Friday, February 6, 2015

when i knew.


you know when i knew i had a drinking problem
it wasn’t when whiskey drove me home, my mind as black as the asphalt
it wasn’t the trickling, maddening throb of pancreatitis
it wasn’t the years i skated over 
the “grow with you in mind and spirit” part of our wedding vows
it wasn’t when i put shared paper to lips, inhaling deception; exhaling betrayal.
it wasn’t when my head smacked the concrete and it felt like a pillow or when
my knuckles bent back against his face and the sound felt like an shrill alarm 
or when my dad’s pleading tears competed with the rum and lost 
or the legions of times
i believed the problem to be the solution

no, hell no, my bottom needed to vise me in the gut, needed to 
unsettle itself there like
parasites that wouldn’t let me live this way anymore

this is when i knew
it was when i chose a second drink over a second heartbeat,
the kick in my stomach, her hand over it before 
she would lean over and kiss me and
the moment would be pregnant with more life than bourbon ever birthed
this is when i started to drink even more until the night when
sobriety dawned on me like the face of god

1 comment:

  1. Hope, baby. Always always always hope. Even when there is none visible. When the pit is so deep and dark and wide and engulfing that you cannot imagine that there ever was light, or ever will be again. You know in your gut. YOU. KNOW. In your gut that it exists. Light. Hope. Don't quit. Don't ever ever quit. We are all here together, in a greater consciousness than we were ever led to believe. When you have none, lie back and let our hope carry you. All you have to do is wake up, show up, and do your best. Let the Universe carry you. Let your wife, and your friends, and benevolence carry you. Stop doing, start being. It takes unbelievable courage to be present every day and to put down the medicine. But what is on the other side of that is the only life you were made to live. You have no choice - you are too valuable to surrender.

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