5:53 p.m. - 2023-05-05
hiatus

The dude called me from the bar. Like, from his cell-phone, sitting at the bar, and started crying. He was that grateful I'd helped him move that morning, and dealing with a lot of emotional strain...but he owed me the call and I'm glad he made it.

He'd basically been evicted from his late mother's house, a house on which he'd paid the mortgage off in full. Problem is, it was technically a mobile home, so he didn't own the property it sat on. And a new landlord was cleaning out the trailer trash with an eye on something different, development-wise. He either had to come up w/15K to move the thing pronto, or take whatever she offered him for it and get out. So those tears of gratitude were mixed with tears of despair at the injustice of it all, at the affront to his mother's memory, and at the prospect of living in a Ford Expedition w/three Dachshunds, two elderly cats and his plumbing tools...but he owed me the call and I'm glad he made it.

Because this wasn't your typical “help a friend move” kind of gig. (This wasn't even a friend, just someone who happens to sit at my end of the bar, but I'm unable to refuse anyone who asks me for help...which is kind of fucked, because I'm equally unable to ask for help when I need it.) I'll spare you the horrorshow details of his redneck alcoholic depression lair, you've probably seen one or its cultural analog (I kinda live in one, come to think of it), just know that it was filthy, decrepit and in a state of disarray. Only...this was “everyday” disarray, not “moving day” disarray. Nothing was in boxes (there were none), nothing had been disassembled. Drawers were laden, cupboards were stocked...pictures and chatchkes gathered dust oblivious to their impending displacement. Both the freezer and the fridge were full and a load of laundry churned in the washer.

“The moving van’s not gonna be here for an hour, you wanna sit down and watch some hockey?”.

Um...no. I did not want to sit down and watch some hockey. I wanted to move heavy objects and clearly-labeled, well-taped boxes with the assistance of a stout cadre of barroom volunteers. I wanted to do this quickly and efficiently and get back to work. This was not to be.

Two guys from the bar did eventually show up to help “pack”, that is until they ran out of garbage bags. Then they just started stacking stuff in the yard or, as the hours wore on, tossing shit out of open bedroom windows. Our host would pitch in intermittently, other times he would sit with his perpetual cigarette burning and stare blankly at the giant TV he insisted we leave on and move last. Or he'd find something that had belonged to his mother and wander around with it, sharing with us the object's history and significance. This didn't speed things up.

So it was up to me and the U-Haul driver to load the truck. All the big appliances, including the heaviest stove I've encountered...a task made harder by the decades-old grease in which it was covered (as was I when we finished) and some ratty furniture and headboards and chest-of-drawers and such. Around this we'd try to fit the garbage bags and loose shit strewn across the lawn. I realized then that, aside from the fact that they stack neatly, another blessing of boxes is that you don't have to mentally inventory someone else's crap and ask “Really? This is a thing we're moving?”. (Like...how many bundt cakes do you bake a year, my dude?)

Anyway, we got 'er done and I balled home and slathered w/Purel. Twice. Once for the nicotine tar and once for the dog piss. That guy's got some challenging times ahead so...may the wind be at your back my brother (and may I never be caught downwind again). But enough about him, this isn't his fun, free online diary after all...

~ ~ ~

Did you catch the real subject of today's entry implied in the lede? “The dude called me from the bar”?

And why might he have had to call me from the bar?

Because I wasn't there.

I'm off the sauce, as per body-mandate. I'd been on a month's long, depression-fueled bender. And yes, I realize that alcohol itself is a depressant, so booze and depression aren't “complementary”. But damn if they don't like spendin' time together...

Anyway, the "bender" bar is set pretty high for me an account of my lifestyle. But I Fosbury-flopped that shit like a track star, got up and kept running. Hard. Until I hit the wall.

This would happen on a jobsite. I'd taken a gig building a freshwater dock, and began construction on an unseasonably warm day. It's physically demanding work, and my body, after months of abuse, failed me. Extreme light-headedness/dizziness, weakness and shortness of breath, dry heaving...all the hits, really. I was forced to work in 20-minute spurts, between which I'd lay down under a shade tree, staring up at the birds and the branches and the blue sky thinkin' “This ain't it buddy...this ain't it”.

