Category Archives: Reflections

A little love for the teacher

40s are the new 40s, feeling old, Goals, Reflections, teaching, Uncategorized, , , , , , , , , , , ,

I have a delicious morning routine that I have indulged to the fullest since I quit teaching in public schools. Twelve years of getting up before daylight, rushing out the door, and trying to map out the day ahead as I exited the highway with the sun’s just creeping up over the dead industrial horizon taught me how to really enjoy a slower morning.

Anyway, my morning routine goes something like this:

  1. I hit the snooze on my smartphone (the alarm is always set for a reasonable, productive hour) for an hour to an hour-and-a-half.
  2. I think about my dreams. I always have dreams.
  3. I talk to the animals that wander into the room and that finally inspire me to get up and let them out (I know I sound like lonely pet lady here, but I swear I have a husband. He just operates on an entirely different schedule.).
  4. I get up, let the dogs out, pour a cup of coffee, let the dogs in.
  5. I feed the dogs.
  6. I drink my coffee, pour another cup, and drink that while I skim headlines of various news apps on my Kindle.
  7. I choose the stories that interest me most, and I read them.
  8. I stop reading when I can no longer stand being stared at by two dogs that expect me to take them for a walk the minute I wake up, yet never do.
  9. I take the dogs for a walk.

After that, anything goes.   Often, if it’s a weekday, I spend a good chunk of that day preparing for my night classes—grading or tweaking lessons or creating ancillary materials or just generally staying ahead of the students. It’s what teaching should be. All teachers should be able to think during some point in the day and thoughtfully plan during others. Having that time allows us to connect with students and properly differentiate our instruction. It wasn’t until I had this kind of time to live my life AND teach that I realized that I’m a fairly effective instructor—student-centered, with progressive yet research-based methods that drive learning. How about that? It’s all about time.

Lack of time is the elephant in the room that American educators rarely talk about above the grassroots levels, the “trenches,” if you will. It’s one of those things that just about every other developed country on this earth (and many developing countries) including China provide for their teachers. Not every country provides the kind of time off for students and teachers that the U.S. does, but believe me, Uncle Sam and his league of state legislators have found a way to make teachers pay and pay for those extra weeks in the winter and summer. Given the average quite shitty teacher pay rates that rarely keep up with inflation or rising insurance costs, those two months in the summer, if you can afford to take them (and most younger teachers don’t because they need to make extra money), feel more like rehab than a vacation.

I will go back to public schools, I will do it all over again if I can just show up at a reasonable hour and teach a reasonable number of classes a day with a reasonable number of students in them, and attend a reasonable number of meetings and spend a reasonable amount of time planning instead of whatever bullshit the administration needs me to do to keep the school running on a skeleton crew. My last school (and this wasn’t where I spent the bulk of my career, but a place where I dipped my toes after taking a significant amount of time out of the public school arena. As soon as I saw the writing on the wall, during the first week of my tenure, I officially resigned) had teachers doing the jobs of the custodial crew.

I will do it all over again, I suppose, when pigs fly. Maybe when hell freezes over… ok, that’s enough clichés. Six and counting (Can you find the other three?!).

The sad thing is, when I left that last school, the one I mentioned above—where, incidentally, I ended up spending a month-and-a-half because my principal, literally, wouldn’t let me leave—the friends I’d made on the faculty and staff didn’t hide their envy of me or their dissatisfaction with the way things were. More than one single or widowed mother told me, “I don’t blame you. I could do it, if I would.” The way they looked at me when I said I was leaving might have resembled how a prisoner looks at her cellmate when she’s about to be released, or like a soldier might look at his fellow who is about to finish a tour. Probably shouldn’t be that way.

There are other jobs that teachers can do, depending on the subjects they teach. English teachers have the flexibility to get into writing and publishing fields or to pursue a higher degree and transition into law or project management or something.   Math and science teachers have a wider range of possibilities. I’ve seen young teachers transition out of the field rather smoothly. The older you get, though, the harder it is to make that transition into an entry-level field where you have no experience. I have all my eggs in one basket (Cliché number six, POW!), so I’m staying in this field, albeit part-time. My colleagues above who envied my escape are staying in this field, full-time. Our lives are very different from one another’s.

I could say so much more. The English teacher always can. Honestly, I don’t want every teacher to transition out of the field. Who does? We’re needed. We’re just not loved.

