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Addiction

The Monotony of Life

December 21, 2018 by Denton Leave a Comment

The Monotony of LIfe
The Monotony of LIfe

By the time anybody reads this, I could be a new father for the third (and FINAL) time.  My wife is 37 weeks pregnant with a baby we know very little about other than we think it’s healthy.  We really like the surprise of seeing what the make and model is once it enters the world. That part is exciting.  And yes, we have a boy and girl name picked out and ready for whatever it is.

So that part is exciting, right?  Just that first glimpse of genitalia to see what is going to hang out with us for the rest of our lives is pretty exciting.  Well, for me it is. For my wife, I’m sure she’ll just be ready to finally have that little tummy beast out of her. For the first few minutes, she probably won’t even care.  But the suspense of not knowing is still pretty cool.

The problem with this little surprise is that, for me, it’ll be the last one for a while.  My wife knows this about me and I’m not ashamed of it, but I am NOT looking forward to the baby stage of this thing’s life.  It’s not for me. Once these other two kids of mine hit about a year old and I could play and roughhouse and communicate with them, I should have been walking around with a coffee mug that said, “World’s Funnest and Gnarliest Dad.”

That mug, however, will not apply to me in the next twelve months.  I will not deserve it. I will do my damnedest to be the best father I can be, but I do not like the baby stage.  The monotony drives me slowly insane. I suspect this time will be worse.

I’m sober this time.

I’ve struggled the past few weeks.  Like struggled to the point that I haven’t had the motivation to write.  Struggled to the point that my wife has been worried about me. I don’t struggle with a desire to drink anymore. That’s actually long gone.  I seldom even think about it anymore. I celebrated eighteen months sober back on November 28, and I think the only times I really think about alcohol is when I either write about it or go to AA.  I do not sit at home at night, even when everybody is asleep, and crave a drink. Ever. Tobacco? Sometimes. Rarely, but more often than alcohol.

But I do struggle with depression and discontent and lack of motivation and – when it pertains to this baby – dread.  Those things can settle on my mind like a cow with four broken legs. The damn thing is NOT moving no matter how much I want it to.  And it weighs a freaking ton.

I’ve been thinking a lot during this low period about the monotony of life.  That’s not all that has troubled me, but it’s the theme. Those questions like, “Is this all life is?” and “What is my damn purpose?” and “Why can’t I have a simple brain that just falls into happiness and contentment at the flip of switch?” are all a part of it, but all of them settle neatly inside the “monotony of life” theme.

The reasons I’ve struggled lately have been pretty obvious.  Life is about to get harder, and I have no addictions to treat the monotony.  Which, if you think about it, is Hypocrisy 101. What is an addiction but one of the most monotonous activities known to man?  You secure your alcohol and/or tobacco daily (or whatever the vice,) you hide it daily, you partake in reclusion daily, you hate yourself daily, you walk on eggshells daily.  There is nothing more monotonous than addiction. And yet it’s such a safe place when you’re in the throes of it. But it is still monotonous as hell.

I mean, at least this baby will smile pretty soon.  That’ll be new and exciting for several minutes. Then it’ll make noises and crawl and walk and hug.  The only thing exciting about addiction is that maybe Bud Light will find another kind of fruit to squeeze in each can.  

I can joke about it all day, but the truth is that the monotony of life is a struggle for me, and it’s about to get worse.  The sleepless nights, the tiredness, the diapers, the zero free time, the inability to escape it, the grumpiness of my entire family, the constant cleaning.  Those things will happen every single day with no real end in sight.

And yes, I know.  Poor, poor, pitiful me.  Everybody has to do it. Everybody deals with it, so put on your big boy panties and grow the f**k up, right?

To that, I say this.  Just because I know it’s whiny, and I know that everybody else knows it’s whiny, and my mind tells me to go in search of the big boy panties, and every fiber of my being tells me I’m too damn good a daddy to dread this so badly, those things don’t mean the depression isn’t real.  And when a person with clinical depression falls into that place, telling him or her to snap out of it and suck it up does not help and is in most cases not possible. It is truly a mental malady with which a LOT of people struggle.  

