I always thought if you show the world you tender spots they'd either devour you or else just feel pity. But it seems that's not always the case. This blog has been written and is being written as a road map through all the achille's heels in my persona. Yet it brings no predators. No missionaries. Only people just like myself. Stronger than they are weak. Weaker than they are strong. Not lost, but unable to commit to a destination.

Everyone has their vices. It's just some people's are more flagrant.

I never wanted to be weak. Nor to be strong. I just wanted to prove I wasn't the only person who couldn't be sure of what they are.

I worried the words would be too ripe. Too dark. Old fruit fallen off the vines. Sticky on the fingers, but sour in the mouth.

Just thought for a change I'd speak instead of listen and see what might be heard. And to my surprise people listened.

People just like me. Just like everyone. Who want to be weak. And want to be strong. But still haven't figured out how to be both.

The truth is it doesn't hurt at all. I feel nothing.

Life was a balloon that popped long ago. All that's left is a shrivelled, broken skin.

There's this void between me and anyone else. Any kind of emotion that attempts to pass through it is dampened down to nil. Like when you leave the amplifier on high, but there's no music coming out of the speakers. That hum it emits that sucks up any other sounds trying to make you hear them. There's nothing else. Just the silence as it breathes so loud.

Maybe I just don't want to feel. Been there. Done that. It wasn't for me.

It's probably just the preliminary stages of letting go. Instead of assembling the puzzle, I'm deconstructing it. One tiny, awkwardly shaped piece at a time until the picture that was once there no longer exists.

Is being an alcoholic a totally bad thing? I think not. I can manage.

Maybe some prozac would be a more efficient cure. That's likely. But I don't want it.

What if Silvia Plath had been medicated? No Bell Jar then. Or Lord Byron. Emily Dickenson and the others.

I'd rather be miserable and be able to write.

I know I'll never be amongst them. The great writers. The great poets. At least not until I've killed myself. Perhaps then. But still doubtful.

But something about antidepressants just doesn't ring true. Maybe. Maybe, just maybe, if you're a depressed sort of person that's what you ought to be. I mean, if everyone was happy, happiness would lose all its cache.

Truth be told, I'm not really depressed. Just don't think life is so special. It's just life afterall. Anyone can make it.

It happens all the time.

Big deal. So what? Next topic.

If life was so wonderful for most people alcohol wouldn't never been invented.

You can keep your cures. I don't need them. And when i do want one I've plenty of my own.

Have you ever loved someone you knew you shouldn't? Where emotion contradicts all cognitive reasoning. And all you can do is ride out the conflict.

I loved what he did. That being himself. And his addiction. I became what he loved. Not what he would love, but what I thought he might. I wanted so much to know him that I became him. In every sense. In life, career and habit.

I spent countless hours trying to figure out what I lacked. What he had that I wanted. And what in me was not worth his attention. His respect.

And now I do know him because I know myself. And we labor under our separate delusions of what we ought to be next. I know that we both lack the same thing. A belief in happiness. And that is why no matter how much we have in common we'll never be any better together than we are apart. Because even with him inside me I was still alone. And even as I was wrapped myself around him he was still so far away.

As if time could recontstruct the buildings we've condemned. Or that a common weakness could unlock the gates of either fortress.

It's easy enough to love whatever you happen to. And you can destroy your whole life looking for a way to make it love you back. But if it didn't when you told it so, it likely never will.

It's hard to accept. Especially when they tease you as they will with promises that tomorrow will be different. But unfortunately a lot of people will take advantage of that vulnerability. The more you love them, the greater opportunity they see to exploit that weakness.

I never would've known it if not for him, but in some cases the distance between what we want and what we have is the only thing willing to save us. From ourselves. From our own willingness to become whatever it is we think will make them love us back.

More than five years later I can ignore, but I can't forget. And I don't know how to undo all the things I did to understand him.

But I do understand him now. And everything he did. And I know what I lack. The willingness to keep letting him take advantage.

Love is just another lie we tell ourselves. Like god and santa claus. So that the world doesn't seem to big and harsh.

There's no happiness to be found in anyone until you first find it in yourself.

That is if you ever do.

empty paper tubes
stand guard at the edge,
as the moon stretches its jaw
wider until;

bending as you reach in
to feel what's left,

that window doesn't
open anymore, but it
stays closed so well.

those words don't
mean what they did then,
as moist fangs tore
into still warm flesh;

accomodating as it did
to fit your world inside it,

thinking the moments
would eventually reveal
the reasons i'd missed.

we met in our silence
and we never left,
we followed our paths
as they disected;

when you'd close your eyes
i'd look for what i'd
not been able to find in them.

i never found it,
but sometimes i still look.

These words as they were are only thoughts. Thin strands in a thick rope. Focused close and tight on the small pieces. Not the whole.

There is more to life than alcohol. More to life than this blog. More than the notions I confess to it.

This space is a microscope through which I examine closely the malignant cells in my makeup. They are not all diseased, but those that are are all that I put under this lens.

Not to seek a cure. I have that already. I only debate when or if ever I will use it.

Not to seek pity. I've never enjoyed being the center of attention. I'm much too shy for that.

The purpose is first and foremost simply to write. To exercise that muscle in my head which breathes only words yet chokes on their endemic silence. To record what I feel now so that later, when I find myself a different person yet again, I might come back to these notes and understand how I got there.

