That Very Last Night

(Understand that this may not be the easiest thing to read. I struggled with posting it because it’s so damn personal and not a pretty time in my life. I only post it for two reasons. One, it explains a decision I have made in my life and it explains the person I am today. I apologize for anyone who may find it uncomfortable reading. I am not asking for pity or for anyone to see me as a victim with this. It‘s just my story. And, for better or worse, it‘s what makes me the person I am today. Good or bad.)

I remember the last night clearly, surprisingly. I had worked a twelve hour day getting ready for a trial in New York. I had stopped in a bar with a few co-workers for a few drinks in center city Philly just to unwind before going home. I had been doing a lot of unwinding in recent weeks. Things had gotten kind of dark for months. I was working an average of 70 hours a week. When the lawyers you work for tell you to slow down, you know you are working too much. But, I didn’t care. It was all I had. It was the only way to keep me from thinking about my life, or lack of one. In the time of living alone, I had spent very little time with family and friends. When you are going through something personal and painful, people tend to shy away, as if whatever you may be going through is catching. I don’t blame them I would have been afraid of me at that time, too. I wasn’t a pleasant person to be around outside of work. For some reason, once I hit that office, I could turn it off. I could shut it out and focus. I still do my best to do that, just not for the wrong reasons. When doing it for the wrong reasons, it’s like wearing a sandwich board that has “Stay away, a friggin’ mess here!”
My first wife had moved out two months before, for the very last time. I guess I should say that I asked her to leave me. I had found her with another man for the fourth time in our marriage. I worked too much and she found comfort in other men. I can’t say that I blamed her. I was nobodies dream. I didn’t get angry or violent. I didn’t destroy property. I just asked her, politely, to leave and never come back. It was the smartest thing I had ever done in my life, but not the easiest thing to live with afterwards. My guilt was thick and was starting to become overwhelming. I knew that I had never strayed. I never so much as looked at another woman. But, I did seem to live a life that didn’t include her. I think I treated her like a painting hanging on the wall. A very nice thing to look at when I had the time to do so. I just didn’t take enough time to really see. Especially after the first time. By the fourth time, I was almost numb. My friend helped. My very good friend.
I got home from the bar sometime after 10 pm. I immediately went to the bedroom I had shared with a woman I thought I loved and thought who loved me and changed my clothes and put my briefcase on my desk. I put on my favorite sweats and went to my freezer. That is where I kept my best friend. The one friend I had at the time that was always there for me. It never judged me. It never called me a fool for taking her back all the other times just to get slammed again. It never made me feel like I had nothing left to give. It was my friend.
It was a one liter bottle of Stoli vodka.
I grabbed a glass, sliced a lemon, and filled a bowl with ice and went to the living room and sat on the couch. I loved that couch almost as much as I loved my friend. I bought it just a few months before because I couldn’t bear to look at the old one. The memory of what I saw my wife doing with a friend of mine on day was just too much for me to live with in my house any longer. I didn’t sell the old one. I had a burn pit in the back yard. I took an axe that I borrowed from a neighbor and I chopped it into pieces and burned it too ash. I am pretty sure my friend, Stoli, was there for that, too.
At about 11 pm, I had made the decision that it was time to figure out what the hell I was still doing hanging on to a life that seemed worthless. I did it the only way I knew how, I went to my desk and grabbed a pad of paper and a pen. I drew a line in the middle of the page and wrote “Pros” and “Cons” on the top.
At midnight the “Cons” heavily out-weighted the “Pros”. I stared at the page for a very long time. Reading each “Con” brought visions to my mind. Memories of days past. Memories of pain received and delivered. Emotional pain, not physical. Never physical. Just the emotional abuse that her infidelity caused and the emotional abuse that my complete lack of attention can cause.
I didn’t marry the first time until I was thirty. At the age of twenty-nine, I told anyone that would listen that I would never get married. My parents were broken before my age hit double digits. All of my sisters, who are all younger than I, had been married and divorced by that time. I wanted nothing to do with God’s blessed union.
But, then I turned thirty. I wasn’t twenty something anymore. I wasn’t a kid. It was time to grow up. Time to put the childish things of my youth away and start being responsible. She just happened to be the one I was dating when this decision was made. It was a very stupid thing to do. It was a great mistake. But, I believed that by saying those words, “I do”, would change my heart and my life into what it was supposed to be. Into what everyone told me it was supposed to be. I was very, very wrong.
