Just Give this One a Pass

You can trust me, you know that?

And so anyway, after about three weeks without a drink you come into a new stage. Because naturally, you knew all along you were numbing your emotions because you couldn’t stand to feel them, but up to now you thought it was simple terror of the future and oh-my-God-what-am-I-gonna-try-to-destroy-myself-with-next. Natural enough when you’re in the habit of taking aim at your foot and letting ‘er rip with both barrels.

But at least by now you’re starting to feel a little confidence that you won’t lose all control and burn the house down just to watch the flames. The shame and the self-loathing are (as always) ever-present companions, but they’re quieted enough by now that most of the day you can almost forget they exist. And in the back of your mind you begin to feel a faint little hope, that maybe there’s something good to this world after all, and maybe you can dare to open yourself up to it, and maybe (just maybe) there’s something in you that’s worthwhile and deserves to be nourished, and maybe there is something like happiness in this world, or at least something other than being in constant pain and despair and just wanting to get away from yourself… and maybe someday you’ll even be able to do good, not just to yourself but to someone else too.

Maybe.

Because there’s still a big part of you that’s preoccupied with burning the house down. But at least it’s not afraid it’s gonna do it on a blind whim.

Nah, now it’s more to do with wanting to burn the house down because of the gnawing rage that more or less constantly sets your arms a-trembling. And you remember that years and years ago, before you ever started drinking, you were constantly angry, but most of the time you were too damned agreeable to dare let a peep of that out to another human soul.

You know the type. Frothing with rage but smiling and shy on the surface. More or less convinced in advance that nothing you do matters, nothing you want matters, and there’s no point in pursuing what you want because you’re just a helpless thing who’s great for spitting answers out of a textbook but really you can barely tie your shoe, let alone manage anything worthwhile.

Impotent rage, is what it boils down to.

And of course there were a million half-reasons why you felt that, but we won’t get into that now. Impotent rage is the point. The kind where you daydream about strangling strippers to death but in the last analysis you’re much more likely to burn your own house down. Because there’s anger there, and there’s a part of you that really wishes you’d never been born and the whole universe had never existed because it would be better for there to be nothing than for this nightmare to go on for so much as a second…

But you don’t want to hurt anybody. Not really. It’s just a fantasy you have because you feel helpless right now and if you can make things worse for someone else, well at least you’re powerful enough to cause somebody some pain.

But you don’t really want to do that.

Unless you’re lying to yourself…

Part of you would jump at the chance to make life hell for somebody else. Or two other people. Or fifty other people. Or five hundred other people.

Or… six million other people.

And that’s the nub of it. Or a nub of it, at least.

That there’s something in you that could fantasize about… that. That would be eager at the chance.

… let’s cut the bullshit. This one isn’t fiction.

I’m horrified by some of the desires I have. My own capacity for cruelty. I guess I’ve never done anything that bad, but then again I’ve never had the chance.

I know I’ve been unable to hold myself back from lesser cruelties. What makes me think I could resist, especially if I had the excuse that I was “just following orders?”

I guess I struggle to believe there’s anything good in me. And one of the reasons I drank so much was to hide that from myself.

There’s a line in one of the Gospels that keeps popping up in my mind lately. Jesus is about to be taken away to be crucified, and he tells his disciples: “Pray that you do not undergo the test.” Maybe I have an inkling what that means?

Anyway. I haven’t drank in three weeks.

I was furiously angry when I sat down to write.

I feel strangely empty now.