A History of Vices Part 3

III.                    Alcohol

I didn’t ever want to drink. I have specific memories of the detailed conversations I had with my friends and family:

        “No, when I’m 21 I won’t be drinking.”

        “Why?”

        “I don’t want to be an alcoholic.”

        “But a few drinks, here and there…”

        “Nope.”

Alcohol problems do run in my family; it’s something my siblings and I must be vigilant about. I did end up drinking alcohol, though, despite my previous protests and manifestos. My self-righteousness. My sister gave me some alcohol in high school; she made me some mixed drinks when I came to visit her. I wasn’t blown away.

        My senior year I sank into a depression to which there seemed to be no light. I know: This is a recurrent pattern in my life. I know.

        I know.

        I read that sad people liked alcohol somewhere. And I was a sad person, too, so maybe alcohol could help me? If I didn’t abuse it? Plus, all my friends were drinking in their parents’ basement. I was not, obviously. If I was, I’m sure this story would come out much differently.

        I got one or two old Miller Lites out of our garage refrigerator. I was daring about it- and I felt like quite the bumbling rebel. Ha ha ha. I thought to myself bitterly. Ha, ha, HA. Of course I had no idea what a light beer was and nearly puked on my first sip of it.

        “I’m drinking now!” I IMed some forgotten person.

        “Cool.”

        This was it. I didn’t “drink” again until college. I was dating someone briefly and we had sangria at a friend’s house. The sangria went straight to my head. In the grungy bathroom of my 1970s dorm, I thought my bladder had exploded.

        I’m going to die. I cried on the toilet. Alcohol KILLED me. Sobs ensued.

        Two years passed unremarkably, in the way time passes when nothing noteworthy happens. I slept in my college library and daydreamed on languid busrides between Erie and Edinboro. These were peaceful days. I had no idea at the time.

        In 2009, I began to actually drink like most people do. I got drunk for the first time at a Halloween party the previous fall. I remember being hungover for the very first time was an odd, surreal experience. I had to drink Gatorade and eat greasy food to calm its effects. Several years later- a hangover inevitably plants me miserable in the bathroom with my face over a (yes) toilet.

        My 21^st birthday, I blacked out. I spilled a Long Island Iced Tea over my best friend, fell asleep on the bar floor commenting about how beautiful the floorboards were. I offered to take several frat boys to a strip club and called every person I knew on my friend’s phone. Most of these people I hadn’t spoken to in years.

        “It’s me!” I slurred. “BRITTANY!”

        After that episode, I developed a taste for beer (Miller Lites, please) and going out on weekends with my friends. I felt like I had been welcomed into a club I previously had been excluded from. I felt accepted and like I was part of the “in crowd.” I loved the nightlife, to paraphrase the disco song.

        Alcohol itself was fun, but nothing I could see myself doing every day. I had a low tolerance back then and knew where to draw my lines (most of the time.) Albeit, when it came to actually drinking, I could not tell beer from water it seemed. I drank so fast my friends told me I should join a fraternity. I learned later in life that this was not good at all.

        It did make me braver, though. It was the little voice in the back of my skull telling me it was possible to do anything. It also made me more relaxed – and to me? That was an infinite blessing.  It also provided me with some further awkwardness, as I discovered (fast) I became unusually affectionate upon drinking. I made some dumb choices; I’ll leave it at that (making out with random boys who came onto me springs to mind: I was soaking up experiences like a sponge.)

        I went out a lot in college because it was a novelty to me. The summer thereafter, upon graduating, I didn’t as much. I would have some beers at home every now and then, but nothing that made me feel too terribly weird.

                My friend from the Internet- I started frequenting this site to meet Swedes in preparation for my upcoming Swedish trip, I didn’t really meet any Swedes – encouraged me. I thought of him as ultra-hip and adjusted and calm. He embodied the characteristics of what I wanted to be, or so I thought. He was my mentor of cool. I never thought of him as much more than that. He could be a good wingman if he lived closer. I naively reasoned.

                “You need to stop drinking crappy beers,” he told me.

                “Nope.”

I knew at this point light beers were lower in calories and alcohol, and I was more than okay with that.

                He was single and living in the trendiest neighborhood in Brooklyn. Or what someone from the borderline Midwest would think was, anyway. He scouted hip bars for girls who looked like they stepped from American Apparel catalogs or Devendra Banhart videos. It occurs to me I may have just dated myself.

                We spoke a lot. And a lot. And a lot. He made me feel confident; he was a pretty above-average listener. I didn’t know entirely what this meant. Like I sometimes do, I took things at face value.

                Of course I am not entirely innocent or blameless for what transpired, and I am not claiming that. I should have been more guarded; I shouldn’t have said or implied things that were not based in any kind of reality.

                2011 saw my Grandma enter Saint Mary’s Nursing Home, where she once worked. She abandoned her house of 40 years; dressing up for the journey with make-up and a small bag prepared. The only thing she seemed to enjoy during her last year on this planet was drinking wine. When she went to the nursing home, she couldn’t even do that anymore.

