Drinking

I am convinced people should have to watch videos of themselves drunk before they are allowed to drink again.

Gilbert Godfrey will do a voice over play-by-play to achieve the right effect.

i first heard it over the phone. he played it for me to demonstrate what a sad song really is. it did sound sad but i couldn't hear the lyrics. i didn't hear them until two weeks later in the crisis home, doing a sudoku puzzle and listening to "decoration day" in its entirety for the first time because it's his favorite album and it made me feel something other than the hellish loneliness that place brings. anything to feel closer to someone, anyone.

b had told me that he slept with the other girl earlier that day.

now he's found himself and i lost mine and i'm just another girl who can't give him anything. sounds better in the song. interestingly, it sounds like j and me. what does it matter? it doesn't matter.

j called tonight to tell me to listen to the dixie chicks since i'm knee-deep in dbt. i could try it, i guess. the thing about dbt is that when i listen to them, it feels like i'm drinking.

i don't drink very often. i'm not a sobriety nut; in fact, some of my best memories were formed over a drink or two or too many. i just don't have the opportunity often -- drinking alone usually ends with me sobbing or calling j up, and i don't have any drinking buddies. i don't know what it is about dbt that immediately sends me into that deeply introspective mindset.

so here i am, listening to "something's gotta give pretty soon" and thinkin' about drinkin'. memories of times spent with a bottle in my hand.

the party with a flask and a can, scotty asking me if i was seriously making jagerbombs in my mouth. i couldn't breathe in the corset i wore for my costume. j was there sipping zinfandel out of the bottle, flushed and laughing. i later puked into a cooler in his roommate's car.

b and i passing a bottle of wine back and forth while watching coraline. leaning over to whisper in his ear about later.

j leaning against the toilet after having too much, me drunkenly smoothing the hair from his sweaty forehead as he told me he loved me more than god.

my dad in the basement, plucking out the bo diddley frog song on the guitar, telling me things about his past that even my mom doesn't know. feeling so connected. i know that part is over. i don't know if i'll ever see it again and it terrifies me, but the thought of our family splitting up over his drinking terrifies me more.

j wants to go out to the bar this weekend. interestingly, we've never actually been out to a bar together. the closest we got was a tgifriday's the day after my 21st birthday. he bought me a couple shots and we left to go drink rolling rocks and have drunken sex in his car.

i don't know what i think of the whole bar-with-j thing. on the one hand, i simply cannot turn down companionship. and i know if i say no, he'll go out drinking with his buddies instead. but god, it's so hard for me to watch him go down that road with alcohol. i've seen him depressed and projectile vomiting and hating himself one too many times.

i feel like kind of a hypocrite not wanting to go out drinking because of him, but being okay having a couple beers in the garage when we finish hanging out. maybe it's because i know his limits and i know four beers is barely anything to him and he'll get home safely and call me once he's there. i still want to watch over him that way.

i think he offered to go out drinking for me. because he knows how hard the crisis home was. because he knows about what happened between me and b. he's trying to be the shoulder he told my sister he couldn't be. i don't know how to take that.

either way, we'll find out soon enough, and perhaps i'll toss a couple back and feel better. until then it's take eight pills a day and hope they're going to work.