#2 "Forever feels too daunting"

From my friend's top ten reasons why it's hard to get sober

“The Tongue of Forever”

The Tongue of Forever rolled out in front of you feels sticky and hot. You worry your cowboy boots will clomp into its suctiony buds. If you choose this fork, you think, you’ll descend into the belly of the beast. Never to be seen or heard from again.

You stare out into the mouth of her horizon. A soft hole with peach lips you used to moisten with whiskey. You sigh. Audibly. And decide again today: you just don’t have it in you.

Forever Contracts

Are you married? For some, that’s a forever contract. Why is that forever easier to YES! Is it because it’s culturally endorsed? Celebrated, congratulated, boozed all over? A tick mark in the appropriate box?

I think so. It was for me.

Two become one. A wholesome way to wholeness. You’re doing the right thing. This is the next step on the staircase to ENOUGH!

But what if that doesn’t work? Even though everyone said it would? What if completion for them — is dissection for you? Shearing off shoulders for someone else’s snug? Would you question that? Would you question the legitimacy of that contract? Would you stop? And question everything?

Drinking, for me, was a cultural contract. I signed on the dotted line. I committed to stay through sickness and health. For richer or poorer. In life and in death. The promise, that it would deliver me whole. Complete. My best self. My highest expression. The bottle. To have and to hold. In good times and in bad.

But I was always sick. And I was always poor. And the good times got so mixed up with the bad I couldn’t tell the difference. It’s not what I signed up for. I wanted my money back.

But the tongue of forever felt sticky and inhospitable. I cared more about my cowboy boots than I did the sake of my own soul. And there were 20 miles of paperwork to issue a refund. Administration made it so fucking hard to go back on my word. So I waited and waited and waited. And waited and waited. And waited.

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There’s something Russell Brand says in his book, Recovery. I read it during my first year sober. And it stuck with me like tiger balm on a hot spot.

You don’t have to stop drinking for the rest of your life, TODAY. You dont’t have to cram all that sober into the plump of this moment, this hour, this panic attack, this sunsrise. That would be too much, for anyone. You just have to not drink, today. You just have to choose yourself, today. Tomorrow, you can choose yourself again. But don’t take that on right now. It’s not here yet.

The Tongue of Forever is a figment of cultural surrealism. An art it does badly.

Now breath, baby.

Breathe, baby.

Breathe.

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