I think I know what my father meant when he sang about a lost highway

I've been experimenting this week with not drinking, which, in my vernacular, means in 4 days, having only 2 beers. To someone who's used to having at least 2 drinks a night, and often 3 or 4, and actually getting drunk at least 3 or 4 nights a week (beer, wine, whisky), is a pretty big deal.

I'm not sure what finally clicked in my brain this week, but it happened on Sunday night, after seeing United 93. I'm not saying United 93 had anything to do with it, but maybe it did. Somewhere around there, I just decided that I don't like, nay, am terrified of, the person I am becoming. Drinking alcohol for me used to be something I rarely did, and it was always joyful, usually in celebration of a birthday, or something special happening, or some kind of holiday. But now I hate it. I hate how it makes me feel, I hate the person I become when I drink now. They say that when you drink, your true personality shines through. Well, remember when I used to get all cooey and hang all over everyone and send out mass emails about how much I loved everybody, and how corny it was? Well now when I get drunk I get angry, I go to bed depressed, and I wake up cloudy every fucking morning.

I've been reading this book, Healing Through the Dark Emotions: The Wisdom of Grief, Fear, and Despair, and I'm not quite halfway through, but it's been very helpful. (It's also funny because she actually makes a lot of arguments against this book, which I read last summer, and learned a great deal from. But her arguments make a lot of sense to me.) It's hard for me to say too much about it at this point, except that it's becoming so clear to me how much I repress, and how much I always have. I guess growing up gay in a small town, and growing up, from day one, feeling almost completely rejected and loathed by all of your peers, for reasons completely unknown to you, except they don't like the way you walk, or talk, can implant some pretty serious neuroses in someone. I'm not blaming anyone, or saying that there aren't people who grew up in MUCH worse environments than I did, who turn out just fine, but I can say that the one survival tool I learned very early on was repression. Keep your chin up, fake it, don't let 'em see you hurt, or they've won. Or, in some extreme cases, pretend like you enjoy the abuse. That'll show 'em.

I always had friends growing up, but the only consistent friends I had were girls. It honestly wasn't until I was in my almost mid-20's that I truly made really close male friends that stuck. All through my childhood, I would make male friends, but they would all decide eventually that I was boring, or too much like a girl to hang out with, or in slightly later years, befriend me, and then turn against me when their friends gave them shit about it. Some of my most vicious tormentors in school were boys who had started out as my friends. I guess I have some pretty serious trust issues. It's also come to my attention recently, that I think I might also have some pretty intense abandonment issues, arising from family situations.

It's funny how when you start really digging into this kind of stuff (basically, once you reach some kind of threshold, or breaking point), how much it seems so fucking glaringly obvious. I've always felt bad about being depressed, I think, or ungrateful. I never wanted the people who gave me my anger, and my sense of smallness, to have the satisfaction of winning, so I never wanted to give in to those emotions, to admit that they had any power over me, or that they had actually affected me in any way. It's only been recently, I think, that I've been able to admit that I was affected, affected very deeply and profoundly, and will probably struggle with these feelings of rejection and fear and rage for the rest of my life; that not having any strong male bonds when I was growing up has seriously impacted my relationship with men, and how I relate to them, and influenced who I'm attracted to in a romantic way, and how I sort of view all of my male relationships as tenuous. Men are cruel, men turn against you, men leave. That's just what I learned.

But in order to overcome these crippling emotions, you have to face them, and admit that they exist, and as the book says, befriend them. Which is what I've never been able to do. But I think I'm ready to start giving these feelings the credence they deserve. The book argues that those "dark" emotions exist in your body for a reason, that they're there to teach you something, to lead you someplace new, and the more you repress them and ignore them (alocohol, drugs, sex, whatever; yes, please), the stronger they get until you pay attention to them. I guess I never thought about things that way before. But it's so clear. And I'm ready to make some new friends.