Not as a way to get back to where I've come from. But as a means to insure I'll know better than to ever return again.

They're all just words, though I see something more.

It's just life. Anyone can make it. Or destroy it. It's ours to manipulate. It doesn't belong to some god that never shows itself. It belongs to us. Every molecule. Every dreary moment. Is ours. To live with. Or die trying.

Every day people reproduce. People who probably shouldn't. It's no miracle. It's just a lack of birth control and distorted principles.

Being born isn't enough. Life isn't an excuse to live.

There has to be a better reason.

Or if there isn't. Then I was right all along.

It's just life. Anyone can make it. No gods required. Just sex and ignorance.

And then you're born and they all want you to live.

They created your life, but they still can't give you a reason to keep it.

Because they're not gods. Just people. Same as anyone is.

People are the ones who create life. And people are the ones who destroy it.

I'd sawe myself if I could.

Crutches. Lots of people have them. Alcoholics obviously. But there are lots of crutches people never even notice are. Like god for instance. Love for another. All three goad the broken to lean upon them. Taunt with promises of faster healing and less pain in the process. But none of these things actually help us recover. Instead it's they that we end up needing to recover from. None of these things teach us how to stand on our own. All they do is make us more and more dependent upon them to hold ourselves up.

They offer false salvation and false hope based on myth or else through the ply of desperation.

Moderately mentally healthy people require none of the three to be content. And anyone who requires one or more is an addict.

Each offers its own brand of pseudo-euphoria. Each begs a devotion which if left unchecked ultimately becomes an addiction.

They all make life easier to swallow. But maybe life isn't something we should be swallowing. Maybe what we should be doing is spitting it out.

They all collect victims by promising things they'll never deliver. And keep them using fear tactics.

Even though I know they're all bad, it's hard not to point out that alcohol lies the least of them and relatively speaking does the least damage.

I would imagine there are people who go through their entire lives just the way I'm going through mine now. When you're a functional alcoholic you have that luxury. Whether or not that's a good thing, I don't know.

It's a precarious balance of control and powerlessness. And I spend most of my nights fearing that scale will suddenly decide to tip to the wrong side.

On the one hand, it's not interfering with my job or day to day functions. On the other, I can't go without it. I can wait til 11pm, but only because I know that waiting will eventually result in...

I didn't use any dvd's tonight. (That's how I trained myself to wait til later to drink. TV without commercials is so much easier to watch). Was just fucking around on the computer and listening to music. I made it as far as ten til 11. Will I drink less than four? That remains to be seen.

Do I want it enough? Probably not. Do I care, not so long as it's a nominal problem.

Still I can't help but think, functional in what sense exactly? I don't know. I may have a good job. I may even do it well. But still, lately, I don't feel so very functional.

In some ways I never have. And probably never will. No matter what.

he remarked nothing
with his words;
just echoes of
all the empty in him.

we strummed eachother
like electric guitars,
until every last chord
had been played;

and then we turned
off the amplifier
and played upon
eachother yet again.

all just vibrations,
intangibles pressing on
the soft cones in emotion
that turn shadows into sound.

the door at his back
in steep perspective;
the sheets behind us
in stern aftermath;

empty bottles are all we've ever been.

The first drink is always free. The second has a small price. And thereafter, steadily the cost increases while the product is diminished.

Life isn't a highway. It's an engine. All those moving parts need lubrication. It comes in many forms. Under many labels at varying expense.

And every so often, after so many miles, you need to change it.

Otherwise all that friction will grind it down inside until it makes a lot of noise, but doesn't go anywhere.

The first drink is always free. But after that the price you pay depends upon how much you want it. Caveat Emptor. Let the buyer beware.

You tend to get just what you paid for in ways you never imagined.

The gentle hum of all things sober is always present in every drink. We just don't listen or don't want to hear it.

Last night it was around 1:30am and I was only 1/4 of the way through beer number three and I actually considered going to sleep without having another. In my head I wanted more, but my body was feeling like I'd already had five.

It was strange. I was dumbfounded by the fact that my body wanted less than my mind did. I actually sat there for a few moments staring at bottle number three, nearly full, and marvelled at the notion that I already felt so wasted.

Habits. Addictions. Whatever you want to phrase them, are so much more in your head than in your body. At least mine have always been. My physical self was being all kinds of easygoing, offering me the chance to go to bed after only three. I haven't done that since I don't remember. But my psychological self is just too stubborn. Too damn interested in destruction over preservation.

I guess that's an obvious truth. If it wasn't I wouldn't have this habit to begin with.

The gentle hum of all things sober is always present in every drink. We just don't listen or don't want to hear it. Because letting go is easy, but it's so hard starting over.

soft pursuit in
channeled steps;
dark hair, fair voice
barely spoken.

with the moon behind you
and forever ahead,
you confessed no crime,
other than having been.

we listened to the
sky change form light to dark
as the game absobred the
last of our pawns.

no shadows noted,
no flames foretold;
only moments passed
in all those lifetimes.

the orange edge
crept near the blue,
and with one inhale
it had all been tasted;

thoughts dancing to
the sound of our mutual silence,
eyes nailed to the memory;
of what almost happened.

the moon at the back of her head,
the words in the narrows of her throat;
all things to which feeble heart succumb.

the less you have,
the less you want.