And there is NO immediate cure.  In fact, we have no idea what a cure would look like even if it walked up and said, “Hey, I’m Cure.” 

Another inhibiting factor in dealing with the monotony of life is that people like me (and I really don’t yet know how to define that person) are destined to slowly (and sometimes swiftly) go insane with monotony.  It’s exactly like the saying about insanity – you know, doing the same thing over and over expecting different results – only we know the results are going to be the same and yet we still question every aspect of it as if a genie will pop out of a poopy diaper and tell us the secret to life.  

In other words, there is still hope in our insanity, and it would be so much easier if there wasn’t.

So how do we go about attempting to find a cure for this monotony of life?  How do we grow to accept it and embrace it and live out every cliche about happiness and contentment and never ask questions like, “So this is it?”  Even better, how do I spice this shit up so that monotony becomes a mythical creature from my past?

I have not one damn clue.  But I figured it was a good enough idea to just spell it all out and figure out what exactly are the things that fall under the category of monotonous in my life.  Maybe it’ll convince me it just ain’t that damn bad. Doubtful, but it’s worth a shot.

The Monotony of Work

I put this one first because it’s actually the least monotonous.  I’m a high school math teacher, so there are near daily surprises.  The high school set is getting lazier (yet somehow crazier,) they’re getting less respectful towards everything, and they leave high school far less prepared for college or career than generations past (and yes, I’m stereotyping all of this, but when it’s true, you’re allowed to type on stereos.)  They are the generation of participation trophies and educational leaders that do their damnedest to succumb to pressure and just “push” kids on to the next grade, mastery be damned.

But even still, there are literally no two days alike.

So in that regard, the monotony is not in the daily planning and teaching, since there is a curriculum that must be completed, and it is not in the humdrum nature of “clock in, work, clock out,” since teenagers are insane and there is that little perk of not working during fall break, Christmas break, Spring break, and summer, and the monotony mostly shows up year-to-year, not day-to-day, which is preferable.

That said, however, all of those things I said about students and leadership in the previous paragraph gets REALLY tedious.  There is daily monotony in the inability to alter the course of this generation, daily monotony of speaking to children so poorly raised that they do not understand the necessity of education (or of listening and respecting their teachers,) and monotony in watching our educational leaders not stand up to it.  And because of those three things, the monotony of losing credibility and authority in the classroom is getting REALLY frustrating. It’s getting old.

Which is why I often remind myself about those damn summers.  They’re nice.

The Monotony of Cooking

I am the cook in my house.  My wife is a perfectly capable cook, I just don’t like eating leaves and guac and tabouli salad and crap like that.  I cook some kind of vegetable for every meal, but I cook a meat and a carb every time, too. As it should be, dammit.

But I spend at least two hours in the kitchen every single day.  We go out to eat more than we should, but when I cook, I have to go ahead and pencil in two to three hours of the same exact shit day after day.  Cook, eat, clean. Cook, eat, clean. Every damn day. Mix in the counters that just seem to grow stuff like mail, cups, medicine, flowers, computers, various bags, used Q-Tips, snot rags, dirty underwear, and entire wardrobes (okay, so the last few are a slight exaggeration, but not much,) and these counters become the constant, daily bane of my existence.

I despise dirty counters and I despise the daily monotony of cooking.  Yet I love to cook and I love my kitchen. I make no damn sense whatsoever.

The Monotony of Marriage

My wife and I have been married four years now, and I tend to enjoy every single aspect of my marriage, so if you think I am going to say anything remotely negative about her or my marriage, you must be out of your damn mind.

The Monotony of Fatherhood

There is very little monotony when it pertains to my thirteen year old daughter.  I’ve moved past the fact that she eats terribly and is starting to act, well, like a teenager.  What’s monotonous is the lack of listening. It drives me insane. I do not know how many times two people can repeat “When it’s your turn to clean the kitchen, the dining room table and all counters are included in that.”  We’ve said it a minimum of seventeen thousand times. How has it not been obeyed yet? I just do not get it. What in the hell goes through her mind when she finishes washing dishes?

