Part Four ~ That Girl

Part four in a series of posts chronicling my history of alcoholism and recovery.

I graduated from high school in 1988. I don't have a strong recollection of this period of my life. And this will continue to be the case for the next 10 years. I was a study in contradictions. Outward appearance: girl going through the motions of daily living. Inward reality: obsessive hell surrounding issues of food and drink.

The next ten years were a fast downward spiral. I don't know if I have it in me to detail the lengths that one goes to in order to support a habit as insidious as alcoholism. And perhaps that is a dichotomy. Am I able to refer to alcoholism as a habit when in fact the medical community refers to it as a disease? To this day I still have a problem with calling it a disease. There will always be a part of me that believes that I suffer from a grave moral dysfunction; and if I was just a better friend, a better daughter, a better student, a better employee, better....then maybe I wouldn't drink quite so much.

What I have learned is that alcoholism is a disease of perception. Most consider those afflicted to be the ones of talk shows, tell alls, and the criminally minded. The average person doesn't want to believe that it's the homemaker, school teacher, priest, banker, daughter, son, friend, etc. We want to believe that its THAT GIRL. The one who can't control herself at happy hour or the holiday picnic. Or THAT GUY. The one who beats his wife and annoys the neighbors with his drunken rants. We don't want to believe that its the soccer mom who has a couple of glasses of wine at the block party but goes home to finish it off in private. Or the school teacher who keeps it together all day, only to drink to a black out in front of the computer all night. What you see is not always what you get. And that is my story.

For the next ten years I tried in vain to be the appearance of together. The attempts at college and career. The attempts at relationships that ultimately failed. The attempts at holding together any semblance of order in my life. What you saw was a decent looking girl from a good family. At times I was a student; the picture of all things studious. Other times I was the working girl; trying to hold it together because college "just didn't work out." At all times I was thinking of the next drink. Whether I was behind a desk or behind a sales counter, I was always planning for the next drink. Happy hour, weekend get togethers, the wine with dinner, the Bloody Mary with brunch. Alcohol needed to be a part of almost every aspect of my life. Most would say this wasn't a problem. Until it was. One doesn't wake up one day and notice that they are alcoholic. Normally it is a series of occurrences that begins to connect the dots.

"What do you mean I can't drink alcohol while taking these antibiotics?"
"What? No alcohol at the wedding? What kind of wedding is THAT?"
"This day in the office/school/traffic/function has kicked my ass...I can't wait to get home and get a drink."
"Joe just got a divorce/promotion/retired/graduated! Let's go celebrate/drown our sorrows downtown."

And then the truth set in. It didn't matter if I drank all day, every day or once every two weeks. The reality is that I couldn't remove alcohol from my life. And that is where the denial sets in. Not wanting to believe that this is happening to me. Because in my mind, it wasn't happening to anybody else. Everybody else could drink normally. Nobody else kept watching the clock, counting the minutes to happy hour. Nobody else counted the days to the weekend, when the beer and wine flowed without restriction. When one feels this isolated from their fellows, it is not uncommon to begin to feel resentment and anger. By the age of 24, I was very angry. And very resentful. And I was in trouble with the law.