Drinking is fun. Sometimes it’s too much fun. I think that my family is very well antiquated with how much fun drinking is.

I got drunk in front of my family for the first time this Christmas. It was fun because the usual anxieties faded away and I remembered who I was again. Charismatic. Easy going. And I don’t want this to come off as arrogant but just a pretty fucking cool guy. Alcohol does these things for me. I drink this magic liquid and for some time I can finally be myself again. I can let loose and have as much fun as I want to. I can dance and not be embarrassed by my lack of rhythm and coordination. My mom’s side of the family is the perfect reminder of these effects. We get drunk and have a good time to say the very least. But there’s always this dark cloud looming over this good day.

Brief aside here. This is kinda my thing. I don’t know why but I kinda have this template where I write: good thing, but wait good thing is actually bad, I want to find a happy medium, finding said happy medium is hard but I need to do it anyways. I guess the duality of man has been something that has always and always will dominate my life. Good and bad. Yin and yang. That type of bullshit. Maybe I’ll write about it later on.

Anyways. Where was I? Dark clouds on a sunny day 😦 I guess the gist of what I want to write is that my family is a bunch of alcoholics and that I feel that fact a little more than I would like to. It’s like an itch that just won’t go away. Even now I just want to go and grab a beer just to cool the nerves. It’s seductive but I know what it does to people. Or at least the residual effects it has had on shaping my family. My dad hates alcohol. His parents too. My grandparent’s immediate family were all drunks. Abusive drunks. The trauma is so severe that it’s the only thing my grandmother can’t find a way to cast a positive light on what happened. I can’t get them to talk to me directly about this fact but I can see it in my dads family. My dad’s cousin, my “uncle”, he drinks a lot. Now I try not to judge my family without knowing the full story but from what I can gather things have not been easy. I think this is as much backstory as I want to give but it’s weird how these “not so secret” secrets impact my life. I’ve always known my dad was kind of a narc and maybe went a little extreme with the over-protection but I had always thought it was to ward off some external threat to my well-being. Now I think or at least I hope it was some measure to protect me from what I can become. Now I know parenting is hard and I have my own issues with how he chose to address this history of addiction and abuse, but I’d like to think that I know what he was trying to prevent me from becoming. I guess this plays into fate or something like that. What’s stopping me from becoming that asshole that increases the tension of the room tenfold?

I like to drink. and I’d like to think that I’m actually a really fun drunk. I have a good time while drinking but I’ve had scary moments where I get into that toxic headspace. I understand it. It’s so visceral and infuriating. I hurt and I want others to hurt with me to understand that pain. I communicate in the only ways that I know to express my emotions: anger or sadness. Which I guess are the same hurt expressed in different ways. I lash out and try to get people to help me from becoming me but they can’t help me or they’ll drown themselves. I find myself slipping down that road and drowning at the bottom of that bottle. I feel it. I’m drowning in myself and the only way to make any sense of it is to cling tight to that bottle and weather the storm.

And I do.

The storm has passed by the morning and besides the throbbing headache I am fine for the moment. I’ll try to slowly piece together what I said and who I talked to. I play it off as a joke. HAha so funny. Wild night drinking by myself playing mario kart trying to distract myself from my thoughts. So fucking rowdy bro. So I apologize. I keep on doing this until I realize that I can’t keep on putting these people through this again and again. I’m clinging to someone to save me and I realize that they’ll just go down with me. So I let go. I let go and I try to forget about them. I never do but at least in my own twisted rational I am the only one who suffers the prolonged hurt. I cut them off so that initial pain is replaced for apathy about that asshole who had emotional problems. It happens again and again because I don’t know how to communicate like a fucking human being so I repeat this cycle of shit slowly circling the toilet bowl that is my brain.

Wow that’s some white knight bullshit. I’m such a hero for constantly sabotaging my relationships so that I can keep on being unhappy. I protect them from myself. Fuck you and fuck that. I’m just a coward because I don’t know who or what I’d be with out that hurt. That open wound is so tied up in my identity, that to do anything about it would fundamentally change who I am as a person. Drinking is easy. It gives me an excuse to not be happy. It gives me an excuse to lash out. It gives me an excuse to be afraid of myself. It gives me an excuse to finally let go and truly feel what I feel all the fucking time. I don’t have to ignore it and I can finally try poorly to do something about it. That drunk me is such an asshole but if I stop drinking I’ll magically become a wonderful person. Whatever man.

I guess that’s just the difference between a 5 beer night and a 5+ beer night.