TheBanyanTree: My #OnwardIGo Musings

[Monique Colver]

I am writing from the hotbed of banality, just outside of Portland, where
the really cool things happen.

Addiction is easy when the illusion has worn away and only falling is left.
Falling is easier when there's a cushion to land on.

I started this a long time ago, so I'm not sure where I was going with it.

But addiction I understand. I am addicted only to chocolate at the moment,
and sleep. But drug addiction? There's something I can get behind. I mean,
I don't, but I can understand it. My mother was an alcoholic, and I know
for her it helped sharpen all those edges she hated. The points of things
that she'd rather pretend didn't exist, the things that made her think she
wasn't a good mother. The alcohol would remove those things to a distance
where they didn't hurt so much.

She was not a terribly great mother, and I hope the alcohol made that
easier on her. It didn't do much for me, but I'm a grown up, and no matter
my upbringing I wouldn't have wanted her to have those doubts because they
don't change anything. Guilt by itself is useless, just another thing
people try to forget to save themselves.

She was using drugs when she was pregnant with me, and drinking, and I've
wondered if that's why my brain isn't quite right. It never has been. I'm
brilliant in some respects and dull as a doorknob in others. My brother,
who came after me, was brilliant in math, and I was not. By that time she
was married to our dad and laying off the drugs. Maybe not the alcohol. My
brother though is an angry man. Don't cross him and he's fine. His youngest
daughter and I joke about how uptight he is, the kind of guy who obsesses
about the perfection of the lawn. Not just his lawn, but everyone's. I am
lucky he has never come to my house because steam would roll out of his
ears in big waves.

My younger sister has some emotional issues and will, I think, sink into
depression and disappear. I think, because she disappears during those
times. A week after messaging me that we have to stay in touch, at least
monthly, maybe weekly, she will not respond to me again for six months or
so. She learned how to drink from my mother, who, as per expectation,
abandoned her as well.

My mother left all three of us. First my brother and I, at some age I can't
even remember, and later my sister, when she didn't like that marriage
either. She always liked to think she left us behind for our own benefit.
It made it easier.

And we know what a mess I am. There is something fundamentally off about
me, but there's no telling why.

I flirted with alcoholism when I was 18, 19. Then I became a social
drinker, and then for years I really didn't care if I drank or not The
drinking became less and less often, and I only drink now if I think it's
going to be an interesting drink, something fruity. Otherwise, never mind.
I'm not alcoholic apparently. My brother doesn't drink, though I have seen
him have the very occasional Dos Equis.

My knowledge of drugs is limited to what I read and see on TV. I had/have
two cousins who were/are addicts. One died of an overdose a couple of years
ago and her brother is whereabouts unknown. He could be in prison again, or
he could be roaming around, or he could be dead too. We really don't know.
Their father was a terrible person who drank constantly and always wanted
to fight with me.

I don't know why people take drugs, but I do understand wanting things to
not hurt so much. I understand looking for comfort in something that will
blur the edges and make life bearable again. I almost even understand
wanting to go back to it when one has gone back to living in real life.
Real life is full of despair, even though we're conditioned to believe that
we should be happy to just be alive, that the very act of breathing should
imbue within us a joy to experience everything that happens to us. But it's
not like that for a great many people. Life is full of despair and pain,
which is why the suicide rate is going up and police carry Naloxone. We
help with that by calling people losers, by telling them they should be
able to live like the rest of us do, by discounting their experiences and
by failing to understand that they have just as many reasons for taking
drugs as we do not to take drugs. We do not take their pain seriously
because we'd rather believe it's willpower, and if they were just not the
emotional wrecks they let themselves be they'd be fine.

Productive rational people who work hard and look on the bright side.

I look at my little bottle of mild opiates and I think, "If that were only
stronger," but I take them only when the pain gets bad. The physical pain.
I know the mental pain will not be eased with a momentary fix. This week
it's my hip, but I don't even take them then, not until my entire body is
encased in a trap of pain. I know I could go overboard, but I don't. I take
one, maybe two, or with a lorazapam, and eventually the pain fades away and
I can see again. I could see before, but I mean clearly.

Only once could I not see at all and that was apparently an embolism.

When the depression comes and puts a chokehold on me I know that pain
relievers won't help because in those moments I am convinced of my
worthlessness, and that I should feel that way because it's what I deserve.

I take a lot of meds these days. Meds to keep the Parkinson's under
control, meds to help cognition, meds to avoid strokes, meds to keep me
upright and happy.

I am happy, mostly, though I do have my moments. Life is hard sometimes.
It's a challenge. But I'm privileged and have a fairly easy life, except
for money. I worry about money more than my health, because without money
what good is health? I know that's backwards but I've been poor, and that's
when I had strokes because I was stressed about being poor. Money would
have helped. People who say that health is more important than money have
never wondered where their next meal was coming from. Of course, even I was
never that poor. I always had a place to live and food to eat. And I own a
house. It's a cushy life, as long as I can keep the money dripping in. I'm
avoiding my health concerns because of money. I need a vascular test of
some sort, but I know it's going to be expensive and I already owe for my
last MRI. I'd met my deductible, but it was still spendy.

I drifted off from addiction apparently. I haven't been writing much, I've
been working and sleeping and seeing friends when possible, so when I start
writing it doesn't stop. I miss words more than I used to, as in I'll write
something and not realize I've skipped over words entirely, but that's not
a big deal. It's not as if I'm writing for pay or anything.

But addiction. I understand it. I could go there. Don't think I will
because I haven't yet, but I could see it.

Monique






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