Smells like My Karma

40s are the new 40s, Election 2016, generation x, Reflections, Social Media, Uncategorized, , , , , ,

So, I opened up my one of my news apps this morning to find a caricature of GOP dreamboat Paul Ryan in a flannel shirt with a classic Misfits skull button over the pocket. The headline: “Smells Like Middle-Aged Spirit: We thought Gen X were slackers. New they are the suits.” Um, ok, ew? What does that mean? It means that my generation means something, and writers like Lavanya Ramanathan, author of the piece, are going to figure out what.

Ramanathan (I immediately Googled her to find out how old she was—and… she’s an Xer.), describes the stereotypical member of the Gen X tribe in the early nineties—ambivalent, underemployed, individualistic, nihilistic, anti-government, and (my favorite term of all) “slacker.”   Not only does that about sum up my state of mind circa 1994, but that about sums up my state of mind as of November of last year, all but the anti-government part, and that’s a really big chunk of the writer’s claim—that the middle-aged corps of the GOP is a reflection of my formative adult years, anti-big-government and all. Also that my politician crush, the vague and ambivalent, but very nice-to-look-at Paul Ryan, has the Beastie Boys in his Spotify playlist.

Other than our both being devastatingly good-looking, I didn’t think I had that much in common with Paul Ryan. Apparently, I do. Apparently, I have A LOT in common with the Gen X crowd in the Republican Party—note every adjective I used above to describe us in our twenties, but also note how those adjectives can shape and mold a person as she ages. Nihilism becomes natural skepticism; ambivalence becomes a purer form of individualism, or (perish the thought) self-righteousness; and anti-government sentiment can become a mistrust of anything government, which is where I derail from the Republican, the Libertarian, and the Tea Parties. I want to keep a lot of (most of, actually) federal programs that our present administration deems unnecessary. I dread the thought of another Cold-War-style arms race. I’m no hippie, and I’m no hawk. Is that a Gen X, trait? Maybe I should ask the experts.

Maybe, no. Maybe I shouldn’t. After reading this article, I wonder how many of my former Nirvana-listening, flannel-shirt-wearing, slacker peers are right now grappling with their conservative sides. I’m not. Over the years I’ve sided with a few planks in the GOP platform, and some in the other parties I mentioned above; but on the whole, they don’t reflect my way of thinking. Ramanathan contends that we will be the wild card in this country’s next election, all 66 million of us, so I guess it’s time to start planting the seeds. I’d say, “Don’t believe everything you read,” but isn’t that a given these days?

 

 

Was it something I said?

40s are the new 40s, Addiction, Election 2016, feeling old, Life in the Suburbs, Reflections, Uncategorized, , , , , ,

Gimme a W!  Gimme a T!  Gimme an F!  What’s it spell?  Well, I don’t need to spell it out for you.  If you don’t know the acronym by now, then you just might be TOO old to be reading this old broad’s blog.

Something strange happened recently:  I almost LMFAO (in the past tense) when I discovered that my blog had been viewed 55 times in one day.  55 times.  Huh.  That’s more times than I’ve seen it, I think.  Was it something I said?  Probably.  Was it something I don’t remember that I said?  Perhaps.

I didn’t laugh when I saw those stats because I can’t believe people would read this.  Quite the contrary.  I sometimes believe that I have a story worth telling, something that might spark thought or conversation or even friendship (see “Why are the Forties the New Forties?”).  I laughed because I can’t seem to tell a story unless it’s accompanied by crisis.

Years ago, when I was blundering neck deep in personal and financial crises–a legal battle that went on and on, an unhealthy accumulation of debt, unmedicated depression, a job that I was flushing down the toilet, “new” parenthood, you name it–I sought some refuge in my oldest and best friends, alcohol and writing.  Actually, I didn’t seek some refuge there, I sought it all.  Almost every night, I posted some besotted rant in my blog about my husband’s ex wife or the thankless and misunderstood job of the stepmother, or the teacher, or whatever.  I was angry, exhausted, and unhealthy.  And people seemed to like those rants.  I had a solid audience.

Then, the wounds began to heal–we settled our custody disputes with my husband’s ex, we sorted out some of our money problems, we moved to a very safe and boring place, I found a job I really liked, I went on meds, then I went sober, then I lost a bunch of weight, and then I had nothing to kvetch about anymore.