I couldn’t come to terms with what was going on in my head. I was struggling and didn’t realize just how much. I looked at my lists like a work project. Make the list of priorities and facts. Prove and justify the facts. Make a knowledgeable decision based on those facts and then argue it until there was nothing left to say. I kept thinking that there had to be something that could save me from this feeling of being so absolutely alone. So absolutely pathetic.
The biggest thing was the fool that I had become to everyone who knew me at the time. I kept taking her back. I can’t say that I forgave her. That is a different animal all together. I just didn’t want to fail. I hate to fail. I know that it’s part of life. I realize that we all mistakes. But, at the time, I didn’t want to believe that I would fail at this…not a marriage.
I do remember pouring the last of that beautiful liquid into the glass, putting in ice and lemon and taking a long pull. The burn in the back of my throat was the very best feeling. It was the reminder of just what it was for. Too cause a little lovely pain into the body of someone who had refused to deal with and face the damage in his life. The wreckage behind me blurred to a jumble of ghosts that I could justify wasn’t really there. I looked at those moments as escape. A way to rise above the damage and believe that I was what I once was. Young. Strong. Important to someone. It had been a very long time since I had felt that.
I won’t say that I actually thought of a way to end it. I did have one idea. At the time, I had a antique stove that had a oven with a pilot that had to be lit every time the nozzle was turned and the oven used. I thought I could just turn it on, not light the pilot, lay down and go to sleep. It would be over. No pain. So gutless. The crazy thing, the reason I dismissed it was the only other living creatures in my home besides me were two cats that I loved very much. “Francis Albert” because he was strikingly white with amazing blue eyes (for Sinatra, for those who may not understand the reference, who was known as old blue eyes) and a beautiful black cat named “Sammy”…again, for Sammy Davis…I know, horrible way to reference the Rat Pack. But, I loved them and didn’t want to hurt them. It was winter in Jersey, too cold too put them outside to keep them safe. So, I dismissed that idea.
At some point I passed out. I don’t remember what time, exactly, that it was…but, my best guess was sometime after two am. I woke up at six am on my new couch. I rolled over and saw the glass first. Have to admit that my first thought was the realization that I had finished my bottle and had not saved any more for a new day. I then saw my lists.
“Pros” “Cons”
I froze. It dawned on me what I was looking at. It was the justification for my life. It was the argument for my existence. It was my life’s eulogy prior to death.
And it scared the hell out of me.
I spent a very long time sitting there staring at my words. The paralegal in me started to take over. I realized that it wasn’t about the number of points under each heading. Volume wasn’t the important factor. I stared at it until I could find the answer to the importance. And then it hit me. Like a brick between the eyes. Under the “Pro” heading:
“Because I want to fall in love. With myself and someone else. “
That was November the 12th, 1994. At approximately 2 am on that day, I had my very last drink of alcohol. No withdrawals. No “DTs”. I went to the meetings for a couple of years. I honestly found some help there, but mostly I found a singles group without alcohol. And that was not what I wanted. In my sobriety I discovered that I better figure out who the hell I was before I tried to figure out someone else. I was scared of my life as a sober person those first years. I hid from alcohol like a scared child under his blanket afraid of the boogyman in the closet. Until I realized, like that child, I was afraid of something that I created and made strong. I just had to decide that I didn’t need it.
Am I an alcoholic? Who answers that? I never found myself in a gutter. I didn’t miss work because of it. I wrecked no cars and didn’t kill anyone. I didn’t get drunk and start bar fights. I just used it as an escape. What I really had become was lazy. I worked real hard, but in the rest of my life I put forth little effort. I took care of my friends, my family but I never tried taking care of myself. I was sliding through life thinking that all I had to do was glide on the ice and not hurt anyone on the way. Beginning to end, that was all that mattered. When I would fall, I would reach for my friend. My very good friend, Stoli.
The change that I have developed over the years is the understanding that I have to reach for my own soul, my own heart in those moments of crisis. I have to remember who I am, what I am, and get up and keep on moving. It hasn’t always been easy. I have been tempted. It’s been a while, but I have. But, the lesson someone like me has to learn the hard way is that no matter how much you drink, the pain and the problems that put you in that barstool will still be there when you sober up. No magic vodka cocktail makes that go away.
It’s been a very long time since that night. I think of it on occasion. In moments when I feel as if I don’t have the answers. When I think that happiness escapes me. And I shake myself a bit, change my focus, and take the next first step. And I walk a little further away from that person that sat to write that list.
He is dead. Dead a very long time. His memory lives in that part of me that most call our inner voice. His only reason for existing there is for the reminder of just how strong I am.
And, mark my words, I will never be that weak again.
One day at a time.