“Hmmm, what was it they told me to do again?  Vacuum? No, that’s not it. There’s no ceiling fan in here, so I can’t dust it.  Wait, I remember!! They told me to eat dessert and check Instagram. In my room. Where no food is allowed.  I never heard them say it wasn’t allowed the four thousand times they said it, so it’ll be fine. Kitchen’s done!!”

The monotony of a two year old is worse.  When I get home from work, I must “play animals.”  I cannot have a break, I cannot go pee, I cannot get a glass of tea, I cannot kiss my wife, I cannot start dinner.  I must play animals. And if I do any of the other things first, the request to play with animals will be repeated ad nauseam, unless we somehow end up in another room, whereas the request can change to “play puzzles” or “play stickers” or “play bed.”  This is daily, and it does not simply happen when I get home from work. It can happen on a Saturday morning, even before I lift him out of his damn crib.

And what is “play animals?”  There are about a hundred little plastic farm animals and dinosaurs, and they must all come out of their bin, and then they must be lined up or they must gather around and eat plastic vegetables or they must come in and out of the plastic barns.  And if any of his ideas for how we must play with the animals are not followed, he pitches a fit, at which point I intentionally piss him off further rather than giving in to him because I’m not raising a pansy ass bitch. (And I’m not about to apologize for saying that since nobody knows whether I’m joking or not.)

And then there is the monotony of him NEVER eating anything healthy, the monotony of the devil’s gift to parents: the toddler car seat, the monotony of diapers, the monotony of picking shit up, the monotony of f**king nursery rhymes, the monotony of the same book over and over again until I want to rip the front cover off and send it like a frisbee out the back door with such force that I dislocate my shoulder.

I love those two so damn much, though.

The Monotony of Church

It’s not just the act and process of Sunday morning church. That bores me to tears, but the monotony of church is more than that.

I just don’t get it, okay?  I never will. It doesn’t mean my mind will not constantly try to DEMAND that I get it, only to have the rational side put up a winning debate, thus beginning the monotonous process all over again, but I do NOT understand most people’s views of the Christian Religion, Jesus, God, and a book written by humans.  And the very aspect of its unchanging yet forceful message / rhetoric gets REALLY monotonous, especially when FAR too many “Christians” are some of the most hypocritical people on the planet.

I physically cringe when I hear somebody say, “I owe it all to God” or “God was with them in that accident” or “Put it in God’s hands.”  Those verbal bouquets of religious feel-goodery are perfectly reserved for those times when something or somebody was blessed with positivity, luck, or good fortune.  But when a kid dies of a gunshot wound to the head at Sandy Hook Elementary School or a mother buries her young son who was eat up with cancer or an icy patch sends a family of four down an embankment into an icy pond or a tornado levels a retirement village in Boca Raton, do we then say, “They owe it all to God” or “God was with them in that accident” or “God gave him that cancer for a reason?” Was it in God’s hands then?  

Then people tell other people to “Pray about it.”  Okay, that’s a nifty idea, but I guarantee I can research and give you equal examples of most prayerful scenarios ending in both positive and negative outcomes, no matter if prayer was used or not.

I’ve suffered forty-one years not understanding it.  Or, I’ve spent forty-one years understanding it so rationally that I have no ability to conjure the reality of what might be the most elaborate fairy tale ever penned.  

Do I believe in God?  Yes, I do. I believe that nothing around me makes one bit of sense unless somebody is responsible.  I believe it is possible to have a relationship with my creator that is not like others. Do I believe in prayer and “putting it into God’s hands?” I might, if it was anything better than a 50-50 proposition.  Will I ever be “religious” to such an extent that I can disciple to a non-believer? No, I can assure you of that. That will never be me.  But I can guarantee you this much. I will struggle with this topic the rest of my life. And I already know my feelings on it won’t change.  So not only is it monotonous and wearisome in my present, I get to look forward to that weariness never leaving. Goodie.

The Monotony of Politics

This one is starting to irk me FAR too much. And this is becoming like monotony squared.  Since 9-11, and exponentially through three presidents, we have become the most monotonous, predictable, hateful, partisan-to-the-death bunch of citizens the country has ever known. And that includes the Civil War.

