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?