What does it mean to be anyone? Pages turned by the wind. Yellowing darker with each night that passes. Spilled ink. A lifetime of words frozen in their silence.

What is there to love except these temporary amnesias to be found in habits bold and crisp. Blizzards in the mind cast their tender blankets over the dead. And it's cold, but at least it's pretty for awhile.

What is there to want other than this? This deepest well of dark forgiveness. No exotic dreams dare burn in my heart. No flowers bloom on the edge of this cliff. Just eyes wide open until I draw its veil across. Just craggy steps leading only down to where nothing asks and nothing tells.

It's no nightmare. You can't wake up from it. It's just the constant echo of the life you wanted to, but couldn't live.

There's no telling how much it'll hurt, but you can usually guage by how good it feels. For every joy in life there are consequences.

You don't pay your dues and then get to heaven. Whatever that is. You're given a little morsel of heaven and then asked to pay for the full taste.

Life is wanting what you don't know how to get. Or else wishing you never got what you have.

Just like drinking is. You look through the keyhole in the door to heaven, but it only lets you watch. It doesn't let you in.

ugly truth (comprehending);
goodbye lost in the
viral scope of
terminal missives.

torn eyes (looking)
at blank pages
where sentences
once prevailed their wisdoms;

as if we were,
or could be,
that which i imagined
in my hopeless naivete.

all colors of the spectrum;
all eyes seeiing.

in our broken stare
we left ourselves until
we were left by it.

and even then,
still no mention of.

Show people only your strength and they will feel threatened. Show people only your weakness and they will pity you. Show them some of both and they will know that just like them you're human. A soft cacophony of emotions. A raging whisper of duality. More alone sometimes in the presence of friends than of strangers. Because those who know me, whomever they are, know what I am. I don't want them to possess this knowledge. And if I could I'd wash it from their minds the same as I do from my own.

To know me is to pity me. And to feel threatened. Because both sides cannot show at the same time. I am bisected. Split right down the center every time someone comes near.

While alone I am whole.

And try as I may with this alcoholic adhesive to keep these two halves together in their presence, still it always loses its grip.

And I am pitied. Or I am a threat. But still I'm not human.

It tastes like tomorrow. Feels like cotton candy on my tongue. As the slick slivers dissolve into my mood. All concfected with sorrow until every strand is but a wisp. What once was solid only an afterthought now. As alone together we assume eachother in our various poses.

Faulty mirrors full of distorted reflections.

I wnanted something to want, but I never found it. So I decided instead I'd wait until I was wanted.

If that time should ever come.

There are already too many wives. Too many mothers. So what is there left for me to be, except what I am.

Child. Daughter. Lover. Alcoholic.

Perhaps a little more.

If that should ever come to be.

I used to have a t-shirt that read Carpe Diem. Seize the Day. I got it round about the eighth grade and by the time I was 30 it was virtually unwearable. That's what I need again. A shirt that says something like that. A shirt that quotes the movie "Dead Poets Society". Because I've never opted to belong to any kind of group, but that;s a group I've always, involuntarily belonged to nevertheless.

Carpe Diem. Seize the moment before it's gone.

In many ways that's what I've always done. The moment just never seized back.

You can grab whatver you want, but that doesn't mean it'll grab back. Doesn't mean it won't sue you for sexual harrassment.

Carpe Diem I've done. Really. I've seized the day on many occasions. And been seized by the realization that choice can only take you so far. At some point it's always up to someone else.

And after that your only choice left is to choose again. Even if you choose nothing at least you've chosen.

Even if all your choices turn out to be wrong. At least they were yours.

Carpe Diem. Seize the day or be seized by it.

it conspires to know
how lies become truth,
and the opposite;

with a jagged razor
it gnaws through the
veins nearest to the surface.

lessons fraught with
too much experience,
teach me little more than
to give up.

if there is a chaser to
help me swallow what
now fills my glass,
it's sure to chase me in
everything i do.

few things are permanent;
the number on the bottle,
the smile on the face as
it begs another kiss.

how it tastes different
every time, because you're
gone a little more than you were
the last time that i counted.

Love and alcohol aren't so very different. Both are addictive. And dangerous. In the beginning they draw you in with bright bursts of joy that careen through your body like mental orgasms. But after a little while it always changes. You find yourself no longer wanting to want them, but unable to stop.

That lonely past looms in your forethoughts as you wonder to yourself, even if I could let it go, what then. What else is there? And you answer yourself. Nothing.

If I feel this way now, how much worse will I feel without it?

But there's a funny thing I learned on my way down to the bottom. However empty your life is before you give in to whatever vice is available, it's no less empty during. It's just in the midst of we can't see clear enough to know nothing has changed except how much harder we're making it for ourselves.

Love and alcohol they're really quite similar. Each holds us when we feel alone. Plays on our obvious weaknesses. Each takes more than it gives until there's nothing left of the person that they first met. And they both always force us to let go when it's the very last thing that we can stand to do.