The basic anatomy of a far-left Democrat when talking about a Republican:  “He’s a racist fascist nationalist white supremacist who tries to cram God into our laws and wants every criminal to have a gun and would rather a mother die than the unborn baby, and I will make up incriminating shit about him to make him and his party look worse than it actually is.  And none of them are middle-of-the-road right-leaning independents either. They’re all irrational, delusional, hypocritical Bible thumpers.”

The basic anatomy of a far-right Republican when talking about a Democrat:  “He’s a baby-murdering socialist satanist treasonist traitor that wants to take all the rich people’s money and give it to lazy people and immigrants because he hates his country, hates God, and I will make up incriminating shit about him to make him and his party look worse than it actually is.  And none of them are middle-of-the-road left-leaning independents either. They’re all irrational, delusional, hypocritical atheists.”

Yeah, it’s getting old.  Work together, for f**k’s sake.  Quit bad-mouthing and blaming every damn president that came before today, grow the f**k up, and do what’s right for the majority of Americans.  It’s just not that freaking hard. Come to the table wondering how you can compromise, not how you can ram a brick up the other’s ass. It’s getting REALLY monotonous and predictable.

I discovered yesterday, however, that it isn’t all monotonous. It’s actually the worst kind of anti-monotony we could imagine. I saw a post on Facebook yesterday with almost a thousand comments made by “adults,” and they were all making fun of Michelle Obama for purportedly having a penis. This is now representative of the class we have in this country.

The Monotony of My Damn Brain

My brain can be a dangerous place.  It is no more dangerous than when monotony has it screaming from the inside.  Monotony causes it to go places in search of relief from that monotony that sometimes the places it goes are not healthy places for the mind of a recovering addict to go.  

My mind is also dangerous because of the stubbornness that is often borne from that monotony.  I am so stubborn about some things that I would debate a more stubborn man about who is most stubborn and not give in even after he beat me.  I’m too stubborn to lose in a battle of stubbornness. And then I wouldn’t admit that I lost. I’d just try to figure out how to beat him.

And this monotony and stubbornness go both ways.  Each can be borne from the other. Unless you are afflicted, you cannot understand the relentless monotony of innate stubbornness.  And stubbornness affects everything that dances, crashes, glides, or tiptoes through your mind. And then that “thing” that wound up there will not leave, monotonously torturing you as it repeats itself over and over until mild insanity kicks in and you have mini breakdowns or short, almost necessary, bouts of anger.

All of the ways that monotony affects me will NOT change.  I have to come to terms with that. I will ALWAYS view those things as monotonous.  They will ALWAYS affect my ability to maintain a happy, content persona. I accept that begrudgingly knowing I don’t really have a choice.  I will quite simply always struggle with monotony. My brain does not work differently than that.

All of this was easy when I was drinking.  I could deal with damn near anything because I could drink that night.  It would all wash away in beer. I don’t have that anymore. I don’t WANT that anymore.  So how do I defeat this brain and the monotony and stubbornness that controls it?

I know part of the answer.  I’m just procrastinating. Per usual.

A few days ago, I watched one of the most powerful videos I’ve probably ever seen.  It was a guy standing on stage speaking to a group of people about his life. He talked about his upbringing and how music had transformed his life and gave it purpose and how monumental the influences of his parents and wife had been.  Sounds ho-hum so far, right?

What made it captivating was that Alvin Law was born without arms.  And watching him on that stage – the confidence, the contentment, the complete absence of self-pity – made me feel both inspired and pathetic.  Here was a man that couldn’t even pick his damn nose, and he appeared far happier and contented than a relatively healthy forty-one year old man with a good job, beautiful wife, two and a half perfectly healthy kids, a gorgeous house, and an overall sublime existence. (P.S. Click on his name above in this paragraph for the video I saw. I promise it’ll inspire you.)

Can you imagine HIS monotony?

