A bar I’ll never be allowed (want) to miss again?

So. I’ve not written in a couple weeks. Partly because I’ve been working a metric shit ton of hours (that’s really a unit of measurement, promise), but I’ve also been doing my best to, you know, avoid everything.

Those damn mirrors my friend talks about keep cropping up in awkward moments. Not in moments I necessarily want them to, but moments I’m now (more) willing and able to admit that I need them.

I am able to say, “Okay, I’m kind of dicking over this/that/the other person in this/that/the other situation.” But, alternately, I’m also able to say, “I’m rocking the shit out of this/that/the other situation.” This is what I’ve been trying to do this week.

I was about [thisclose] to buying a bottle of bourbon on Saturday. I was [thisclose] to not doing This any more. Not going to meetings, not doing a lot of things I should be doing. A lot of thinking I shouldn’t be thinking. A lot of doing I shouldn’t be doing. But then I turned around and called a friend who helped me think out the things I was thinking. One of the things that I’ve heard a lot in the Halls is, “Think out the drink.”

It might seem like a great idea to have a drink in the moment, but once I start I’m highly, HIGHLY unlikely to stop. A couple fingers of bourbon is going to turn in to half a bottle (or more). Thankfully, as I said, I had the foresight to call a friend while on my lunch break so I wouldn’t have the time to hit up the liquor aisle at the grocery store five minutes away from my work. I picked up more hours of work so I wouldn’t have time to hit up the liquor aisle of the grocery store. I went to a meeting even though all I wanted to do is sleep. I went to my Head Shrinker even though all I wanted to do is sleep.

I talk with my friends, family, even when the last thing I want to do is admit I’m struggling.

This reminds me why, when I first started writing about all this on here, people I love dearly said, “Don’t talk about the fight (whether alcohol or mental health issues) so publicly. You don’t want to end up setting a bar you’ll never be allowed to miss again.” The bar isn’t something necessarily explicitly set by my loved ones, but it’s a bar I’m setting for myself because it’s a bar I think they’re implicitly setting (they’re not; I’m lucky enough that the only bar my loved ones are asking me to meet is to be okay).

I’m slowly, glacially slowly, starting to get to a point I am okay. I’m still scared of being okay since it’s such a foreign concept, but I’m starting to believe that I’m okay and that it’s okay that I’m okay.

A particular lyric from Bruce Springsteen struck me especially hard today, “It ain’t no sin to be glad you’re alive.” I’m taking other parts of that song to heart (“Badlands” if you want to listen to it in its entirety):

“Talk about a dream,
Try to make it real
You wake up in the night,
With a fear so real,
You spend your life waiting,
For a moment that just don’t come,
Well, don’t waste your time waiting,

Badlands, you gotta live it everyday,
Let the broken hearts stand
As the price you’ve gotta pay,
We’ll keep pushin’ ’til it’s understood,
And these badlands start treating us good.”

I’m starting to get there. And it’s terrifying. But at least I’m seeing okay as being something I can do; something I can be. I’m seeing it “ain’t no sin to be glad I’m alive.”

Told someone I’d add on this post-script: Thank you, KCova, for being the one to help me see what I’ve been missing when it comes to the Boss. Love you. ❤