I have as much a lizard brain as anyone else. I spend a lot of time trying to cultivate a human veneer of having a fair portion of my shit together, but as a lot of blogs I've written hopefully point out, I at least perceive myself flailing in the dark as excitedly as the next guy. Things I try to put to bed bubble up as each shot trickles down. I'm left cramped and dehydrated trying to squeeze out even a vague memory of things I said in the last few hours of the night.
One of the things I really liked about parties and alcohol was it seeming to bring out what people were afraid to deal with or say sober. Maybe a difficult talk couldn't get started because there was too much inhibition. Maybe the flirting and tension could take a back seat to just getting it on already. The phrase, “drunk mind, sober heart” rang true for me and I used to be able to get reports of all the praise and love I showered on my room full of friends while I was blacked out.
I sense more has changed than simply my capacity to process alcohol as efficiently as when I started drinking. More crap has built up in my subconscious. More major disappointments and broken expectations have made it where I can no longer trust that blacked out blanket of love to descend on whomever I'm pointed at. I find that unfortunate. It's as anxious as I can get the next day even if I'm fairly positive the majority of my conversations were nothing but polite.
I'm in a 10 steps forward, major leap back process as far as my head is concerned. I stop having physical reactions in looking at a picture of an ex. I put more positive words than negative ones out about how I choose to remember our time together. A few pleasant conversations happen. But it's like small cracks in a windshield. It's the distance and distractions that were contributing to a better perception. It took my mind shutting off my conscious state to apparently have a drunk phone conversation and send texts about all the cliché things drunk exes text each other.
Interestingly enough, I'm considerably less concerned with whatever I said than I am with the idea that it wasn't the truth. I don't think we should get back together. I think I was palpably hurt by the dishonesty and I'd only be encouraging a cycle of emotional abuse. Something more insidious about my brain or biology is reacting viscerally to the idea of rejection several leagues removed from how I actually think and want for my life. Isn't that really fucking weird?
The implication is that if it's already hard enough to face obvious problems with obvious solutions, what happens when more of you is being driven by your blacked out brain than you can even identify until you're blacked out? This is the place I speculate people's depression is burried. This is why 2/3 of deaths from guns are suicides. It only takes a moment of peaking behind that door for shit to go terribly wrong.
In drinking, I'm also able to access a part of my being that I enjoy seeing in other people. I call it feeling “normal” to just keep the flow of whatever conversation going or give out hugs and handshakes like an undiscerning child. It can be pretty annoying to be “Nick P.” the hyper involved in everything and nothing in particular who's constant stream of ridicule and criticism literally needs to be impaired to slow down. I can recall like it was yesterday the first time I felt the reality of, “taking the edge of.”
I think it's important to state that I'm not embarrassed or ashamed of being a pining loverboy. There's nothing wrong with getting entangled with other people and there's no exact science or time frame for how long wounds take to heal. It's just incredibly annoying. It makes me hyper cynical to personally experience playing the game and get that intimate knowledge about why I don't buy it. Finding someone that taps that deeply into your psyche doesn't make me advocate or encourage less discerning people to do it as well.
It's not even precisely right to say the whole affair or the darkness of hangover days makes me feel sad. Haunted is the better word. The knowledge that it's not if, but when, your coping mechanisms will break. That you could be acting in any number of ways in utter spite of yourself and not even be aware of it. I start to resent my own happiness. I can't just take the win. Hanging out with friends becomes an opportunity for my head to race down the path of what happens when trust and joy turns to shit, even if there isn't a better group of people I'd rather be drinking with.
The best you can do is try. I don't turn on people until they figure out why they want to turn on me. I don't soberly text people I shouldn't nor materially alter my world to reflect back to me my most beleaguered thoughts. So far I've managed to keep writing away the demons before they've manifested as something monstrously more destructive. But I know I'll never shake them completely. I still need to be insulated and shaped by better examples and environments. And I could stand to hire someone to take my phone away around 1 or after the 7th shot, whichever comes first.