I guess we can stay, but the longer we do, the more it becomes us. Until we're not alive at all anymore and that void we've been trying so hard to evade is all that's left.

would've been in hell
if i wasn't already there;
like the way that words change meaning
given the sentence that surrounds.

it's not enough just to say
that you love me now,
or once did,
you have to love me
before i was
and after;

becuase i can't love myself.

the empty bottles that
count long after i've stopped,
they always promise a moment
they never deliver.

just a cocoon wherein the life
still is trying to grow itself;
wings form in slow precipitations
as the truth unwinds.

we couldn've been anything, but
this is what we are;
dirty drinking fountains at
the mouth of the heart.

They tell recovering alcoholics to live one day at a time. But what if one day is still too much? I live my nights in fifteen minute increments. 9:15 still sober. 9:30 even better.

I've been changing. Started out using DVD's of TV shows and movies I really like to train myself to lay there watching instead of sitting here drinking. They're a world apart. The bed and the chair in front of the computer, even though they're in the same 12'x10' room.

I've laid there on the bed many nights til 10:30 or 10:45 just watching various DVD's. Fifteen minute increments. That's the dosage I take sobriety in. Fifteen minutes at a time and an hour is over in only four injections. And now I can lay there watching regular TV and wait. Fifteen minutes at a time. It doesn't go by too slow. But still underneath the conditioning I am always waiting. Waiting for the prescribed time when my mind says it's okay now to have what I've been wanting from the outset.

I suspect the wanting never really goes away. Even after recovery.

When they said life isn't fair, they weren't detailed enough.

Like mismatched lovers, alcoholics and alcohol tend to do eachother so much harm, but still never stop wishing they could somehow be good together. Cause sometimes they even are. And it's hard to let go of they only good thing in your life. Even when it's the worst thing too.

Better? Worse? The Same? All of the above in some way or another.

I don't really remember ever being happy. I can remember times I was distracted from my discontent. During good sex, on fast/high roller coasters, going down steep hills on two wheels without a helmet. Plenty of times I've dismissed, forgotten or otherwise not noticed whatever this terminal state of my mind is. It's not exactly depression. Not quite sadness. Maybe it's just who I am.

I've got memories all the way back to about five years old, but nothing really spectacular. The first tooth I lost right before kindergarten was set to begin. The JcPenny catalog my mother bought all my clothes from for the first 12 years of my life. These are my memories. Stupid, mediocre shit.

Well, the clothes remind me of the time my mother freaked out because whatever husky size I'd been wearing didn't fit anymore. The jeans, I believe were pink, size childs husky, 16 1/2. There was a lot of yelling and you're so fat's. Like I didn't get that enough from the other kids.

I still cried back then. Hey, I was just a kid. So I cried. And she yelled. And still the pants didn't fit.

I could probably put those same pink pants on right now and have room to spare, but strangely that's little comfort to me now.

Maybe my memory is defective and it only saves the bad stuff. Because there have to have been good ones. There have to have been and it's my fault because I can't remember them.

Been thinking a lot about McMarried lately. I wrecked that so good.

But then I'm not sure it was all me. I had issues it's true. But I never left him. He left me. I understand the reasons. That's all good. But then why come back only to leave again?

The things I said, you'd hear them before. They never made you leave until you had little to gain from staying.

That's who I am. Don't try to socialize with me sober. Especially when there are feelings involved. Not good feelings of loss.

I told him to call me back when I'd had enough beers and I honestly thought he would. Cause I meant what I said. I always have. I'm not much of a girl like that.

I can't do it sober. With him or anyone else. All that pretending life is good.

But after enough beers I miss them. The people and all the moments they spawned. And I can love them still without having to lose all over again everything that's already been lost.

So I thought if I reached out a little. Sent a few friendly emails. Maybe he'd feel secure enough to get in touch again. Cause I honestly thought that was what was lacking. He'd been reading my other blog. Googling my many websties for references to his nickname. And I'd been cold that last time. I actually thought he cared and was just feeling rejected.

So I threw my hand down on the table, but he didn't call it.

No big surprise. It's not as though I haven't been mistaken before. But I really was hoping there was something real there. That I had been more than just a sounding board to him all those times in the past. More than just sex and web pages.

Yea, okay, maybe you are sensitive, but hey!!! So am I.

Maybe I hurt your feelings. I probably did. But mine have been hurt too. By you, on many occassions.

I made an effort. And this wasn't the first time. I'd have made more of an effort. Acutally made contact in real time, if it weren't for all those nagging insecurities telling me to him I am irrelevant.

The last thing I want to do is bother someone who's glad I'm gone. And with him, as with most everyone, it's always seemed gone is where they've always wanted me.

Hell, even I wish I was gone. That's why I drink.

Maybe I haven't made myself clear. I don't have a problem with stopping the drinking. I have a problem convincing myself I want to stop drinking.

Granted life isn't all that great this way. There are pros and cons. But life before. Not better really. More cons. Less pros.

Sad really. That drinking should make a life better. How pathetic said life must've been that this would be an improvement.

Well, not everyone is born attractive and well inclined to socialize. There are probably home schooled children who have more social skills than I do.

It hasn't really been helping me lately. If anything it's been facilitating my antisocial tendencies.

I figure I'm always going to be alone so the sooner I start getting used to it the better. I think there's a limited amount of happiness to go around. And the rest of us must live with the opposite. Because that is the balance of the universe. You need both rain and sunshine to grow the plants. And life needs both joy and grief to make it happen.