Alvin Law has been a motivational speaker since 1981.  And why not, you know? Is there a man more perfect for it?  He was born with no arms and has a better attitude about life than 99% of the population.  He cannot hold his wife’s hand, but he can play the piano, the drums, and the trombone. He looks like a circus freak, but watch him on stage and he oozes badass cool.

I’ve only just discovered Mr. Law, and I plan to watch as many videos as I can find about him (and read his book) because he makes me want to be a better me, but I wanted to focus in on a just a couple of things that I’ve seen so far in speeches or quotes by him that I really think can help me when monotony has me settled under that legless cow.

His big mantra is that everybody has a label.  It is affixed to your forehead, he says, for all to see.  But he argues that there is not a darn soul who can stop you from changing your label.

I have a few little labels that speak well of me:  Husband, father, teacher, newly self-appointed addiction activist.  I have more labels that do not speak well of me, however. And as I got to listening to some stuff Alvin Law said, it occurred to me that we actually have TWO labels.  One is the label that others see. One is our own label; the one WE see that is hidden from the outside world. Which one do you think has more bright lights shining on it?

Our own label affects us far more intimately than the label others see.  Our lives literally revolve around the way we view ourselves. My label has some hard-to-digest words on it.  Addict, loser, failure, recluse, friendless, unworthy. Looking back over the past twenty years, my label has become as monotonous as my life.  It hasn’t changed in twenty years. That’s pretty monotonous, don’t you think?

Alvin Law simply says, “Change your label.”  I’d like that. That is definitely something I want to do.  But how?

I think it’s clear that I do not put much stock into “signs from God,” but everything – and I mean EVERYTHING – the past few weeks has been screaming at me the same message.  I look on Facebook and it’s there. I read an article online and it’s there. I see a commercial and it’s there. I’ve read two random blogs this week and it’s been there. I even heard a kid in the hallway at school saying it. And it is almost exactly the same message.  Every. Single. Time. For weeks this has happened. Same message every time.

We live once.  No regrets from this day forward.  Go do something that will inspire you that everybody else thinks is crazy.  Who gives a royal damn what they think?

Sounds like a great way to break out of the monotony of life, doesn’t it?  Terrifies the shit out of me, but I WILL regret it if I don’t. So do I have an idea of what that might be? Yeah, I do. All it is is an idea right now, but it both excites me and terrifies me beyond words. I don’t know if I’ll ever muster the courage to do it, but I know my future will continue being monotonous if I don’t start taking some chances. I did it once, in the past few months, right? I started writing again.  

We live once.  No regrets from this day forward.  Go do something that will inspire you that everybody else thinks is crazy.  Who gives a royal damn what they think?

I’m getting there. Maybe this baby will make me finally punch the grip of monotony square in the freaking face. It’s my only chance to REALLY live outside the unrelenting grasp of addiction, self-loathing, depression, and the insanity-inducing monotony of life.










When Giving Thanks is Hard

November 20, 2018 by Denton Leave a Comment

When Giving Thanks is Hard

At some point on Thursday, you or somebody in your general vicinity will utter the question, “What are you thankful for this year?”  Sure, it might be worded differently, but it will nevertheless be some form of that cliched question.  And for most of us, it’s pretty easy to answer.  

When I say easy, what I mean to say is that your answer will be as cliched as the question.  You will say that you are thankful for your spouse, your kids, your job, your health, your house, blah, blah, blah.  If you already know the answer, why even ask the question, you know?  If you want to be interesting – or ask interesting questions – you should just go up to your dad, punch him in the stomach, and say, “Aren’t you thankful I didn’t punch you in the nuts?”  It would be a much more interesting question to ask this Thanksgiving.

I’m admittedly not a big holiday fan.  Most holidays are nothing more than stocking stuffers for Hallmark in my opinion.  They just don’t mean much to me (but they mean a hell of a lot to Hallmark.)  Think about a few of these before we get to the reason for this season.

