ALCOHOLISM AND APOLOGIES

I have to admit, I don’t really get addiction. Sometimes I drink enough that it prompts half-worried conversations with friends and family, but I am not, in a classical sense, an alcoholic. In a romantic sense, maybe, as in sometimes I drink so much so often that it makes for a bad optics, raises questions about the long term-health of my body or of deeply suppressed psychological trauma (but seriously I’m okay). But in a classical sense, in which one gives alcohol free-reign to negatively affect one’s life, I’ve got nothing to worry about. Because I know addicts.

One, a best friend-turned-girlfriend-turned ex-turned-friend forever, called me months ago from rehab. She warned ahead that she was at the stage to tell me that she’s sorry. I did not answer that call or the next one. I finally spoke with her today from the comfortable aesthetic distance of facebook chat, and after some strained small-talk, she let on that she was working up an apology.

“An apology for what?”

 “Whatever fckd off things I might have said to you during belligerent rants,” she said. “Sorry  =. /”

“Wait, so you’re apologizing for things you may have said without knowing what they are?”

“*that’s the joy of black outs,” she said.

I really wish she hadn’t said that, about the blackouts. It seem to come from a narrative that, due greatly to the influence of drugs and alcohol, she has been a total bitch all these years. How could she ask me to accept an apology that comes out of a place like that? I don’t see her that way. I would not have spent so much time and love on her if I saw her that way. Sure, she was mean sometimes, but she was also often right. And let’s be honest with ourselves: booze or no booze, sometimes friends are mean. Sometimes we’re petty and selfish and insecure and cruel and we hate and frighten one another. Whenever we are still friends after the dust settles, it is because there is so much more to us than all of that.

And besides, that time she pulled a knife on me for calling her the wrong girl’s name in bed, homegirl was stone cold sober.

As far as I can tell without prying, the final-straw stages of her alcoholism were a lot darker than the blissful/tragic city nights that make up my recollections of her. What it comes down to, is that I don’t want our entire (mostly inebriated) history delegitimized just because she eventually spiraled. Good and bad, those times were significant and real.

And sure, Sara says her apology is more about her and her healing so I should just accept it, or whatever—but isn’t that just the kind of selfish expectation people should apologize for?

FOLLOWING MYSELF AROUND FOR A DAY: A DIARY

I saw you in my dreams this morning. I had woken up at 7:30 to make sure Sara made it off to work on time, but by 8:20 she had momentum of her own and I was losing a battle with the incredible gravity my own bed has after a weekend away. I closed my eyes to gather my thoughts. When next they opened, I found myself in seen-and-done-it-all Columbia walking through campus on a warm, cloudy day. You called out to me from a across the mall. You looked the part, too, dressed down in sweat pants and in glasses with your hair pulled back. When you hugged me, you were 20 again. I slurred, “Is this reality? I can’t tell anymore.” You promised me that it was and, because you were you, I believed it.

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In the pretty 10:00 light, which enters our apartment through the trees and shimmers with their leaves on the living room floor, am I moved to reflect on my weekend in my college town. What more is there to say about Columbia that hasn’t been said already? Some good conversations, some mean gossip, some former lovers, some future ones, some cool people, and more with egos bigger than their contributions to society. But more than anything, my Columbia is about the limitless, undying love affair we have with our friends. As much as I love the big parties, my favorite part usually comes at the end, after Julia has kicked out everyone who doesn't know her last name and the rest of the crowd falls away when the beer runs low. Then it’s just the few of us in the living room laying all over and around one another, bleary-eyed and high and sensitive.

And yet, at breakfast there is a nagging sense of unbelonging that makes my protestations a bit briefer each time Sara is ready to leave. The streets don’t quite look the same. My social world has reorganized itself along new axes, sometimes newcomers I’ve never heard of who view me suspiciously as I return the favor. There is a part of me that feels like that that town is cursed with over, that St. Louis is blessed with happening. I know how fucking stupid that sounds.