Fish lay hundreds of eggs because instinct and evolution tells them only a small portion will survive. When we set out to grow something we know we must plant a lot of seeds. Because we know only a few of them will actually live.

"Are there any more recyclables?" she asked.

"There's this bottle, but be careful, there's still some in it." I said.

Then she shoved in right in my face and said, "Finish it!"

Disgusted, I spat back an insulted, "NO!"

I suppose it must've been some kind of test. I guess I passed. But the results are irrevelant.

Some people just don't get the whole concept of a functional alcoholic. We're addicted, yes. We crave it, we do. But on a schedule that doesn't conflict with responsibility. We are the kermits. Not the gonzos.

I still remember in school the teacher telling us that an alcoholic isn't neccessarily someone who drinks all the time. Even if they only have a few drinks, but they do it everyday, they probably are.

Shades of grey to everything. Daylight. Darkness. And everything inbetween.

You go to sleep one night innocent. The next morning you wake up addicted.

I'd even go so far as to say some people are destined to become. To fall in love with how blurry life gets when.

he talks like the moon
and moves like the ocean;
vascilating between here and gone
with no intention of ever choosing.

the words smear across
half turned pages,
but it only matters
what they haven't said.

warm is the memory still
as loneliness stokes the flame,
generous is the empty heart
as it longs for something to fill.

maybe it's never over,
or maybe there are no beginnings;
only lies we tell eachother,
the kind we can't tell ourselves.

Do you think alcoholics get to have friends? Maybe some, but then they probably lose them. You'd think they could be friends with eachother. But such is not my experience. Must be all those secret reasons that cause one to drink that much in the first place that interfere with the ability to interact and maintain any kind of meaningful relationship.

One might get drunk and sometimes write an impromptu email and send it off without even considering. But any coward can write an email. Spill your guts to a blank screen and then click that button never having to look at or even hear the breathing of that person who's going to receive it. It's just like talking to yourself except that it tricks you into thinking you're not quite that alone.

And even if they read it, you never have to see or hear their reaction. It may as well have been sent to no one. For all you know it was.

At some point it gets to where you can't talk to anyone except yourself. You started because it opened those valves that were stuck. But now there aren't even valves anymore. Just a lot of dead ends.

I had to make up for lost time. I'd wasted 25 years. Some being the fat girl. Others being the quiet girl. I'd wasted it all. I had to hurry if I was ever going to live before I died.

So I took to the internet and proceeded to make date upon date. At first, for a little while I did it sober. Just as I'd heretofore done everything. As myself. That same shy girl who wore the glasses and the tomboy clothes. But that just wasn't working and my time was limited.

Some of my only good memories were created with the aid of alcohol. Without it I'd probably look a lot younger and have a lot more money, but I never would have lived. Not really.

So this is my dilemna. The source of my confusion. For all the bad it's done to me, still it's the only thing that ever afforded me the chance to experience a life that without it never would've happened. And while it proceeded to strip me of that life not long after, I never could've lost it if it hadn't give me the chance to have it in the first place.

Everyone's born to die, but some people sooner than others.

There are a lot of bad things a person could be. Many choices. But few things invoke as much shame as being an addict. The majority of people hold life in high regard. Something fragile and precious. So when they see someone destroying theirs in favor of oblivion they tend to look down upon them. The word loser springs to mind. Only in reality that's always been a word that could describe me. Different reasons, same moniker.

I used to be a fairly good person. I wasn't perfect, but I did my best. Now I don't know what I am anymore. The debris left over after the crash. Limp, barely connected body parts and organs exposed. Fragments of a person mixed in with moans and broken glass.

An anecdote. A lesson. A cliche. A suicide always on the verge of happening.

For me, alcohol is a paradox. In that it's the only thing that enables me to even consider living another day and at the same time it gives me more reasons than ever to end it. Because now I feel so ashamed at what I've become. What those around me see I've done to myself. Only I've always been shamed by them. I was never anything of what I should've been. First I was fat. Then I was ugly. Now I'm an alcoholic. So now they have something tangible to blame it on. Maybe that'll be of comfort to them.

Thinking back I know I'd be no less miserable without it. I never was before. Ever since I can remember life has been nothing but a burden I've had to carry. Life is my problem. And there's only one solution to it.

When I first started drinking I wanted it to be my savior. To take away the confusion. The despair. Blot out the loneliness. Assist me in mocking hope until it finally gave up on itself. And it did do all those things for a while. But eventually it stopped working and until recently I thought that my savior had abandoned me. But now I realize it's still saving me. It's just using a different method.

technical goodbyes unresolved
leave you waiting on support,
knowing the solution lies
in the approach rather than
the condition.

technically we were
love unabsolved,
torture in its purest from;
such a graceful sedcution
of irony and skin.

i couldn't chew it,
so i swallowed instead;
and what i choked on
was more nourishing than
any feast i'd ever had.

it's no recovery if
you don't wish you'd failed,
it's not truth until
all other thoughts are
blotted out by it.

i couldn't let it go,
so i convinced it to
let me go isntead;
life painted on the
head of a pin.

as small as it gets,
it only takes a closer look
to see the same details
you saw when.

it always tells me
i'll be different,
but i never am.

it always tells me
that i'll forget,
but i remember.

everything.

technical goodbyes
still unresolved;
so far down inside myself now,
i don't know if that window is lying;
or if the world is actually out there -

not waiting.