For the past five to six years, I’ve distracted myself with a string of short-lived hobbies: gardening, repurposing old furniture that I found on the sidewalk, playing the guitar (today, I am fond of playing Cracker’s “Turn on, tune in, drop out”), everything but what really defined me for so much of my adult life–drinking and being pissed off.  Can those be hobbies?

I’d like to say I don’t know what sparked my latest first-world crisis that seems to have produced more thoughts that others are willing to read, but that would be dishonest.  I’m introspective enough to know what has shot me back out of the cannon.  I can even pinpoint the date–November 8, 2016.

I’ve gained a bunch of weight and started waking up with hangovers again, but it’s not all bad.  Those 55 views (even if some were same viewers going back) are my proof of that. And I am loving some of the material that these viewers produce–stuff about alcoholism, depression, alternative lifestyles.  Some write feel-good poetry.  Some write books.  Some have advanced graphics skills that make my blog look sloppy and primitive (soooo 2003). Give me more, please!

As for the crisis, I’ll deal with it.  I have to.  45 year-old drunks are unsexy.  Where’s that life hacks book, again?  I think I need a glass of cold water and some barbells…

Repeating history

40s are the new 40s, Addiction, Aging Parents, Election 2016, Eternal Youth, feeling old, Goals, Life in the Suburbs, Parenting, Reflections, Relationships, Social Media, Uncategorized, , , , ,

I realize that I don’t contribute much to this blog, my only blog, my only writing outlet, in fact. I write a lot of entries that don’t get posted because I don’t know what kind of a point I’m trying to make. I write a lot of entries that don’t get posted because they’re for-real-and-for-true too revealing to the few parties that occasionally read the blog.   I write a lot of entries that just trail off… my boredom revealed in the white spaces at the end.

I’ve decided that I will post this particular entry in whatever state that it becomes. It will address a topic that I believe applies to the theme of 40s are the new 40s—depression, addiction, divorce, adult ADD, children, aging parents, politics, wrinkles, you name it. Everything applies to us, doesn’t it? We’re adults, and as a consequence of our age and our growing cache of wisdom and experience, we can come up with something to say about anything. We’ve been there, done that. And the younger generations that follow us will feel the same way after they’ve stopped believing that they can figure everything out.

Speaking of the younger generations, I have no hostility, some envy, and a whole lot of curiosity about what’s going on there. I have spoken to few people my age who don’t have a fantasy “do-over.” My husband would have been a medical doctor. I would have been a lawyer. My cousin would have been a boat mechanic on a pier someplace where the sun always shines. This is normal to us, and we see the younger people around us as simply younger versions of ourselves—people on the verge of making that one bad decision that will alter their lives. But what if these younger people aren’t like that? What if they don’t have the time that we had in the eighties and nineties to enjoy relative national peace, prosperity, and opportunity?

We know that people decades younger than us have one distinct advantage, and that’s time on their sides, time to figure it out, time to make mistakes, and time to revel in their youth. We did that. But I don’t see them doing that. I don’t see little “mes” in the twenty-something women I interact with and work with. I see women in their teens and twenties moving quickly, being savvy, and getting on with it in ways that make me wonder if these generations are exquisitely different. Did my mother see that in me?

Just like my mother and I are alien to one another and yet familiar, young people today are both alien and familiar to me. I wish them well because “times they are a changin’.” They will confront the new. I’ll observe it. They’ll fight to secure their survival. I’ll fight to secure my old age.   And sure, I’ll fight injustice where I can, and sure, I’ll continue to grow and develop as a human being. Maybe I’ll even write that pilot that I’ve been talking about since 2004. But they have decades and decades of a future to navigate. They’re gonna see some shit that we never will, just like we saw some shit that they can’t imagine (life without an Internet connection? How did we do it?). I wish them well, and I hope—I really hope—that they let us in and ask questions and respect our perspective.

Isn’t there some famous aphorism about history? About how if you don’t know what happened before you knew it all, then you’ll just become a tool to someone else who does?

How Do You Get to Know Your Parents?

