The first thing you should know is that I have given up Diet Coke, and I've survived. It's alright if that fills you with jealous rage. Listen-- I've felt that way too before. I've met people who never took out student loans. I've seen the young and unwrinkled. Jealousy is normal, and you know what? Maybe you'll achieve your dreams one day. I mean, it's practically impossible and you will probably fail, but you should definitely try it. Awww. You're adorable!
JUST KIDDING I AM IN YOUR CORNER AND ALSO STILL LOVE YOU IF YOU ENJOY THE SODA POP.
The second thing you should know is that I gave up alcohol in 2018. People who know me in a casual way (also family members, and believe me, that's not a mutually exclusive distinction) think I did that because it was making me tired. I have been infamously exhausted for about four years, and did that whole thing where I went to many doctors many times and got told I was fine until eventually I started bleeding profusely and it turns out I wasn't ever fine, but had suppurating ulcers in my intestines!!! Which are auto-immune, and called ulcerative colitis! And had probably been having something called occult bleeding or years and years, and that it not nearly as seductive and witchy as it sounds!
But anyway, it was definitely true that drinking alcohol interfered with my sleeping, and I gave it up at a time when I absolutely could not afford to waste one single, solitary drop of restoration. This was a time when I skipped showering and eating lunch just so I could sleep in until the last minute before work and then nap on the break room couch at lunch. Alcohol did not work in that equation.
The thing is-- and I know this because I've given up Diet Coke before like 15 times, and have failed 14 (let's pretend this last one is going to last)-- the thing is that it's easy to be mostly not drinking or eating something but still indulge every so often. I know vegans who eat bacon once or twice a year, and that's what they need to do to be vegan almost every other single day, and self-knowledge is a beautiful thing. Soon enough I'll slip into a Diet-Coke-at-parties-only mode, and that'll be good enough.
I happen to have never gone back on giving up alcohol, though, and it has nothing to do with exhaustion, or ulcerative colitis.
I don't budge on being alcohol-free because giving it up wasn't really about physical health. It was about redemption-- about trying to redeem something in myself that stands out as one of the chief regrets I have from the days of the affair with the priest. The very first meeting that was chaste and fine until it wasn't, I had been drinking. Every other terrible, horrible interaction with him from that point onward was also soaked in alcohol, as were the days afterwards when I had a baby and a toddler I kept mollified with Disney movies while I sobbed in silence on the screened in porch and drank hard cider and smoked cigarette after cigarette.
I don't drink anymore because all these years later, when I turned inward and asked myself with brutal honesty what I could have changed or done differently to have avoided the affair, the answer was that I could have stayed sober those nights and afternoons. If I hadn't been drinking, I truly believe I could have stopped things before they went too far. The alcohol did just enough to lower my defenses and fuzz my sense of up and down and right and wrong that the old hurts and needs inside me that made me reach towards him instead of away took over.
The irony in all of this is that if I'd been drinking Diet Coke, I might have avoided the absolute worst time in my entire life. But what is hindsight for if not for the things we regret? We don't "hindsight" the times when things go the way we want them to. We also don't tell casual acquaintances that the reason we no longer have a glass of wine on girls' nights involves extra-marital shitfests with clergyfolk. Instead, we blame them on the actual shitfests caused by ulcerative colitis. The literal and actual ulcers, rather than the metaphysical ones. But if I know one thing about myself, it's that the sense of missing out and longing I sometimes feel when my friends have a chilled glass of Pinot Grigio feels like penance, and I'm a sucker for ritual.
Giving up Diet Coke, though? That was 100% about my physical health. That shit dissolves pennies, and if you have bleeding sores in your intestines, it might be that pouring acid down your throat twice a day is a poor use of time and talent.
What's inside always finds a way out, my friends. And often, it bleeds.
Image description: A cool, frosty glass of brown cola sits on a restaurant table, straw at the ready. It looks like it might be a pizza place, given the round glass shaker of parmesan cheese and the hint of a menu off to the side. Pizza is so delicious. I'm not eating that either, anymore. I've gone paleo! It could be an entire other post!
Image credit: "diet coke" by plasterbrain is licensed under CC BY 2.0. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/?ref=openverse.
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