When reviewing the long list of my many all too human flaws, my health glaringly pops out. I see myself in the light or darkness of two categories: 1. I’m a lot more unhealthy than I let on (or how I am perceived); or 2. I’m exactly as I’m seen – failingly frail.
I’ve been, pretty much, sickly most of my life. As a child, allergies were my undoing and the sinus infections that were inspired by the allergens and mucus gadding about my overwhelmed little body were debilitating. I lived in the seasonal curse of a terminal flu. Hell, at 9 years old, I nearly went deaf from ear infections; and when I was 13 years old, I developed ulcers that actually took the stride from my youth.
Being that I was the malady that I was, there was no excuse; and yet, I started to drink alcohol as a teenager. The added physical grief alcohol inspired in the form of excruciating hangovers, stomach ailments (of all sorts), and a general cloudiness of being only screamed: “Really?!”
Really. I kept going because when in my cups, I was in love. Through high school, through college (where upon returning home from school that first time freshman year, my mother yelled, “You’re green!”), through my twenties (when I was so overwhelmed with working full time, going to school full time, and falling apart full time that the addition of napalmed mornings still never stopped me), through my thirties (when my sanity started to be questioned by midnight arrhythmias and daytime ectopic beats), and seemingly well into my forties as I now manage a new state of illness.
Six weeks ago, already feeling shitty, I drank my share of pints (while also hiding my physical failings) and entertained good friends on our roof into the night and into the joy of inebriation. I woke up the next morning and I was done. Achy, bent, palpitating, burnt, I said goodbye to my drinking life and I felt no remorse. Not for the pints (that I loved, loved, loved), not for the wine (that I almost desperately attached to all my meals (and loved)), not for the conversations inspired, the soundtracks created, the fights, the flights, not for the value of all the relationships formed around booze and booziness. I was done. My health demanded that I be done… my health demanded that I be done when I was a teenager; but it wasn’t until I was 47 when I finally abided.
I love to drink. I really, truly do. Alcohol seems as much a part of me as my imagination. And someday, when I’m healthier, I may choose to drink once more – a pint here, a glass of wine there… but I’ll never, ever let it endanger my well-being again.
Now, if anything, I’m saddened by all those lost mornings and days; and I may even be more despondent now that those celebratory nights in festering pubs, jammed parties, or solitary nights alone in my own firmament might be lost to fond memories.
But at 47, in sound mind, if not yet body, I, like the Dude, abide. Cheers.