40s are the new 40s, Aging Parents, Election 2016, good reads, Reflections, Relationships, Uncategorized, , , , , , , , , , , ,

I’m reading Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake right now, and it’s affecting me on a very personal level. I know I should wait to find out how this plot gets resolved before I discuss the novel as a whole, but this isn’t a book review. This is more like a dialectical journal, running thoughts I’ve had since little Gogol Ganguli grew up and the point of view stopped being from his parents’ perspective. Here’s how it goes so far:

This nineteen year-old girl in Calcutta marries a fellow Bengali a week or two after their parents introduce them. Her betrothed is studying in the U.S., and so that’s where he takes her after the wedding. The novel begins with this girl, Ashima, trying to make a recipe that reminds her of home using only ingredients that she can scrounge up around their Boston neighborhood in the late ‘60s—I remember Rice Krispies and some other unlikely candidates in the mix. She is disappointed with the flavor. Something is missing. Then her water breaks.

We spend a few intimate chapters inside the relationship of this husband and wife, chronicling the birth of Gogol, their daily lives, their move from an apartment to a house, and the growth of a network of friends, all Bengalis, around the Boston area. Ashima and Ashoke can only afford biannual trips back to India, so occasionally their American lives are interrupted with a tragic phone call—the news of a grandparent’s death, then a parent’s death. The phone becomes symbolic of their alienation.

Then Gogol, their oldest child, grows up. He moves away. He does stuff that college kids do. He finds work, falls in love with girls who aren’t Indian, and he lives an American life. Consequently, he lives two lives, one in which he is Indian, one American. Sometimes, especially around his girlfriends, he’s embarrassed by his parents, ashamed of their beliefs and their habits. Lahiri spends several chapters in Gogol’s head as he compares how his girlfriend’s Manhattan family lives and entertains with how his Boston parents live and entertain. So far, he sides with a lifestyle in complete opposition to the one in which he was raised.

He’s conflicted in a way that I will never be. My parents and I were born in the same area of the U.S. We were brought up with vaguely similar belief systems, food, and cultural norms. But we do have our generational and regional divides—especially now—and they’re big enough for me, big enough that I can relate to Gogol’s (and Ashima’s) conflict. There’s stuff about his parents that he doesn’t understand, and rightly so because they don’t tell him everything. But some things just can’t get told. For instance, there’s no way that Gogol will ever tap into his mother’s emotions on that day in 1968 when she tried to replicate a familiar Indian recipe, the day her water broke. Even if Gogol cared, even if Ashima were capable of verbalizing her feelings on that day, what mother in any culture will share such intimate details with her grown son? In many ways, Gogul will never know Ashima, his mother.

What I’m waiting for as I read this novel is not for Gogol to know his parents but for Gogol to want to know his parents. I think it’s coming. I at least think he’ll want to know his father. But right now, at my stage in the reading, Gogol thinks he already knows them, and there’s the grown child’s biggest mistake.

This recent election and the ideological divides that it revealed between some parents and their children has slowed down one of my most important tasks as a grown woman to date—to find out who my parents are, or at least to find out a few key details about them as people that they wish I knew. Doesn’t have to be everything, just has to be what they want. I don’t want to assume anymore, like Gogol assumes. Assuming we know who our parents are is an arrogant luxury reserved for the arrogant twenty and thirty-somethings.

I am 45, and I want to know my parents, but I don’t know how.   How do I tap into those snapshots of my parents’ early lives—decisions they made that they might have thought at the time were temporary, ideas they had about what marriage should be and what the future looked like and what they expected of their children? I don’t know. I can only guess, and like Gogol, my assumptions are probably wrong.

To Burn Out or to Fade Away–I’ll Take Fade.

40s are the new 40s, Election 2016, Goals, Reflections, Uncategorized, , , , , , , , ,

For most of my life, I assumed that everyone else in the world considered suicide in varying frequencies or degrees. I didn’t know why professionals made such a big, stinking deal over the mention of it, I just learned very early NOT to mention it around certain people and to outright lie to others: Have I had any thoughts of suicide? Nope. Not a one. What do I look like? A crazy person? A weak person? Meanwhile, I would wake up in the morning wondering what it would feel like to jump off a tall building or put a bullet in my head. Quick and efficient stuff I’d think about. None of this slow bleeding in the bathtub nonsense, hoping someone might run in and save me. I always knew that if I actually did it, I’d do it right. I’d do it to get it done. For most of my life I drifted in and out of these fantasies. I could come up with a hundred reasons to hate myself in the course of a day.