  • Valentines Day – I shouldn’t need to be told or made to feel obligated to treat my wife like a queen.  I should do it regardless.   She puts up with me EVERY day.  (Of course, I put up with HER every day, too.  Ha!) 
  • Easter – Finding eggs inside candy should be something we all do weekly.  This is just amazing fun.  That’s the reason we celebrate Easter, right?
  • Independence Day –  I’m pretty proud to be an American the other 364 days, too.  I don’t really need a specific day to focus on it. 
  • My birthday.  Yeah, that’s just so stinking special I share the day with about thirty million people in the world.  Yippee!!

As for Christmas?  I hate it so badly that I physically detest the antiquated, totally impersonal, increasingly banal act of the family gift exchange.  Here’s an idea, family.  Why don’t we all just bring thirty dollars for each person and spend an hour trading money for other money that is exactly like it?  

“How thoughtful and nonconformist of you, Maw-Maw.  Two fives and two tens? I’ll cherish it always.”

And yes, I have been told to shut up and just smile through the gift exchange and try to not damage any teeth when, after the fifth family get-together and the fifth gift exchange, we can hardly close the back gate of the van and I can’t stand that I’m participating in enabling the materialistic reality of Christmas yet another year.  So I will grit my teeth as softly as I can and do as I am told.

On to Thanksgiving!!  This is not so much a Hallmark holiday, but it is certainly becoming more and more of a forgotten holiday, isn’t it?  (See the above two paragraphs on Christmas for the reasoning behind that.)  It has gotten so bad now that retailers have started Black Friday deals the weekend BEFORE Thanksgiving because thirty days isn’t enough time to plan and buy gifts for your baby mama’s third cousin Pookie’s nephew who really wants that Xbox game that you saw on page eight of his Christmas wish list.  He could give a rat’s ass who actually gives him the gift, he just wants the damn game.  Greedy little craphead.  And you fall for it!!  We ALL fall for it!!

Anyway, I’m still pissed off about Christmas and it isn’t even here yet.  But let’s focus on Thanksgiving for a moment, specifically that question that you or somebody you know will ask and/or answer come Thursday.  You know, that question that sums up the entire reason for the holiday? 

What are you thankful for this year? 

Seems like an easy question to answer, right?  For most people, it absolutely is.  They can and should list their spouse, their kids, their job, having all their basic needs met, whatever.  

But what if somebody is asked that question Thursday and they don’t know the answer?  What if they have no idea what they should be thankful for this year?  What if they hate Thanksgiving because of this inability to be grateful?  What if it’s just been a crappy year and they just can’t do gratefulness right now?

If you have no ability to empathize with how this scenario is even possible, please add that to the list of things you are thankful for this year.  This is most definitely a real thing for a lot of people.  Sometimes it’s depressingly hard to find even a single thing for which you are thankful.

I’ve been there.  This year, luckily, I’m not, but if you’re struggling with giving thanks this year, I hope this article helps.  You’ll soon see that pretty much everything you can ever be thankful for falls under a very small number of categories.  This is a good thing.  If you’re struggling with giving thanks, you need to dial in your focus a little.  Start simple.  Find one or two.  Allow those to light a little positivity fire.  Fan that flame with a few others.  By the time Thanksgiving is here, you will be one of the most unique people in the world.

You will be in a very select group of people who actually respect the intent of the holiday by giving proper, heartfelt thanks.  And remember this:  Blessings appear where needs or wants exist.  Sometimes you need to sit down and focus on exactly what those needs and wants are so that you can determine if there is already a blessing there that you’ve somehow missed.

As mentioned earlier, there are very few categories we need to address to find all of the areas where you might be able to find blessings for which you are able to give thanks.  There are only five.  No matter how difficult you want to be with respect to an argument that there are more than five, I would argue that “simple” is the goal here.  Five is more than enough.  If you’re struggling to give thanks this year, simple is good.  So here are the five simple categories that most of your blessings (or their opposite, trials and tribulations) fall under:  

  • Physical Blessings
  • Mental Blessings
  • Emotional Blessings
  • Spiritual Blessings
  • Social Blessings

Let’s break each one down a little.  I’m willing to bet you can find something to be thankful for under each one.

