Undrunk in love

Still have not had a drink, I am proud to say. It's been almost three months. I haven't been happier. Not in a jolly, plastic, superficial, FB-selfie-as-proof way, but feeling stable and even, not low. I certainly feel all of my feelings, though. I feel sad sometimes, especially now, during winter, when all is grey and white outside. But the sadness is pure. I can name all of my feelings. I notice when I feel anxious, as I wait for the man I have a crush on to arrive. I recognize my sadness and I am there for my tears. I know when I am frightened and it is always fear of things that exist only in my mind. I also feel the fleeting ebullience of joy. Joy is light and sweet, like whipped cream.

So many times in the past, my angst regarding my (non-existent) love life has felt so horrible because I was drunk--either coming on or coming off. Either numb or excruciating pain of skinless flesh--that's what being heartbroken while hung over feels like. Now, as I contemplate yet another confusing crush on yet another specimen of the mysterious male sex, I do feel bad, but I don't feel like hell.

What I do feel: I want to just get away, go away, disappear. I want this confusion, yet again, to stop. I wonder how I always get crushes on men who act so ambivalently about their feelings. OK, yes, I guess I am ambivalent about relationships, too. But why does it have to be so difficult?

I like someone, or at least I harbor tender, passionate, wild feelings about an individual. We come from different worlds. We are opposites in every arena. I am too old. I feel not beautiful enough. Men like young beautiful women, and I am not necessarily a "hot chick." I am an attractive academic of a certain age. He flirts with hot chicks who are 25 years old. He's a bit of a clown, and yet I have these feelings...why? Why am I not attracted to appropriate objects?

Anecdote: a few weeks ago, I dated an appropriate object: a professor at a nearby university. We commiserated over our careers--grad school, department politics, the writing life. We shared stylish meals. We went hiking. I saw his well-appointed apartment. He dressed tastefully from the JCrew catalog and everything. We watched a DVD together and laughed knowingly and snarked knowingly, smart people that we are. We made out, but alas, I felt very indifferent about going any further. First, he had really bad halitosis, which made me gag as well as made me feel a bit guilty about judging him. But also, I just didn't lust for him. He looked fine, rather cute in exactly the kind of nerdy way that I would want were I to date a fellow professor. But no desire beyond the superficial. My desire for him was mechanical, not organic. So we parted ways.

The one I actually love is a clown. He is also, of course, a musician. We have barely a thing in common except dancing. We belong to the same dance community. You meet all sorts of people there, fortunately or unfortunately. Sometimes when we dance, there is a palpable energy that emits. I felt it the first time we danced and have felt it frequently since. He doesn't ask me out. Coming from a different culture, he is not a "date" person, I don't think. Or maybe he is and is just not asking me. But I know he feels things for me, too. We dance. When he dances with someone else, we lock eyes across the dance floor. There is awkwardness and we have nothing to talk about--is this nervousness or the fact that we really have nothing to talk about? Is it just a sexual thing created by dancing? It's like we can't communicate with words, so we communicate wordlessly when we dance. The energy I feel when we dance is something I have never felt with other men. It's warm; it is life energy itself. Does he have this with other women he dances with? It's sexual chemistry, for sure. But it's weird--is it all in my mind? It's driving me nuts because I can't just ask him--I feel awkward. It's not like asking about factual things. How do you talk about such a deeply subjective experience with someone? And ask if it is shared? Ask why does it happen? How would he know? And yet, knowledge is all there is. Knowledge without explanation. I believe this is what Lacan is saying about "the real"

Ultimately, I go back and forth between wanting something to happen between us to thinking it is the worst idea in the world, it would never work out. I enjoy dancing with him so much. When these instances happen--the energy exchange, let's say, it's a kind of addictive feeling. I want to touch him again and more. Although we are just acquaintances, it's like my body knows his body much more intimately and looks forward to being near it as soon as possible. It's the strangest thing. I have to simply experience the pain of dealing with it. The pain of being around him and dancing with him without any hope of anything happening. It's too awkward and he won't make a move. I just want to get out of here. Luckily, I go home for Christmas--3000 miles away. I wonder if this crush will dissipate? I both want and don't want this.