It wasn’t until I met my friend Fluoxetine, at the age of 42, that I learned otherwise. Fluoxetine, and the man who prescribes it to me, taught me all kinds of things about how other people can see the world. For instance, some people NEVER think of suicide. Not just once a day or once a month, but NEVER once. These are probably the people who freak out when they hear you mention suicide as casually as if you’re talking about flossing your teeth. They probably feel sorry for people like me who see no other way to see the world. Hell, I guess I would feel sorry for me, too. But I didn’t know anything different. My doctor said freedom from that world, the only one I’d ever known, would feel like a weight being lifted. When my surroundings became more than a fluctuating shade of drab, I would wonder how I could have lived for so long the way I did.

I was skeptical, of course. I’m always skeptical of the therapy trade. But this dude was more than a therapist; he was a doctor who could make a precise diagnosis. He was a man who didn’t pity me or fear for me or for my condition because he knew it was treatable. No drama. No endless talk therapy.

I was one of the lucky ones who reacted positively to the antidepressant right from the start. I remember so clearly driving to the grocery store, exuberantly singing along to whatever came on the radio, and giggling at nothing. I remember walking through the aisles of the store, trembling a little because I just wanted to FUCKING DANCE! That first day was like a pure coke high without the bleeding nose. My doctor said it shouldn’t have happened so quickly, that my body needed time to adjust to it. But I tell you, it happened. I actually wanted to dance in a public place, and I don’t dance, anywhere. It was a sign.

So what’s my point? I guess it’s this: in all those forty-two years, during those times when bleakness would interrupt my thoughts at random and make the whole world seem absurd, I never did it, never acted on the dark fantasy. I seem to have a strong survival instinct. I found ways to adapt to whatever it was, just like I need to find ways to adapt to whatever this is that’s happening now in the world. I need to adjust my perspective, to compensate, maybe to up my dose. I’m considering going full-throttle into hippiedom and embracing peace, learning how to play the guitar, maybe go vegan, never step on a bug. I’m tired of conflict. I’m so damned good it, so good at starting fires and stoking them, but I always get burned.

“Will Never Do”s

40s are the new 40s, Eternal Youth, feeling old, Goals, Reflections

I didn’t post much in 2016, something I vaguely attributed to being drunk much of the time, but I wasn’t drunk for the entire year. I spent some time early in the year training for the AVON 39, a 39-mile charity walk that—due to poor planning, I believe—turned into a 43-mile walk. It was gratifying, and I’d do the walk again if I didn’t have to raise the $1800 required of me to participate. I’d experienced extreme physical tests in my life, but never that extreme.

By the end of Day 1, after crossing that 26.2 mile mark, which was arguably a 29 or more mile mark, I was too exhausted to eat or shower or even move. I hunkered in my pink tent, waiting for a tentmate that never showed, and considered calling an Uber to take me home. The only thing that stopped me from walking to an Uber was the thought of the pain of walking to the Uber. So I just lay there on my unopened sleeping bag until I felt energetic enough to walk over to the “relaxation” tent with the inflatable couches and the warm lighting. After some hot tea, I could eat. After that, I could sleep. I got up in the rain the next morning, dismantled my tent, threw on a plastic poncho and trudged the last arguably 13, though more like 14 and some change, miles back to home base, and I was done with that milestone.

After walking arguably 43 miles in two days, I briefly considered training for a marathon until my father told me in so many words that I was nuts for considering it. He was tactful by never admitting that age was an obstacle. Like me, he had started distance running in his thirties; but unlike me, he had run the marathon before he developed issues with his knees, something that appears to emerge on both sides of my family.

“You can do it,” he explained, “but it’ll take a permanent toll on your knees, and then what’s the point?”

After the marathon, there would be no point, I suppose. I’d have issues with both knees, and I’d be years closer to replacement surgery than my father had been. No point to do it, I suppose, except that I hate closing doors on possibilities. I’ll never be able to stick a 26.2 sticker on my rear window. Boohm.