Aside from the myriad perks of alcohol (oblivion, ability to live with yourself, creative enima, social stimulant, eomtional expectorant, time killer) there actually are a few unpleasant side effects.

It makes you older so much faster. Both physically and mentally. I saw it happen to what's his name. One year he was healthy and crisp like an autumn breeze. Half a year later he was looking more like the dead leaf that autumn wind had pushed to the ground.

And now I'm starting to notice it happening to me. Those lines in my forehead are fast becoming trenches. Not that it matters really how old or ugly I get. Who's looking anyway.

No, the physical aging isn't that bad really. It's what it does to my head when I'm not drinking. Nothhing. Absolutely nothing seems to be of significance anymore. I just lay there on my proverbially made bed staring at the tiny people inside the glowing box. I just lay there lost in watching their tiny lives unfolding and forget that I once had a full-sized one of my own.

I must have left it inside of one of those bottles. Perhaps someday it'll be recycled and I'll live again in another other form.

We all must grow older regardless of how. We can quicken the the aging process with various substances or we can go to unending lengths to stretch it out until it's like a taut rubberband.

Either way, eventually it's going to snap back in our faces.

And I for one, prefer to be intoxicated when that time comes.

Why drink when you could just not? To that I say, why stay sober when you don't have to.

I once knew someone who made life different. Not that they really changed me, but I felt changed in their presence. Some people make you question why you do what you do to yourself. This person was one of them.

As obvious as it was that it couldn't last, I felt forever in their touch.

If every sip more is a step further down, being with them was a pause in that descent. A brief one, But a pause nevertheless.

They might've actually afforded me the experience of happiness. Or they may've just made me think I'd had it. But either way, it's something hard to let go.

I was big with the drinking before I'd ever met them. Was big with it during. And after.

It's not as if my life changed because I met them, but in a way it is.

Because several months and many beers later, it occurred to me that I'd finally experienced something I never before had. Something, someone had made me smile besides beer or bad internet porn. Someone had made me glad to be alive.

I wish I could've done the same for them. Or failing that, not have been so very sober the last time I spoke with them.

Because then happiness would still be something we could believe could be possessed. And life wouldn't be measured only in bottles. It would still be measured in friends.

This site gets lotsa hits from people searching for 'how to live with an alcoholic'. Variations include wife and husband.

The question isn't how to live with them. It's how to live with yourself. Whether you're the alcoholic or the other.

Since that's what it's all about. Every drink. A way to live with oneself. Though moreso, a means to live without.

For the drinker it's about escape. Getting lost. And I guess for their partner it must be about finding. You can't find anyone who doesn't want to be found. The best you can do is mark a path that they may follow should they ever decide to come back.

You can live with an alcoholic quite easily. Just share the same residence and don't refer too often to their drinking. It's as simple as that.

But if what you really want is to understand one, you never can, until you are one. And even still, each has their own reasons. Their own doors that won't shut and windwos that won't open.

The kind of personality that needs alcohol to cope isn't made, it's born. We're different from sober people. Different down to our very DNA. We see the world in full color, but we prefer the grays. We crave power over our emotions. To the extent that we'll drown them in this drug to convince ourselves we have some kind of dominance. Though, if anything, with that act we've relinquished the last shred of power we might've had.

That's not to say we're all alike. We just all have this one weakness in common. Alcoholics come in all forms, but at some point. Given too much, we do all become the same.

Ghosts the living see, but can no longer touch. Forests so thick with trees that no single one is dicernable. Leaves that drop wihtout a sound. Without a destination. Consumed with the act of falling.

You can gather them into piles, but they'll just blow away. No branch can hold them. No weight had precendence. Driven only by the colors that they change.

Over time everything changes. Everything except this compulsion to never be myself again.

how high the arc of pain
as it gathers above the manifold
of idling hearts;

in smothering clouds
thick with exhaust.

and poisons you wish
would keep their promises,
and kill what is left of
peeling flesh.

the swift flow of addiction
the onliest sound,
as you count the empty skins
your life has molted;

since the last time that
you dare count.

since every knot got thicker,
and darkness so much louder;

so that you could hear
everything and still
nothing somehow.

not what you consume,
frail reflection of your isolation;
what you are consumed by.

not what they would think,
not what you know at all.

just sun spots in your memory,
all darkness and speculation;
nothing real except the void.

more infinite than eyes can glimpse
or any amount of years could
ever hope to fill in.

all alone, each in our
various stages;
all hopelessly lost
in our personal mazes.

seeking no saviors,
only friends.

and this is the only
one that i've found.

The problem is I need alcohol to write. I can't not write. It's all I have left to be. Beside an alcoholic.

I guess it's all related. The need to write. The need to drink. Both issues spurred by some other problem. But I don't know what the problem is.

I've thought about it a lot tonight and the passed few nights and I've finally come to a conclusion. There's something very wrong with me and it was wrong long before there was alcohol to blame it on. It's that wrong that is the reason alcohol ever got involved.

