Nobody Seemed to Notice.
At the beginning of December, I started a new full-time job at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History.
I was welcomed into the Department of Education with such a flourish and so much care, I couldn’t believe my good fortune. My job was to answer phones, type, and do whatever else was necessary for the other staff in the department.
My office was tucked away in a part of the museum that no one ever sees, which meant I was privy to all the museum’s wonder but rarely had to contact the public.
Every time I left my office, I walked awestruck through the permanent exhibits, enjoyed behind-the-scenes access as temporary exhibits were constructed, visited whole rooms of taxidermized mammals awaiting display, and cruised through quiet hallways that the general public never knew existed.
In my time at the Carnegie, I especially loved Mondays when the museum was closed, and I could cower under the dinosaurs alone and stare up-close at grizzly bears on my way to deliver an invoice to the maintenance department.
The best part of the job, though, was the job itself. I fit right in with my brilliant colleagues: curators, writers and docents. Once word got out that I could proofread, I did some proofreading. When word got out that I could write, I wrote correspondence and articles. They didn’t leave me stuck waiting for the phone to ring; they included me, like I was as much a member of the staff as those who had been there for a decade.
Their confidence in me made me feel confident in myself. While I was still “just a secretary,” I felt important and needed and even essential to the inner workings of that department. I felt like I belonged at this world famous museum. And I wanted to rise to the occasion, to reciprocate by letting my team know how important they were to me, so I did the very best job I could do.
Unfortunately, I was a raging alcoholic and I had a terrible time getting out of bed.
Only a few weeks into my new position, I started staying out too late (again) and hanging out with Gregg (again) and drinking until I could not drink anymore, which was always well into the wee hours of the morning. I never left a bar before closing time, except to go to another bar.
Unsurprisingly, this showed in my ability to get to work on time. It showed in my job performance. It showed in my attitude and my inability to stay awake in the mornings and my inability to focus in the afternoons. Almost as soon as I got to The Carnegie Museum of Natural History, I became a liability.
Fortunately for me, nobody seemed to notice.
So I told my therapist. My new job let me take extra time every Tuesday to keep seeing Dr. C, so I kept going. I analyzed dreams and shrugged off goals and griped about Gregg.
Every week Dr. C would say, “How much did you drink?”
I would say, “I have no idea.”
“Maybe you could count drinks by collecting bottle caps.”
I almost always drank from cans, but I didn’t mention that until the following week.
“No bottle caps!” I’d say.
“Collect the tabs from the cans then,” he’d say.
“I only drank drafts!” I’d say the following week. “And some shots.”
“Use a notebook to keep track,” he’d say. “Keep a running tally.”
“I didn’t have a pen,” I’d say.
Work was suffering. I was floundering. And my therapist was getting frustrated.
I just kept drinking.