You know what else I’ll never be able to do? Lots. Here is the list of as many as I could remember in the thirty-eight seconds I gave myself to remember and write them down (NOT necessarily in chronological order):

  • I’ll never be a foot model.
  • I’ll never be Miss America.
  • I’ll never be the President.
  • I’ll never work in Turkey.
  • I’ll never be a high-class prostitute.
  • I’ll never be a mother.
  • I’ll never be a lawyer.
  • I’ll never run a marathon.

I’m sure there were more, but those are the ones I remember as clearly as my conversation with my father about not running a marathon. There are just times in your life when you admit to yourself that something isn’t going to happen. I assume we all do this, and by “we all” I mean people over forty. For you I can’t explain why I considered that I’d never be a high-class prostitute, but I will put it on the list.

And, you know what? My list of dead possibilities is SHORT! I haven’t been wasting my time entirely here on this earth, and life’s adventure ISN’T over. There are so many possibilities left to us at our age, and we’re in a position to pursue any one of them.  The position isn’t financial or familial, it’s primal—We see the end. We grasp the moment. We shit, or we get off the pot. We live, or we die.

2017, Meh.

40s are the new 40s, Election 2016, feeling old, Goals, Reflections, Relationships, Uncategorized, , , , , ,

2017, Meh.

That about describes it—“meh.” It’s more than just a word. It’s how I felt ringing in a new year that I didn’t look forward to. Everyone around me was saying, “2016 just needs to be over! 2016 sucked!” I don’t feel that way. So yeah, in 2016, the historical pendulum swung into outer space and a contentious president was elected. Sure, in 2016, a few childhood icons died. Regardless, 2016 was my peak. It was one big party that I didn’t document. I welcomed it at the craziest one I ever attended—the party that made my husband and I say to each other in the wee hours of January 1, 2016, “This will be our year.”

So fast forward to now. What did we say to each other this year?

“I am going to control my road rage,” he mumbled in the wee hour of January 1, 2017. He must’ve dug deep into the pits of avoidance to come up with that one. I didn’t even bother: I couldn’t think of anything except all the ones I broke last year. My husband brought up one of our shared resolutions, and then I wondered, “Maybe I have peaked. Maybe this year that I am tossing out right now was my last good year.”

And that was that. Happy New Year! My mother-in-law gave us blue sparkly top hats and noisemakers that I tried to hide from the kids. Shortly after the ball came down (which, incidentally, only about 1/3 of us actually saw—the ball drop has cheapened since Dick Clark), we all went to bed.

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Can’t Say it Doesn’t Matter

Election 2016, Reflections, Relationships, ,

giant_meteor_2016_lawn_sign-rfc92d897d33b40f7a3bad3411accca70_fomuz_8byvr_324

The recent election created some small ripples in my ordinarily placid family dealings. I targeted certain family members, like my mom, and I tried to sway their votes. This caused one of my brothers to threaten to “unfriendly” me (although he never did) and my retired uncle to begin actually using Facebook . My branch of the family tree isn’t much on confrontation (or communication), though we’re pretty good at freezing out.

I have no intention of freezing out any of my family members, even the ones who’ve subjected me to their own cold shoulders over the years, even the ones who never visit (that would be all of them), even the ones who talk shit behind my back, the ones capable of turning on me for little or no reason. Won’t do it. They’re mine. I see little sparks of me in every single one of them.

Perhaps that’s why I spent an hour today trying to decide what to wear to lunch with my brother. I tried on two dresses, two pairs of leggings, three jackets, and four hats.

My brother drives a large white pickup truck with a pair of yellow testicles hanging from the trailer hitch and an airbrushed picture of Mt. Rushmore—behind a Thomas Jefferson quote and the Tea Party’s URL—on the tailgate. He likes to wear extra large cotton shirts because they’re roomy. He embroiders custom slogans on the pockets of tees with an industrial-sized embroidering machine that he gave to his wife as a “gift.” He’s inspired by Fox News.

I will never get into his truck. I question his fashion sense. I listen to NPR, and sometimes I pity my brother’s wife for the weird “gifts” that she’s received from him over the years, like the aforementioned embroidering machine, or the sports car that doesn’t run.

My brother can also build or fix anything. He can build a new computer if he doesn’t like the way his functions. He can drag a dead jalopy out of a junkyard and not only make it run again, but make it run better (which, incidentally, makes me wonder why his wife’s sports car is still in the garage). He can construct his own energy-efficient heating system in his house or fix a jet engine.

I can do none of these things.