Vipassana and alcohol

So far, I haven't had a drink yet. Since October 1st, when I decided to do "Ocsober," I haven't had a glass of wine, beer, or liquor. Mentally and emotionally, I haven't been happier or more stable. I haven't woken up feeling horribly depressed. I have definitely been tempted here and there, when the thought of a glass of after-work red wine seemed to have been the correct and best solution to the empty space opening up at the end of one thing and the beginning of another. That "another" could have ended up in a dulled stupor, but I did not give into the thoughts. The thoughts are mostly of the type: "drinking wine is the solution." But it never is. That is the gift of wisdom, the wisdom of having followed this faulty logic over and over again for years.

What preceded this sudden desire to stop drinking? Meditation. I casually joined a local Buddhist meditation group, a sangha, earlier this autumn and some realizations dawned on me. One of the keys to being fully present, which is central to meditation, is that you fully experience, without resistance, everything that is going on--the good thoughts, the bad thoughts, the good/bad feelings, the irrational/rational, the irrelevant/irreverent, the profound--everything that happens in the mind. It is actually quite interesting once you begin to observe what is there in the mind. What was beginning to conflict with my meditation study and practice was being under the influence of alcohol, whether being intoxicated or hung over.

Drinking interfered with experiencing and accepting the moment as it is and therefore, impeded my ability to meditate. When I realized this, I stopped. I said, I would stop for a month--October. But I really want to not drink anymore at all. I think it is very interesting that meditation, specifically, vipassana, which is mindfulness meditation, has given me this profound insight. That is, vipassana is not only there to help you relax and be happy, it is there to allow you to understand things like you have never understood them before because you have automatically believed certain thoughts and done the same behaviors repeatedly without reflecting on how they are serving you. Mindfulness is all about observing things as they are and it's strange and amazing what you actually notice! Like, I knew deep down that drinking was not in my best interest because I was using it as a crutch and it was unhealthy. But I didn't *notice* it truly until I started to meditate. Noticing, I realize, is not an intellectual thing. It is spiritual.

Ultimately, this habit that I have supported for half of my life--alcohol--is one tremendous obstacle that has stopped me from accepting, observing, and meditating. And all of these years, I used it to protect me, when in reality, it was shielding me from what I really needed--acceptance, not only of myself, but of everything. Alcohol was shielding me, like an imperfect parent, from what I needed to see to get to the true experience of life. Finally, at the age of 41, I can say good bye to it, my false parent.

I've been drinking, I've been drinking...

I have decided to stop drinking. I stopped, in fact, on October 1st, roughly a month ago. I am 41 years old and I've been drinking alcohol for half my life and I have finally realized that it is doing me in. Not in a melodramatic Days of Wine and Roses type way, or in an Alcoholic Anonymous way, but in a straight up, drinking alcohol doesn't make logical sense and it never really has epiphany type way in which I have questioned all the reasons why I do it and none of them made sense. Why?

I am tired of hangovers and wasting time feeling physically bad and emotionally depressed. But, I never drank more than three glasses of wine, which is actually a lot of alcohol, but an amount that most people wouldn't bat an eye at. And still, alcohol is an addictive drug--how does one "just have one glass," which is the recommended amount for women per day. That's bullshit--who has just one glass? I am tired of depending on wine as a crutch in the same way I did for cigarettes, which I also quit, fifteen years ago. Everybody drinks; wine is water these days. But it causes more problems than it purports to solve. It doesn't really relax you, you just think it does. Also, if you drink regularly, the reason why you feel relaxed when you take a drink is because of withdrawal--having a drink is a mild form of hair of the dog that bit you.

I read a great book, Kick the Drink Easily by Jason Vale and he basically uses cognitive behavioral principles to allow you to see the error in your thinking about drinking. And it is really powerful. I haven't drunk any alcohol in a month and I really want to make it a permanent thing.

I realize that my entire adulthood has been accompanied by drinking--the stories of my drunk, absent father as genetic cautionary tale to bar hopping in college and throughout my twenties, to evenings at home with culturally acceptable bottles and bottles of "antioxident rich" red wine. It's good for you!

I am debunking this theory and musing out loud about my new life. I want to start writing here as a way to log in about not drinking but also, to understand the past as it relates to my present and future, without alcohol. I don't want to mystify or romanticize alcohol, because I think it is part of the problem, but I do want to sort it all out. I do think there is a post-AA sober revolution happening right now that has a lot to do with other mind/body movements that have become more mainstream in recent years. Hopefully, I can use this space to work it all out fruitfully...