No one ever stays in my life. They always end up leaving or I push them away. Logic tells me chances are I'm the one with problem and not all those other people. Only trouble is, I don't know what's wrong with me. Well, I do. I know I can't cultivate meaningful relationships. Not lasting ones anyway. And I know I've had this problem since I was a child. And no, I didn't drink when I was a child.

So I know the problem, I just don't know why I have it. Where it came from or why it never left.

I guess that's why I'm so fond of alcohol. Because for a little while (a long while by my standards) it facilitated my building of relationships with other humans. But even alcohol has not sovereign over this curse. Eventually the spell it cast wore off and I turned back into a toad again.

In the fairy tales it's always the prince who's the toad and the woman's kiss that breaks the spell. In real life it could be anyone whose outsides don't match their ins. Whose words always comes out wrong. And the only kiss that can lift that curse is that of death.

I've spent most of my life living to die. Now I'm dying to live. But everyday I see less and less difference between the two.

driven in like a hammered nail
through the darkness.
securing the framework
that lay under broken skin.

always this,
just realizing now;
how slow life unbuttons its blouse
and slithers loose of its pants.

the life that almost was
pooling there in
a dark red cloud,
steeped in loves aborted.

tasting like my thoughts
do now, as unquenched
they sharpen, cold and hard
the friction is against;

too human, that's the
worst i've ever been,
life spreading like a virus
under this fragile skin.

no questions now.

only answers to impale,
failing sight as sleep imparts
its tattered wisdoms.

it never had to hurt,
but for some reason
it always did.

Certain things in life there are no escaping. Literally. Become an alcoholic and you'll always be one. You can choose to be the recovering kind or the not so recovered, but either way, underneath the will power or lack thereof, you're still an alcoholic.

You're always a mother. No matter how old your children grow or even if they die. You'll always be bipolar no matter how regularly you take your lithium.

There are qualities about ourselves we can change. Hair, weight, clothes, even eye color. We can change the superficial. But we can't ever change what really matters.

All that we can do is force ourselves by chemical means or through will power to behave as if we aren't what we actually are.

You wouldn't think anyone can be born an alcoholic or a drug addict, but if they can be born biploar or clinically depressed or inherently poetic, isn't that the same thing. Fill them full of whatever drug you like, they'll still be dependent upon something outside themselves to make life something they can swallow without vomitting it back up again.

It's always too late. No matter when you start. Too late to tell them you're sorry. Too late to accept their apology. Too late to go back and tell yourself this wasn't always who you were.

Some things change. Like the years. The months. Always changing, but not enough so that we can really tell, except for how they make us older. Less likely to revel in the next.

Other things never change. Like names. Faces. Scars. As faint as they become, at some point the healing process plateaus. And however they've disfigured us is permanent.

It's always too late, especially when you always wait several beers until you decide that you want what you once had back. And if it couldn't care less whether you're gone or not, you tell yourself, it's a good thing I drank this much. Waited this long. Because now it's too late to try and embarrass myself. At least until tomorrow. And if I just drink enough then. They won't ever have to know how much they matter to me and I won't have to admit how little I mean to them.

And then I realize, it was always too late. Long before I'd found this excuse.

The words are coaxed by this. This open snow globe in my hands whose snowflakes are made of liquid. Without it all my thoughts are muted. How? How would I ever live with myself then.

It unfolds me like fresh linens and spreads me across that empty bed. Carefully tucks all those corners and folds down the edge of the blanket to put all that grows weary by day to sleep for another night.

It demands nothing. Only I keep wanting of it.

It blooms this flower in ways nothing else can. Releasing from this bloated capsule all those seeds that are trapped.

It's not the villain. I am. I always have been. Before it. During. Ever after.

Without it I am a locked diary. Never to know anyone other than the one who writes in. But in its tender massage the lock is opened. And all those words roam free. So they are still mine, but I no longer belong only to them.

I asked it to make me lost. And it did. Better than I ever could've on my own. And when I asked for someone to help me find again, it was the only one who even bothered to look.

I know it can't love me, but still it seems it's the only one who can.

The night predicts in cold measures how much will be consumed. How much will be wasted. It's an unforgiving scale as it balances beer against man/woman. From sober to forgiven in only seconds. And I can't love myself. Or anyone. But the hate is gone. For one more beautfiul night I've defeated it.

It flows down my throat like a poison dart headed straight for my center. To put to sleep whatever in me is the reason I am what I am when sober. Why everything hurts when nothing should.

The less I drink the more comfortable I feel indulging deeper again. My alcoholism is a seesaw. One side goes up the other sinks. Up and down they go. Drunk. Sober. Drunk. Sober. The axle squeaking sharply with each manuever.

I'm not better now. Not worse either. Only different.

I'm not looking for happiness in this disease. I know it isn't there. I'm just trying to convince myself it's nothing that I need.

Love at best is a tactic. A strategic counterstrike against loneliness and pain. At worst, an ultimatum. Emotional blackmail. The same is true for alcohol. But who does it to whom I'm still unsure.

I know it begins with the potential alcoholic having the upper hand. It's a choice afterall. Easy one or hard; a choice still the same.

Before it ever uses you, you are the one using it. Swallowing that demagogue for all the peace it can bestow. Knowing full well, it won't last. That soon it'll have claimed the power. Only you just don't care about a month or a year down the raod. All you care about. All you ever have is this very moment. NOW.