                I applied for more jobs in a flurry of bitterness, panic and wanting-to-leave-Erie. I fired off resume after resume after fruitless resume. Eventually the words meant nothing to me; my life reduced to bullet points. I was spending my afternoons with my Mom in the nursing home- I was feeling claustrophobic and confused.

                One job that got back to me was in New York City. Manhattan, if we want to be technical.

                They wanted to give me an interview.

                An interview.

                Of course I jumped at this. I remember happily stalking down the halls of the nursing home, a little dance in my step. I felt I heard destiny finally calling my Christian name. I went for it.

                My parents were skeptical, but my friend? He believed in me. He said I could stay with him. We’d have a great time.

                So I bought a bus ticket- and I left, for a long weekend spent in New York and DC. It coincided with my 23^rd birthday, I was so unbelievably excited.

 I felt like I’d have a new life. A real one.

                My first impressions of New York were nothing like my class trip in college right before Christmas. My sophomore trip was dark and foreboding; I arrived in the city late at night and everything looked sinister. I was frantically texting him, making him aware of my progress as I came nearer. I saw him before I even got off the bus- he was nothing like I pictured him or had even seen in the rare photos he sent me. When we met for the first time in person, once I stepped off that late bus, I felt somewhat duped.

                That trip constituted of, in addition to my job interview that went very well and also went nowhere, a lot of drinking craft beers. I remember my bus ride to DC to see my sister after the fact; I held my vomit in for most of the trip until I threw 20 minutes before we arrived.

                “What’s that smell?” some Indian guy shrieked when he stepped in after me. I also have to note there was no toilet paper, so my vomit was basically everywhere.

                I explained to my friend that that kind of lifestyle was not for me at all. I wasn’t used to heavy alcohol or drinking for a string of days in a row. He was nice enough about it at that time; I feel though New Yorkers have a much stranger relationship with alcohol than the rest of the country. Although, I have to say Phoenicians are abnormally big on day-drinking, something I quite don’t understand the appeal of 100 percent.

                As for the New York job, something weird happened. Something that could only happen to me and the shitty luck that I’ve been cursed with since I was a child. The woman I interviewed with called me up and offered me the job- but I had to get there fast. I couldn’t waste any time or else it wouldn’t be mine.

                So I did what you can expect I did. I left Erie ASAP. Twenty-three and I practically ran away from home. I flew in La Guardia and my friend, and his friends, greeted me. At this point, I have to say our relationship was getting flirtatious. Do you remember me mentioning how drinking made me more affectionate? Yeah. That.

                Even though I had been under the impression we could cohabitate as “friends,” I was quite mistaken. Our relationship would never be on the friends-level ever again. I decided it was worth experimenting with, because I did love him. But as every adult eventually discovers by one mean or the other, loving and being in love are two very different states of mind. One is the Pacific Northwest, and the other is Arizona.

                The other thing worth mentioning was the job disappeared upon me moving to New York. This logically sucked. I decided to look for new work then- a quest that would take me through several interesting but otherwise unrewarding freelance gigs and eventually into the company of some very unsettling people who made me extremely uncomfortable while I worked with them.

                During this tumultuous period in my life, I began drinking more. This was partially because in the beginning of our half-hearted relationship, my friend and I went out a lot. Like, Scott and Zelda a lot. It was all very much a novelty, and I’m huge on novelties. I learned to altogether stop drinking lite beers. And I learned that some beers contained a whopping amount of alcohol, and I learned this by blacking out several times.

                When the novelty disappeared, I drank because I couldn’t stand my friend anymore. He was getting, frankly, mean. And in order to be his girlfriend until I was able to move out on my own (I was terrified breaking up with him would leave me homeless,) I needed to numb myself. I drank much more than I was ever comfortable with and became used to the constant stretches of hangovers. I became a pro at operating with a pounding headache and undeniable nausea. It was almost a bragging right, really.

I began having a slew of panic attacks as well. This was in part from drinking and, in part, from the population of New York. I couldn’t handle on some days leaving the apartment and entering the subway to find person after person after person coming at me. It was way too much for my senses to handle. I had an anxiety attack that dragged on a miserable four hours at one point. At another point, I was so worked up and visibly upset a police officer had to come speak with me.

In retrospect, I have no one to fault but myself for this degree of excess. I wish my friend had been less aggressive with me and less mean, and I wish he hadn’t been so insistent on dating when he realized I was more or less solely attracted to women. But bygones are bygones. All I can do from these situations is learn.

In November of 2011, months after the job had gone and my grandmother’s eventual death in the nursing home, I had a nervous breakdown and came home. I was a defeated, anxious mess.

At this point, I began to drink less- a lot less. One, because I didn’t like who I had become in New York. And two, I knew I couldn’t keep doing it without something horrible happening. Some people didn’t quite understand why I was reluctant to go out or whatnot; I still did, but I tried to keep myself in check. I felt ashamed of myself and altogether subhuman at times. I blame my nervous breakdown, to a certain degree, on drinking.