So yeah, nary a drop since. It's been great, doin' sober stuff: driving in straight (boring, unoriginal) lines, showering, changing shirts; NOT being hilarious w/every cashier and postal clerk or rambling off-topic on anyone's notes or DMs... In all seriousness though, I have experienced a “positivity bump”. One that speaks to perhaps the most pernicious aspect of the depression/booze combo—it sapped my will.

One of my unfinished-at the-time jobs offered two things that used to keep me engaged professionally: carte blanche design authority and challenges in a field I knew nothing about (i.e. a chance to expand my skill-repertoire). But a listless air had gathered around my maudlin mindset, and I began eschewing the challenges I'd once embraced in favor of rote carpentry and handyman work, gigs that reaffirmed my crap worldview. Two days sober though and I showed up w/a cup of coffee and a notebook to face one of the more-vexing of my outstanding tasks. It was a complicated 12v marine wiring harness for a boat I'd finished remodeling in fucking February. The existent work was ad-hoc—a rat's nest of unlabeled, multicolored wires and I'd faced it at least five times before; always to fuck-off to the bar in knee-jerk frustration, texting the client that this wasn't my job, that I couldn't guarantee any work done...surrendering, basically. But after a few hours of staring and mapping and trial-and error-rewires, I figured it out. Other task-dragons on other jobs would be slain likewise in the days to follow, and I can honestly say that I've accomplished more in the past two weeks than in the three months prior.

Don't get me wrong though, none of these jobs were easy. Sobriety didn't hand me a cheat-code or anything. And sobriety hasn't stopped me from forgetting to pick up shit I need at the lumberyard (even though it's written on a list, in my hand) or from stepping backwards off a dock and falling in the water, twice, on the same afternoon. Alcohol never (noticeably) occluded my cognitive capacity, it did something more insidious. It sapped my will to overcome obstacles, at the same time as depression was dulling my enthusiasm for success. A debilitating combo for someone like me, who ranks “tenacity” amongst his stronger traits*.

So my mind is engaged and sharp(ish) again, but it would be dishonest not to mention the anxiety that informed my first couple of days on the wagon. Because I was way down in it, you know? I'd wake up with but a hazy recollection of the previous day, and no knowledge of (or interest in) what month it was...but I could tell you exactly how many cans were in the fridge or drinks were left in last-night's bottle. So in an effort to allay my addict's insecurity, I went to Mini-Mart and picked up an emotional-support Tall-Boy, and he's stood chill-vigil, untouched, in the fridge ever since. It's stupid, but so am I, so it works. And together we've soldiered through...

Physically (excepting a few vital, long-suffering, internal organs that I can't speak for) I bounced back quick; I was probably at 75% by the time I was loading that damn U-Haul, and feel stronger today. But I'm sooo hungry all the time now. It's like my body's calling in IOU's for every meal I skipped-or-scrimped-on while I was livin' in the bottle. Which is fine. The combination of my newfound appetite and the availability of funds previously earmarked for alcohol has added a new dimension to my daily routine. The Spartan, tactical-strike market trips I once approached as a chore: get in, get out...grab a can of beans and a 12-pack (or in times of austerity, maybe just the 12 pack?), have given way to more considered, inquisitive strolls up aisles less-visited. And I've been spoilin' myself, on occasion, with fancy upscale items. Like pears, an' shit.

Anyway, I'd been tacking incrementally off-course for months, and when I realized the straits I was in I jibed hard-again in-kind**. Is it smooth sailin' from here out? Can't say for sure but damn I feel good. My deleterious thirst has abated, and I've begun to tackle my depression as something causal, rather than existential. So if I was a betting man I'd say my loyal Tall-Boy's stay of execution is soon to expire...

~ ~ ~

On the second and third nights of my withdrawal, I got the DTs***. I was fluctuating between fever and chills. My dreams were rapid-cut and inchoate, and left me with the distinct impression of having been shouted at. In the midst of all of this I found myself, even while shaking uncontrollably, overcome with a weird sense of calm. Something I can only attribute to a gestalt synchronicity between my haunted mind and my debilitated body: as they were, at that moment, on the exact same page.

~ ~ ~

**Anyone playing metaphor-bingo on this entry? Christ. I'd hoped sober-me would be more judicious w/those.

***I'm using “DTs” to refer to detox in general. I knew someone who suffered actual Delirium Tremens, w/a seizure and the confusion and had to be hospitalized and restrained. Her experience weighed heavy on my mind those nights.

previous - next