Wait, So You Mean You Don’t Drink Any Alcohol, Ever?
I’ve become a keen observer of my sadness. This distinct feeling of melancholy is old. With familiar stories involving my various errors and defects. But I’m no longer inside of this, consumed. I am watching, almost as if from above, seeing the pattern. Knowing that it passes. It’s all ancient. Different stories with the same root experience. Explanations I came up with when I was young, not yet able to grasp the bigger picture.
This sadness I speak of, it isn’t necessarily a scary or bad feeling. I’m fairly comfortable here. Its even rather cozy. I can exist inside the depth without getting lost. But when I don’t take care of myself, when I drink alcohol for example, it can snowball into the quickest of regressions, leaving me with a pronounced victimhood and rage at the many ways I’ve been done wrong. A deep haunting that my existence is lacking. A jarring and inescapable reverb of hollow loneliness.
So, yeah, I stopped drinking over a year ago. I had quit once before in my mid twenties, after many stories of very bad things happening, attributed to or exacerbated by my drinking. Being sober as a single twenty-something was frowned upon by a lot of people. In my forties, it’s a whole different game. No one really cares that I don’t drink. Many think it’s admirable and have cut back or quit, themselves. People assume I’m just…
