Slow Dance

Some of the most tragic events in our lives sometimes send us down a spiraling headfirst dive into a world of vices. Even in the calmest of waters, it takes a bit to find your bearings after a dive to come up to surface. If you’re a good swimmer, it takes less time than the average person, especially since you also know how to hit the water. If you’re an average person, you may or may not struggle a little, and if you’re a below average swimmer, you may or may not make it to the surface. Now apply a tidal wave, a typhoon, or any other factor that would turn any of the best swimmers into nothing more than a man overboard.

What I described resembles my journey with alcoholism. I would say that when I dived headfirst into the bottle, I was going in with weights on my feet already. When you see things and experience things that drive you to try and escape from the unforgiving nature of reality, one could be understood for wanting an escape. Lost hope after lost hope after lost hope of wanting to one day father a child and look upon them as they experience all the joys in life, guide them through the hardships, give advice to them, solicited or otherwise and instead be met each time with a view of disturbed soil, a grave marker, and the last time you ever see them is when they close a fancy box to be lowered into the ground along with a little piece of your spirit each time.

Life passes you by as you stare out the window, stare at a white wall without looking at it, and before you know it years have passed by while you’ve been on auto-pilot. Your body is an automaton carrying a set of eyes that’s been slacking on carrying information to the master inside your head. It’s almost like watching your life from your point of view on a television screen; everything is happening but you’re detached.

One day, you decide to get a few beers. Been awhile since you’ve had one, after all, drinking a few here and there, especially in the culture you’re apart of where drinking is not only normalized but damn near ingrained, that’s no big deal. You see your vision change, you feel different, life seems slower and more at your pace. This feels great. You feel less inhibited, you feel more you with every drink you take. So you crack another one… and another one… and another one, now you’re out, but you don’t want this feeling to end. But you feel great, so you just decide you can wait.

A few more times of trying to replicate the feeling you first had, you start drinking more, occasionally reaching for the harder stuff. It gets you there quicker, but my God does it taste like shit. At least you’re not bloated. A few more times turns into both days on the weekends, and after that, work nights, and hell, you’ve gotten this far, what’s a couple before work?

Regardless of the fact that every single day, the Sun creeps through the blinds like a child peering through a keyhole, blunt pain in your head, a stomach curses you out loud and compels an evacuation, doesn’t care how, you still press on, trying to run from everything that was put here before your time. Light of any kind is like hellfire to your eyes. You’re exhausted but you haven’t done anything today. You’ve just woken up and you feel worse than you did before you went to bed after your wife woke you up from the recliner.

No one calls you out. No one thinks there’s an issue or if they do, they’re not telling you. They don’t even say anything when you spend your last twelve bucks on a six pack of something that barely qualifies as beer. Getting paid tonight, you can just get more after work. The whirlpool spins in a steady manner, you don’t know why nothing is ever getting better. You plunge ever deeper in an amber lake searching for the meaning to everything, for comfort, for peace. Your head is still facing the bottom, you haven’t even begun to look down, which is now up to you.

This… it was supposed to be a crutch to help, but you’re still picking yourself up everyday, no one else is, the crutch isn’t there. It’s a bunch of empty bottles which even after being empty contains more inside them than you do inside yourself. It isn’t working. Why not? Everything that led you to the path that you are on now is still there, and now you’ve got diabetes, false hope, your depression is even worse than it was before.

The one thought you have left is the one that terrifies you the most, because now you know there is no way out. There is no light at the bottom of the ocean, it’s down, which again, is up because you haven’t begun turning this shit around yet. You look down… and it seems a little bit brighter than where you are at now. Granted, it’s a hell of a swim back up, and it’s going to take damn near forever to get there, but it’s the only thing you haven’t tried. Your life and the things that happened weren’t bright by any means, but it was still brighter than down here with all the apparitions that you’ve tried to run from. They followed you all the way down here.

You’ve got four beers left. You make a vow that after these four, you are done. You drink them and get it out of the way, and you’re still at the bottom of the ocean, but at least right now, you’re standing on your feet. You push yourself up and strain to make muscles work that haven’t had any activity in God knows how long. Any resistance you ever had, you’ve poured some sauce on it and though it didn’t go away, the slickness made the punches slide off a little better, but they still left a bruise.

Week one, your body gives you the benefit of the doubt. You have a few headaches sure, but your body is giving you some leeway. Week two, your body and mind are fighting each other in a knockdown drag out fight. Your body desperately wants to return to that ten years of normal that it knew, and your mind ever so slightly starts to concede, telling you, “maybe we should listen. Just one.” Your mind hasn’t completely taken over, so you still have some room to fight.

That’s when you start getting gas at places that don’t have alcohol inside. You start taking a different way home from work. You see a gas station, but know that the temptation to walk into your spiritual mortuary is too much to risk. You’re on edge. One look, one wrong tone, one wrong word, and you don’t have anything to let the blows slide this time. The scariest thought you’ve had in a long time is now there is no fickle shield between you and the world.

Your ego, believe it or not helps you survive. It tells you not to give in, not to break. Is this willpower or is this being stubborn? Who gives a damn?

Finally, your body calms down, your mind isn’t working overtime, and your head’s above water. You swam from the bottom to the surface. It took time, but you learned how to swim. The sky is clear, and the sun doesn’t hurt your eyes anymore. You’re still in the water, but at least you can breathe. A few thunderstorms here and there, a lot of things that look like what pushed you to the bottom, but other than that, at least you can swim. You can tread water. You may be treading water till the day you die, but at least you realize your true strength now.

People around you are having almost no trouble treading the same water. Sometimes you see their heads dip a little but they come back up. Diving isn’t for everyone. You may never be on land or a ship again for as long as you live, but at least you’re not afraid of the water. Just don’t look down, which is now, for the first time in a long time, actually down.

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