I wanted to be a better person and I wanted to leave the past where it needed to be: behind me. I wanted to live for something bigger than myself; I wanted to not make the same mistakes again. I spoke to an Air Force recruiter. I began arranging a physical and written test to gain admittance. I’m not sure where my life would have ended if I had followed this path.

“You lived in New York?” the recruiter inquired, jotting down my details down during my second or third interview.

“I did.”

                “What part?”

                “Williamsburg mostly.”

                “Oh! I’m from Bushwick,” he smiled at me. Bushwick made me shudder. I had moved there briefly; I met two other sweet girls, one from the Midwest and the other from the Bay Area. I didn’t know them that well, but I liked them. Then, we got bedbugs, and my room was the most infested. I remember tearfully carrying furniture down creaking stairs and flinging it all trash heaps outside. I remember writing notes that were like confessions that weren’t my cross to bear and slipping them under neighbor’s doors. We are your neighbors, and our apartment is infested. Yours probably is too. I remember not getting my security deposit back- which was half my savings. I don’t think the girl who I subletted from had a nervous breakdown. Ever.

A few months later and a real job offer in my field, I moved to Phoenix. This time, things went better. I was convinced I had a new shot at life and I didn’t want to squander it. I didn’t want to do what I had done before.

I wanted to live honestly.

Unfortunately, after a few weeks of tight living, I found myself in a social circle where the chief activity was going out. Nearly every other day. I’m not saying anything negative about them; they were great and accepting and helpful. Here I was, a stranger in the desert with just a suitcase full of belongings and some broken bridges left behind me, and they took me in. They are all gone now, having moved to other cities and destinations. I miss them.

The unfortunate part was this was starting to expose me to a lifestyle I wanted to leave behind. Then, the catch-22 was I wanted, needed friends. So I couldn’t just seclude myself and shoot down their offer. I was available and I went anywhere. I made dumb choices, again.

I started hanging out with my one old friend frequently, and things were a blast for a while. It was a semi-golden age. It came and it went, though, like ages all do. There were weeks of not-talking and sometimes months. As my first social network began to dissipate, I found myself very alone for the first real time in my life.

To assuage this and occupy my restless mind, I tried several things, since this loneliness was toxic. This loneliness was cancer. It ate at me. I could be having a good morning, enjoying a cup of coffee and cleaning my apartment. I could be headed home from work after a virtually stressless day, relieved and calm. Then it hit me like every cliché you can conjure that I was so, so, so alone. I had no one and nothing and I couldn’t begin to fathom the empty apartment, the quiet nights, the weekends without speaking to another person in the flesh. It began to corrode a sense of peacefulness I was working to cultivate. I couldn’t see a point in anything if I was constantly alone. And I began to fear for the rest of my life that this was a perpetual condition. I had no Mom or Dad with me; I had no pet, no siblings, no friend who I could always turn to. I had no significant other; I felt like an island of flesh and bone.

I drank some weekends more than I like to remember. It gave me a pastime; it made me feel numb and not alone. Sometime I went out and met random people. Sometimes I just sat at home and listened to music, and fell asleep.

Thankfully, this turned around for me. I met a girl. She was amazing; I remember every detail of our first meeting like it was a movie I’ve seen countless times on cable.  My whole life played if I had been waiting for this. I fell in love, and for the first time in the impossible forever, I didn’t feel alone. I had someone to share my life with and I wanted to share everything with her. I worked on cutting out my bad habits. I wanted to be a better person- for her. Therein, the repetitive problem. It wasn’t for myself that I desired deep, personal change.

And for several months, I think I was. I had moments every now and then, but the darkness felt like it lifted. I kissed her hand and I felt like the future had come. We spent our weekends shopping, we opened up to each other. I wanted to protect her and I felt she equally had protected me. It was a good thing for a while until it wasn’t.

Eventually, things came to a head. My Mom taught me growing up we can never be truly happy on Earth, and perhaps this is why I always am looking over my shoulder, waiting for the other shoe to drop. Perhaps I am always overthinking and overanalyzing, and just inflicting needless pain upon myself. Anyway, we parted ways. It was one in a string of bad happening that more or less broke my heart. In fall of 2013, I was so sad and crestfallen and hopeless.

And I resumed my less-than-stellar habits.

Eventually, after a few months of smoking and drinking more than I had planned, my body and my mind said “Enough was enough.” I began to try and see more than a series of sadness in life. It was a challenge: Friends had died, Dad had died, friends and my significant other had packed up due to their free will and nothing else. It was hard not to internalize everything- I wasn’t successful in resisting.

At this time, I am back where I am post-New York, pre-Phoenix. My goals are less tenuous and mendable now. I have them, but they’re somewhat vague and shapeless. Still, they are existent. And I realize that if I want to make any progress in life, there are things I need to refrain from. Mostly, my vices- and the negative feelings that take me there.