Aimee Bender Loves Me, and Other News . . .

So hello dear blog. I have missed you. It has been a busybusybusy week, but I have thought longingly of you during the calm and quiet moments and I have longed to caress these keys and to be near you.

And stuff.

Anywhoo, so last Friday Violet and I went to a literary pub crawl in Silver Lake (which for those of you who aren’t totally hipster and cool like me, is the most hipster and cool part of LA. Jenny Lewis still has an apartment out there). We went because my most favoritest professor was one of the readers (world-renowned badass Martin Pouson). You want to know who one of the other readers was? Calm down, I will tell you! It was Aimee Bender! She is one of my favorite authors and she has always been special to be because her collection “Girl in the Flammable Skirt” was one of those books I read when I was still trying to figure out how I write. It is one of those books that made me go, “You’re allowed to write like this?”

Anyway, I love her dearly and while I have seen her speak before, I have never seen her read. It, and she, was delightful.

Also of note, this was my first night out drinking since I stopped drinking and, I am happy to say, I did not drink. I really didn’t even have the urge to. Well, that’s not totally true, but it’s true enough. What I did was drink Red Bull on the rocks all night so not only was I not drunk, I was on the complete other end of the spectrum of sobriety. I was super-not-drunk. Now at some point we will have to have the conversation about how I am just tricking my brain with a different but no less stimulating mixture of chemicals, but we will do that some other time.

OH! Also of note, ended up at this awesome bar called the 4100 Bar and let me tell you, between the low light and the leather booths and the actually good music being played too loud, it is like one of my favorite places. It is also, quite sadly, within walking distance of the place I used to live in Echo Park. If only I had known about it then maybe I wouldn’t have been so bitter and lonely when I lived there. But alas, it doesn’t matter now. But if you ever have the chance, check it out.

I have to head off to class now (History of the World from 1945) but I will meet up with you again later dear blog.

I am done editing the college literary journal (The Northridge Review, on stands March 12!) and my accelerated health Science Class ends in a few weeks, so soon I will be with you much more often.

TTFN.

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02-14-2010

So dear blog,

I try not to write too much about the sort of deeply personal ins-and-outs of my life you find on a lot of people’s blogs. I figure that you have your own problems and if you’re killing your time by floating around on the internet, then you would probably rather be entertained and maybe laugh a little, so I try to stick to writing about the funny or the interesting.

However, at the moment, I am compelled to share with you a little bit because this is important to me. The long and the short of it is that I am going to give up drinking. Completely.

I know that for most of you that doesn’t make one bit of difference at all, but for me this is a big thing and I want to commit to it is a kind of way that I can’t backpedal from. So here we are: I am posting on the internet, for any and all to see, my declaration of not drinking.

So there it is.

I do not drink anymore.

So, you’re saying to yourself, WTF?

Well, there are a couple of things that you should know. First is that I am not a compulsive drinker. I don’t drink all the time. I really don’t even drink that often. My problem is that when I do drink, I don’t stop. It’s as if there is a problem with the part of my brain that says, STOP. Other people have that and I am envious of it. Over the past couple of years I have tried to moderate it and I have tried to find a formula. 1 drink followed by 1 drink of water, that sort of thing, and the limited success that I have had with that made me think that there was a way that I could make it work, but the truth of the matter is that is doesn’t work. So now I’m at the point where I really do have to man up and deal with the reality of what it means to be me and to have a brain that works this way. I have to accept that I’m not other people and the rules that other people live by don’t necessarily work for me.

So there it is.

I do not drink anymore.

That’s all the important stuff, so you can stop reading there if you want to. But I need to work some stuff out for myself and I think that I’m going to do that here because sometimes the keyboard helps me to clarify my thinking.

My history with drinking is probably a little different than yours. I used to be part of a little group where drinking was a social activity in and of itself. And that’s what the evenings and weekends were for. Drinking wasn’t an ancillary activity, but the activity itself. I know that we all drink a lot in our early twenties, but I realize now that I was involved in what now gets called binge-drinking, it was A LOT of drinking happening a lot and so I never really had to stop and assess my situation. I knew that I drank more and faster than a lot of people, but I didn’t realize that it was a problem because I was basically surrounded by it. And please understand that I’m not making any excuses or blaming anyone but myself, but I’m just taking a walk through my history.

When I moved to San Diego there was less drinking initially, but it increased as a little transplanted social group began to form. All in all, I was starting to grow up in other aspects of my life, I was drinking less, but when I did drink it was still too much.

When I moved to LA the drinking all but stopped. Sometimes I would walk down Sunset Blvd. and pop into a bar I had never been to, but I limited myself to two drinks because I knew that I couldn’t afford to get drunk and stranded.

Once I moved to Newhall I decided not to have any hard liquor in my little apartment, but wine was okay. A glass of read wine has always been one of my favorite things. So I drank wine, but I spent most of my time in Newhall alone and drinking is a social activity in my head and so there wasn’t much of a problem.

But now I’m in Stevenson Ranch and as Violet and I have made friends and developed a little social group, there have been more opportunities to drink and I have not handled them well. And I have been mortified by how poorly I have done. The thing is that I can drink a lot and be fine, I can drink A LOT and seem fine, but there is a point – and I inevitably get there – where that one last drink puts me over and I am gone. Just gone. And the next thing I know I wake up with a headache and I learn that there were hours that I have no recollection of.

And that is bad.

And I am being completely honest here; I am no longer willing to tolerate that about myself. So I am giving up drinking completely and entirely.

I am sorry that anyone has had to tolerate me the way that I have been. I am sorry that it has taken me so long to finally get to this point. I’m sorry that people have been affected by my problem. I am sorry that Violet has had to deal with it.

So there it is.

I do not drink anymore.

I want to be able to live the rest of my life without causing these kinds of problems, for myself and for other people.

So this doesn’t mean that I can’t be around it. I can be in a bar and I can be around people drinking. It is not my will power that is at issue. I can be in a bar and not drink. I have the ability and the resiliency to not have the first drink. It’s not the first drink that does me in, it’s the eighth or ninth drink that does it, but the only way to stay clear of the eighth and ninth drinks is to not have the first. And I am now finally and entirely comfortable with that.

And if you’re someone I know this does not have to be one of those things that we awkwardly avoid talking about. This doesn’t have to be some dark and secret thing. I am going to be as open and honest about this as anyone ever has been. I am going to be a model of not-drinking. I am going to rock sobriety as hard as I rock male-pattern baldness, which is to say, quite a bit. I am not going to be embarrassed by this. I have a problem and I am dealing with it. You wouldn’t be ashamed if you had diabetes and so I am not going to be ashamed of this, I am going to deal with it and go on about my life. I hope that you will support me in this new endeavor, or at least, not talk too badly about me behind my back.

And all this is not to say that I am going to start proselytizing about temperance and sobriety or anything. For you the drinking is fine and you should have as much as you want, and I will be right there with you, cranberry juice in hand.

So this is going to be a new and interesting part of my life. And, hopefully, a better one.

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