Physical Blessings

This one is the most obvious.  This is your physical health.  How is it?  If you have no complaints, you are one of the luckiest people on Earth.  If you don’t have an ache or pain or crink or boo boo or a weight problem or a heart problem or a tummy problem or whatever, you are damn lucky.  Be immensely thankful for that.  If you have four limbs and twenty digits, and they all work, be thankful for that.  If you are struggling to find thankfulness, you absolutely must start with the mundane and obvious.  At the very least, get them out of the way so you can find something deep and transformative for which to be thankful.

So what happens when you can’t be thankful for perfect health?  What are you thankful for if you have a bum knee or chronic back pain or gluten is giving you hell or god forbid you have cancer or multiple organ failure or dementia?  How in the world can you be thankful for that?

You can’t.  Don’t try to find the sugar-coating because typically that means you’re scratching and clawing for answers to why it happened to you.  So don’t do that.  Say it sucks and move on.  Yeah, you can say, “Well it could be worse,” but can’t everybody on the planet say that about something?  Whether it is depression that has led you to this place or you’re on the tracks heading there, you can’t build a case for thankfulness of your physical condition if you are lying to the jury.  And guess who sits on the jury?  You and you alone (and your doctor to some extent.)

The other aspect of being thankful for your physical health is the question of whether or not you can fix it.  If you are overweight because you eat terribly, you are nothing more than a victim of your own manufactured misery.  Be honest with yourself.  If you have a thyroid problem and that is the cause of the weight issues, then you do not fit in that example.  Otherwise, you might.  Take an inventory of your entire physical health.  Find something good.  Find something else about which you need to set some goals.

Most people can fix a good many things associated with their physical health.  If you can’t, and you’re so hung up on it that you will NEVER be thankful for your physical health, skip this one and move on.  If you CAN fix it, be thankful that you have the ability to do so.  However, recognizing that you have control over certain aspects of your physical health can be a severe depressant if you aren’t particularly strong on the mental side of this blessing pentagon.  It takes some mental fortitude to change your physical hardships.  Trust me on that one.  I’ve been living in that Groundhog Day for years.  And that is exactly why that one comes next.

Mental Blessings

How tough are you mentally?  How WELL are you mentally?  That second one is the bigger question.

What is addressed repeatedly every time you hear about a mass shooting or a father that kills his children or a teenager that commits suicide?  You hear everybody questioning their mental health, right?  This is a completely viable question.  And it probably has a perfectly concrete answer.  The problem is that nobody will ever know that answer, even if the killer is still alive.  And do you know why?  Because the only person that will ever be able to understand the human mental condition of every sick (or healthy) person is God.  The person on Earth that is a close second?  The mentally ill person himself.  He is the only one intimately familiar with his own mind, no matter how twisted and sick it is.

I have this belief about mental illness that is probably not too far-fetched and it is probably shared by a lot of actual professionals.  Most people with mental illness have fully functioning cognitive abilities, right?  They know what’s going on, they know what they’re doing, they have no trouble conversing with people, they are fully capable of driving a car or cooking a meal, etc.  Whatever their illness affects, it does not effect their daily functionality.  Think depression, anxiety, mild personality disorders, eating disorders, addiction, etc.  These are still functional humans, even if they have some major issues.

What that means is that they have the capacity to “let people in” only to the point where anything incriminating is deemed harmless or treatable.  That means that they are the ONLY person on Earth who can fully diagnose their problem.  And that means they are still – to the outside world anyway – completely normal.

And WHY are they completely normal?  Because the experts say that one in five people suffer from mental illness ranging from mild to severe.  That’s more common than left-handed people.  Are THEY not normal?

All of that is to suggest that there is quite literally only one person who can diagnose your level of thankfulness over your mental condition.  That person is you.  If your mental health feels pretty healthy, if you are able to force yourself to do stuff you dislike via the willpower of your own mind, if you can rationalize good and bad and right and wrong, if your focus is sustained and your thoughts mostly positive and your self-esteem average, and if you have an innate desire to better yourself every day, you should be damn thankful.

