There's just no percentage in it for me, and I'm okay with the embarrassed silence or outrage that may ensue. If it makes y'all feel better, consider this my "personal rebranding."
I walked away from polite society a few years ago. I'd been working in Washington, DC for some 30 years and had worked my long and arduous way up to the wasteland of middle management when a conveniently-timed company reorganization came along. There were opportunities to reapply for positions in the new hierarchy, but also a rather generous severance package for those who opted to move on or simply didn't make the cut. I'd been in the trenches for a long time at that point, had gotten tired of all that and, seeing the writing on my cubicle wall, did what any normal, responsible person does in these situations: I said, Fuck y'all and moved to the beach. Since then, I've actually been to the beach once or twice, despite my tendency to burn. I kicked around for a couple of years pretending to be an "artist," which for me meant working out of my garage and going to the occasional gallery opening. I liked being an artist, because there were lots of opportunities to guzzle free box-wine from small, plastic glasses. And I made some nice things along the way, which my friends bought. But I soon learned that having no fixed schedule and no place to be on a regular basis is not a terribly healthy thing for drunks. At least not for this drunk. It turns out I'm someone who needs a job, and not especially for the paycheck.
Which brings me to where I am today. If you had told me, back when I still had the white-collar desk job that I would be doing the type of work I'm doing now, I would have laughed in your face. (And if I told you the hourly rate I make now, compared to when I had that white-collar desk job, you might be tempted to laugh in my face, for which you would be instantly forgiven.) I work with elderly clients, providing care and assistance in their homes. It pays slightly more than nothing, but I’m fortunate to be at a point in life when some of my ships are coming in and I have now multiple dribbles of income and some meager resources to call upon in a pinch.
You might think, Dear Reader, that someone as crabby as I would recoil at the thought of helping others to the toilet, but I've found this isn't the case. I like my clients, especially the crabby ones (ahem), and the work itself actually sets a counter-balance to my own crabby nature; it suits me, and no one is more surprised than I am. It isn’t glamorous — far from it — but neither is it ever boring. No day is ever the same as the day before, and yet there comes a sense of normal routine. My schedule is largely my own, while still requiring that I show up sober and on time. There are challenges of course, but these do not exhaust or deplete me the way my “real career” often did.
Mostly, it pulls me out of my own crabby self, and and allows me to see beyond my own anxieties and angst. It forces upon me a sense of compassion, and allows me to feel helpful to others in ways that pushing papers never did. I mention all this, because I've been thinking about those years in DC. Through the magic of Facebook I'm still in touch with most of my former colleagues, who number in the hundreds, spread across the nation. I watch their progress, track their comings and goings, their accomplishments. When I see that one of the regions are coming together for a conference or planning meeting, it always makes me smile. I remember how much fun it was to see everyone, to catch up, and to plan strategies for this or that new initiative we were launching. And if I don't often miss my former life, I must admit, I do sometimes grow wistful at those moments. I miss being a part of it. During those years, I had the privilege of working with the very best and brightest in their fields. I learned a great deal from them, and was a better person for the time we spent together. I have tremendous respect and admiration for them, all of them, and I like to think that feeling is mutual. And yet... and yet... there's this nagging little voice in my head that says, "They weren't fooled, y'know. They all knew you were a drunk who was just phoning it in all those years. If they still think of you at all, it's probably to snicker about how far you've fallen." That is one wicked little voice, let me just say. It's what one of my favorite former mentors refers to as my "inner critic," and I've fought it my entire life. I'm my own best enemy, blah, blah, blah. I've come to think that being drunk was a way of silencing that inner critic, of replacing it with a different voice, one of bravado and surly confidence: "Oh yeah? Think you're better than me? Well, bring it on, bitches, 'cuz you ain't seen nothin' yet!" All this played out only in my own head, of course, a neurotic circle of thought that went round, and round, and round. Walking away from my former life was my first serious attempt at breaking that circle. And, though I'm still grappling with it, I'm finally making progress.
I don't regret getting off the merry go round long enough to finally wrestle my demons to the ground. I don't regret walking away from what I had before; from who I was, before. I am not that person today.
Yesterday made 8 months sober, the longest I’ve ever gone. It doesn't sound like much, but to me it's huge. I'm not carrying my regrets forward. And I’m not going back.
I've been thinking a lot about honesty lately. I'm always a little envious when people jauntily tell me how bitchy they can be, or that what you see with them is what you get. I'm jealous that they find it so easy to just blurt out whatever comes to mind, and are therefore unburdened of any secrets. Because I'm now trying to unburden myself, and I'm finding it damn hard.
I struggle with how to be "honest" without being "too honest," and as with most things, I make it needlessly complicated. To me, being honest has always been less a straight up/down, on/off proposition -- more like 50 Shades of Truth. Must we be either brutally honest, or lying through out teeth? Or are there gray areas, times when one needn't tell the truth -- or at least not the whole truth? If I smile and make polite chit-chat over dinner when I'm actually thinking, Fuck this, I'm so outta here, is that a lie?
People often tell me with great earnestness to just be honest about what's really going on inside my head, to share my feeeeelings, to open up. But it doesn't always work out so well for me. When I am finally honest, I often get shocked silence, embarrassment, hurt feelings, or outright anger in return.
I suppose I can't really blame people for this. It's not their fault that they're shocked or confused when I finally show them what I'm actually thinking and feeling, because what I've always shown them in the past bears no resemblance to what I'm showing them now. It's completely understandable that they'd feel angry or betrayed. I haven't aways been honest with them in what I project. Does that mean I've lied?
When people ask me to be honest and then get angry when I am, does it mean they didn't really want me to be honest in the first place? Does that make them liars?
Is withholding information not being honest? I spent my early formative years trying to make sure no one in my small town -- including family, close friends, teachers, clergy, etc -- knew that I was queer. It seemed expedient to my survival at the time, but even now, standing before you as the well-adjusted, confident gay man that I've since become (ahem), I still find myself in situations where my reflex is it hide it. I don't, god forbid, pretend to be straight or make up stories about having a wife or girlfriend somewhere. But I don't necessarily correct them if they make presumptions about "my wife." (Shut up, all of you, it still actually happens.) Does that make me a liar?
My point is that my desire to hide is so engrained that I often do it reflexively. Sometimes I'm not even aware of it. And, whether you think the above examples make liars of us all, or that there's maybe something to be said for tact and diplomacy, the fact remains that I have a decades-long pattern of subterfuge and camouflage that have proven ultimately toxic and destructive.
Which is why I can't always tell where the lines are drawn between honesty and rudeness, candor and cruelty. I frankly haven't developed the skill sets to be proficient at this whole honesty thing without accidentally burning the house down.
