In Despair, I Hit the Bottle.
The stories I remember best are those that changed me in some way: took away my innocence, made me feel brave, hurt me beyond repair, frightened me into submission, caused me to rebel, caused irreparable damage, broke my heart, made me lash out, gave me hope, tried to kill me, reminded me I had reasons to live.
But the feelings are what I remember most – the emptiness, the angst, the bottomless pit of sorrow and loss. When trying to accurately describe the depths of my constantly depressed state, I googled the word that came to mind over and over.
The word was “despair.”
de·spair
/dəˈsper/
noun
the complete loss or absence of hope.
Yes, I thought. The complete loss of hope. That’s it.
Coincidentally, Google – not me! – used the word “despair” in a sentence, to show just how desperate a despairing person might be.
Google’s sentence?
For the terribly literate, Google was not suggesting that I slap my hand on a bottle of lemonade if I am in despair. Google was suggesting that if one is despairing, one might do something so desperate as to drink alcohol.
And of course, I was drinking alcohol as often as was humanly possible, not relating it to my despair at all. I was drinking alcohol because I was a complete and total drunk. I had crossed over that invisible line without realizing it, and had taken to drinking and doing drugs with all the gusto of a starving man who had just been presented with a buffet.
I did this every single day, without fail, not because I was in despair – but because I was an alcoholic. And being an alcoholic caused me to be in despair every single day. I was 100% stuck in a life that I did not want, and had absolutely no way to get out of it.
I had jumped out a window, landed on my head, and lived. I had survived my one serious suicide attempt and made an instantaneous deal with God that I would go on.
But I didn’t want to go on. I lived with zero gratitude.
I hated my life. I hated waking up with an unbearably dry mouth, squinting to filter any light in the room, wanting to vomit but empty inside. I hated not knowing where I’d been the night before, what I’d done, with whom I’d done it, or where I was now. I hated feeling ostracized by the world for being a drunk, ostracized by my family for being a biker chick, and ostracized by the bikers because I was nothing like them. I hated my life. I hated everything I did. I hated everything I’d become.
And yet I could not fathom for even one moment that there was anything I could do to make the pain stop.
And so I was in a constant state of despair. I had no hope, not for a single moment of any day. I didn’t feel like something good was just around the corner. I didn’t feel like anything would ever change. I couldn’t see a way out of the predicament I’d gotten myself into – but I thought the predicament was Larry, and Pitcairn. I didn’t know yet that the predicament was Alcohol and Me.
So I woke up without hope. I drank and had sex and did drugs. I blacked out then passed out. And then I awoke, again, without hope.
I was in constant, agonizing despair.
And I tried to numb the despair with alcohol, a sadly temporary solution to a permanent problem.