Right now. This very moment. That's where I always am. Where I always must live. And I want it to be better, but if I can't make it better then I must at least make it tolerable. And this is how I can.

With this stealth IV of fermented numbness. As drip by drip it filters into and I lose the war, but then I always wanted to.

I was dead long before I found this particular coffin.

Holding taught to Agamemnon sources. As though your battle. Your war could be won or lost by virtue of your best deceit.

Are they all?

Slightly drunk. Slightly sober. Maybe a little more. Preferred by the morning, the night obeys.

It tastes cold, but heat is too threatening.

It is dark, but I'd rather not see.

Portraits lost in broken rhyme. The somber jurisdiction that life pervades. Villain after villain belaying their crimes. With slow ropes and heavy hands. It's all within our grasp, but our fingers have failed us yet again.

Gripping raw everything we think we have. Only to find there's nothing there.

Sometimes you have someone you genuinely care about and maybe they even in their own selfish way care about you, but they always end up hurting you. Some might say hurt is a part of closeness and love. But they'd be young or desperate or both.

Hurt is a part of love only in the way that it shows you what love is either dying or bound to soon.

Not just romance love either. Mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters. Too much hurt and what's the point. You're just staving off the inevitable.

I once knew a guy. He was a sensitive sort. It was easy to accidentally hurt his feelings. Maybe, that's just all guys. And they don't like anyone to know.

He had so much going for him and so much potential for happiness. But I don't think he ever found it. I don't think he ever even tried.

We had a lot in common that way. I'd rather just keep the status quo than risk anything on someone else.

I spent more than five years trying to get to know him and barely ever did. I still don't know how he felt about me or why we were ever friends.

It may have started out as sex thing, but that didn't last long. The conversations far outlasted the physical pleasure. So while I'd like to just check him off as another asshole who wanted an easy lay, it doesn't make sense.

Sometimes I want to talk to him again just to see what he'd say. Just to see if anything at all in his life has changed. I hope it has. For the better. But in my gut I know, it's the same old same old for the both of us. Neither of us are getting any better. The more time that passes we're only getting worse.

I can't honestly say we would've been happy together, but I can say we might've been less unhappy than we are alone.

(swollen throat) congested mind,
in the auditorium that is introspect (guilt) disbelief (failed denial);
waking softly to the sound of five years wasted.

fear and hope perched in tandem
on the thinnest branch, the slightest limb;
as a gentle breeze considers.

i am not this,
but this is me;

this smoke that trades
my breath for poems,
the bottle that breaks
my silence.

(tomorrow) what we'll never be.
yesterday (what we wish we hadn't)

turning pitchforks into roses
and wine into blood;

every night is just one,
but all are the first unto.

(fingers) bitten into wounds.
chewing open sealed segments;
(as if) it mattered
what happened (what didn't).

just wet dreams drying
like white sheets in the wind.

Unlike most alcoholics I made my worst mistakes back when I was sober. Once I started drinking enough, not too much happened with my life after that other than more drinking.

There was the one time I'd spent the night drinking with, I'll call him a mutual sexual interest, and we hadn't officially been completely intimate yet. I was all set to go at it after four beers, but instead he wanted to leave. He said I was too fucked up. It would be taking advantage. And I started yelling and calling him a tease. How often in the history of all male-female sexual relations has the man been called the tease. And so vehemently? Not often I would guess.

But other than that little tidbit, I've experienced a very mundane form of alcoholism. It was only before then that I did all the stupid and self-destructive things.

Losing my virginity to a guy I barely knew and whom I knew only wanted that. Saying no to almost no one. Dating indiscriminately. My only purpose to degrade myself further. Going back to what's his name again and again fully aware nothing would change.

Not that all this drinking isn't self-destructive as well. And humiliating. But at least it's subtle. A kind of pain and embarrassment I can squirrel away inside these empty nights and hollow pages.

And unlike all those other people I let inside my life and various other regions, though it does as much, maybe more damange, it comforts me as it does.

If it's this hard now to think about going a night without any assistance from my friend beer, then how much harder will it be in a year or two or more?

The longer I delay the inevitable the worse I make it for myself when it actually comes. It just feels so good right now. How could it ever betray me. If I don't live too long it never really has to.

Sometimes I try to remember sober. Still can. Midnights Sunday watching Deep Space Nine. Sometimes the phone would rings and it'd be what's his name on the other end. Back then he'd be all stoned and drunk and I'd just be plain, old me. I hated that. Just being plain, old me. I still do. Even if no one calls anymore.

Other times I'll recall being much younger. Still pedalling towards twenty. I'd leave the house around 11pm with my portable cassette player in my coat and my koss headphones over my ears and wander the darkness as though it belonged only to me. Inbetween the lyrics and the rhythms of the songs I'd think crazy, angry, still technically a teenager thoughts. And would try to flesh out in my consciousness a plan not to hate the world.

I never came up with a way. But one found me.

If I were to go back to being sober. To being the original me. I don't think I'd hate or rage anymore. I'm too old for that now.

But I'm not sure I could live with it. Keep pretending I'm all right when it's the one thing I've never been.

Who we were never leaves us. Particles remain. They speckle the pages of who we become. Only I've erased all mine. If I should ever find the strength to go back I'm not sure there's such a place anymore.