Blacking Out The Friction
October 2nd, 2005 by Adam
It starts with blurs and shifting lights—sounds that invade until your stomach rolls and you awake in a panic, mind spinning with confusion and fear as you slowly reach consciousness and the hammer blows of pain strike at your temples, exerting enough pressure just behind your eyes to force them closed. ‘Oh god’ your mind repeats over and over as you force yourself to once more open your eyes. Flashes of sickening white heat; pianos and posters blur lazily in front of dilated pupils. It’s about then the adrenaline hits long enough to take stock of the situation.
It’s day— the light creeping through venetian blinds is evidence of that—but the hour is a mystery. Mentally you go through the familiar list. Hands and feet? Check. Fingers and toes? Check. All your piercings? Check. Are you in a familiar place? Yes. Are you in imminent danger? No. The questions come one by one in the singularity of established routine, forcing themselves through ruptured neural pathways until the question that hangs awkwardly, coming only at deliberate length with the quiet shame of a guilty child.
…What happened?
That answer is easy to construct, or at least the outline: you were drunk. Not a happy social drunk with light-hearted banter and flirting, nor a wild party drunk that found you dancing on tables or shacking up in a closet with a psychotic admirer. No, this was the blackout kind of drunk— the insidiously dark drunk that smashes your resolve and your sanity, leaving you bed-ridden for 2 days, waking only to lay on the shower floor and vomit into the drain, shitting stomach acid and loose bits of intestinal walls burned off by cheap vodka and bile— the kind of drunk that blanks your memory and you awake the next morning to find your vomit-drenched clothes laying on the floor and an unconscious woman across the bed. As she stirs you grimace and think hard, trying to reconstruct the kaleidoscope images of the evening previous. The memories permeate and you begin to recall basic events, though fuzzy and unreliable, appearing to you through the thick gauze of indirect recollection. You remember her coming over. You remember drinks with co-workers. You remember the two forties of Country Club afterward. You remember the grocery store and the bottle of generic vodka. You remember taking shots from a baby food jar and suddenly your brain hits that fourth wall and you simply can’t remember any more.
‘Are you asleep?’ she asks, bringing you around to meet a pair of piercing blue eyes. For all your confusion and pain she looks absolutely beautiful in the honesty of late-morning light as you force a weak smile and make small talk. She asks if you remember shooting pool, going outside, getting punched in the stomach, falling down in the hallway. You answer ‘no’ over and over, searching for the knowledge, wanting it to exist somewhere, but wretched weakness has robbed you once again as you struggle to dredge up those memories– mind bursting with unrelated vignettes; pictures of a world you created but can’t seem to recall. The force of confusion and anger begins to build up inside, layered like carpet squares, until your mind reels and the nausea sets in. You claim a need to urinate and escape to the bathroom where you slump against the wall sullenly and try to slow the beating of your heart, wondering if she can tell. A classic trait of any alcoholic: the overwhelming need to pretend it’s not a problem; that you’re not so sick, that it wasn’t too much, that it’s okay. You laugh it off each and every time but in a very real way you understand it’s not okay as you choke back a wave of nausea, tongue sticking to the roof of your mouth. You try drinking water from the faucet but bile immediately fills your mouth and you spit violently, sliding back against the wall, turning off the light to make the spinning stop. Too dehydrated to sweat, you lay briefly on cool tile, building up the courage to reenter that bedroom and lay down beside her.
From the floor the badness comes. Not the physical damage, but the emotional toll such episodes inevitably take— the shame, the fear, the guilt of knowing that you’re out of control, that you lack the ability to say ‘no’ to the haunting demons of possession that whisper ‘more… more… more!’ as you raise the bottle to your lips once again, drowning your identity, resolve, and self-respect in the process. Long after she’s gone and forgotten, long after the headache subsides and your stomach finally heals from the incessant purging, the shame is still there, burning worse than vodka or cigarette; punching through your abdomen at the thought of everyone you’ve loved or hurt and every evening you’ve lost to this weakness. The shame comes in expanding waves: the fear of facing friends and family knowing that you don’t know what was said or done; wondering who is looking at you sideways and shaking their heads in disapproval; knowing that the encounter was coerced, that she finally gave in because it was easier than saying no for the thousandth time. The shame recedes and builds again for another battering: the guilt of hearing her voice on the phone and knowing that she’s ashamed, worried, concerned, frustrated; knowing they all are; knowing that you know better, but knowing that it’s only a matter of time until it all happens again.
It’s always just a matter of time.
You return to the bedroom one deliberate step at a time, eyeballs twitching from movement on movement on movement until you crumple safely to the bed and begin steeling yourself for the deluge. She speaks again but you’ve stopped listening. Thoughts flit inside your head but you only catch glimpses of content and color—your Uncle’s kitchen floor, a Broken Spindles song, your brothers voice from another room— and you laugh a sad, sickened laugh at the broken shards of promises made and devoured as easily as any bottle of liquor.
Yet you stubbornly make that promise again— silently, as willfully as you can with the full force of sickness, shame and exhaustion bending your desire— and you plunge forward endlessly, keeping this morning enigmatic as a vague reminder of why the future must be different while always looking forward to tomorrow because ‘One Day At A Time’ is the mantra, and one day is always better than zero.
Back on the wagon,
Adam