I imagine my brother and I appear opposites to anyone who doesn’t know us. My mother thinks we’re too much alike. My emotions concerning him have vacillated from anger to envy to disgust to admiration to a staunch conviction that I will never, ever be like him. I’ve accused him of being smart, stupid, wise, deluded, selfish, selfless, even mildly autistic. Sometimes, when he talks, I feel an overwhelming urge to leave the room.

In true my-brother form, he casually mentioned he’d be in my metro area for a week. It came out when I asked him why he wanted to know about certain bars around there. My brother lives at least nine hours away. He visited me once, for my wedding, in the sixteen years I’ve lived here.   We made plans to do a late lunch.

And so I spent an hour today trying to decide what to wear to lunch with my brother who would undoubtedly show up in a baseball cap and an extra-large Carhartt. I tried on two dresses, two pairs of leggings, three jackets, and four hats. I worried about where to take him, what to show him besides my urban fashion sense. I might detest him sometimes, I might love him sometimes, but I can’t say he doesn’t matter.

The Iron String

Reflections

“Man is timid and apologetic; he is no longer upright; he dares not say ‘I think,’ ‘I am,’ but quotes some saint or sage.” –Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance

 I’m fasting so that I can take a blood test, so that I can find out if I have liver damage, so that I can take a drug that will make me not want to crave alcohol. If this drug works, I will be both happy and angry. I will be happy because it will have done its job by snuffing out those sparks in my brain that go off like fireworks when I take my first sip of a cold draft beer. I will be angry because the drug will have quickly done a job that twenty-some years of willpower and talk therapy couldn’t do. If this drug could have saved me the time and aggravation that a lifetime of alcohol abuse cost me, then yes, I will be angry.

I found this drug myself with the help of an article in The Atlantic and the Internet (it wasn’t difficult), and proposed it to my wonderful psychiatrist who, though grudgingly, often allows me to explore my own treatments. My wonderful psychiatrist is skeptical of my plan to start taking this drug without some kind of companion therapy, i.e., talk therapy. I sensed from him that he had tuned in to hear a rock-bottom tale from me about why I needed medication to help with this problem, as if I needed to revisit myself at my worst before I could be worthy of treatment. That’s the AA model. He weakly asserted that he never prescribes this drug without some kind of therapy in conjunction, and then he prescribed it. I’m glad he’s a reasonable man.

See, my doctor knows what he’s been trained to do as a professional—tell me to go to “meetings” where I can find a sponsor who will teach me to how to kneel at the altar of sobriety—yet he also knows I’m not going to do that. There exists a secular support group, he suggested, but then he wasn’t sure of its name.   Shouldn’t he know?   Even a practical, seasoned professional like my good doctor believes that, for most, it’s AA or the highway.

Here’s a bit of advice for the forty-something who struggles with alcohol addiction, who’s been subconsciously waiting for her life to fall apart before addressing the problem: don’t wait. You don’t need to wait until you’ve gathered a TV series’ worth of drama in your personal and professional life to reach a level of awareness fit for making changes. The competition among AA members to publicly outdo one another with confessions from the dark side can be a huge turnoff for a more pragmatic and high-functioning drinker. So can the hand-holding, the prayers, and the insistence that this pre-World War II method of treatment is the only true and righteous path. Trust me, the step isn’t so big. Our twelve-step culture, enabled by the medical community, just makes it seem so, and so we begin to doubt our skepticism.

If this drug works, like I said, I’ll be both happy and angry. Our advancements in medicine and technology are supposed to make our lives easier, so if I can painlessly flick that monkey off my back, my life will become easier; but then I will detest the culture of talk treatment even more. If this drug doesn’t work, I’ll just have to take a more difficult path. Either way, I’ll still be happy, because I have the power to choose it.

So if you’re wondering why middle age has not brought you new wisdom. If you are noticing that the alcohol has begun to make most of your decisions for you, and ordinarily cool people telling you that you MUST go to AA meetings, yet you feel very skeptical about that option… be skeptical. By seeking assistance for a predisposition to drink alcohol, you’re not crossing over from the dark side into the light. You’re not seeking absolution for a heinous crime. You’re dealing with a physiological problem. And like many other physiological problems, there is more than one way to approach it. Google them. Seek out multiple opinions. Be proactive. You’re not powerless.