Emotional Blessings

Depending on what link you want to click on or what study you want to peruse, different people will tell you there are anywhere from four basic emotions to as many as twenty-seven.  I knew I couldn’t write this article and talk about how to find thankfulness in dozens of different emotions, especially when we’re focusing on chiseling even the most minute thankfulness out of a stone unwilling to allow it, so I chose the one that had no author.  Seriously, nobody is taking credit for this, but it’s concise and inclusive (and pretty obvious, honestly.) Let’s look at each one briefly.

  1.  Anger – Pretty simple question with this one.  How much anger do you live with daily?  I’m willing to bet that most of those things that make you angry are either not worthy of your anger or, in the case of anger towards another person, can be fixed with a simple, open, honest conversation.  Be thankful that the cure for most anger is actually pretty easy.
  2.  Sadness – What makes you sad?  If it is something that required you to complete the stages of grief, did you chicken out on them?  Was sadness just easier than saying goodbye?  If you can let something or somebody go whose loss saddened you, that is a blessing.  Be thankful you have the mental health to say goodbye and then look back with happiness, not sadness.  If your sadness is more in the form of a general daily malaise, that’s one you’ll have to tackle yourself.  But it goes back to that first question.  What makes you sad?
  3.  Fear – I’ve written a lot about this one.  Fear has consumed me since the day I got sober (and all the years before.)  I’m thankful for it because it has taught me that those things which scare me are the things I know I absolutely must do.  If you can smile at fear and just say, “Bring it,” that’s a blessing.  It’s a second blessing if you are able to follow through on squashing the fear.
  4.  Joy – Every person on Earth knows what joy feels like.  If you don’t, you sure as hell wouldn’t be reading this article.  So you know what joy feels like.  Are you joyous?  If not, what is standing in the way?  You have to discover it before you can fix it.
  5.  Interest – If you like your family, your job, your house, etc, and those things interest you enough that you do not show apathy towards them, you know the feeling of interest.  It is those people that know nothing but apathy who cannot claim a blessing here.  In addition, do you have a hobby you enjoy?  That means you have interest in something.  That’s a blessing.
  6.  Surprise – This is not only the blessing of FEELING surprise, it is also the blessing of wanting to deliver it.  If you’re married and have no interest in surprising your spouse, your heart is beginning to decay.  But if you love to surprise your significant other, your children, or even your coworker, you have some emotional health.  That’s a blessing.
  7.  Disgust – Pretend you’re watching the news tonight and the first story is about genocide in a third world country.  The next story is about the guy that killed his two little girls and his pregnant wife.  The third story is about maggots crawling out of a fast food hamburger.  Do these disgust you?  If so, you’re in tune with your emotional side.  That’s good.  Now think about yourself.  Have you done something that still, maybe even years later, disgusts you?  That’s bad.  Work towards forgiving yourself.
  8.  Shame – Same basic scenario as the second half of disgust, only shame is a more hollow, painful emotion.  It’s much quieter than disgust.  It rests on your spirit like a thousand pound weight.  But you don’t talk about shame the way you may other emotions.  Shame is deep-rooted and VERY difficult to strip away.  Even if you still have shame, if you can leave this article feeling like you can ask for help in cleansing you of that shame, that’s a blessing.  You should be thankful for your willingness to seek help.

Spiritual Blessings

I’m not going to spend a lot of time on this one.  Spiritual health is a personal feeling of closeness with whatever higher power you choose to believe in, even if it is the absence of one.  If you have an intimate relationship with your creator, that is a blessing.  It means you realize your own insignificance, but it also means you know how significant you can be to others.  It means you have allowed the power of the spirit inside you to empower you to become a self-reliant, self-validated machine.  Spiritual blessings equate to a spiritual confidence.   If you possess that, you are indeed blessed.  You should be thankful for that.

You will also notice that there is a theme in this article.  Only you can determine your own blessings.  You already know if you possess spiritual blessings, even before reading the words I used to try to describe it.  Be thankful for that knowledge.

Social Blessings

This one is mainly going to focus on a series of questions that only you can answer.  And if you can’t answer them positively, you either have to decide whether you have the power to change them or the power to never let them bother you again.  The reason that last option is there is because you have never – and will never – have the ability to control other people.  Stop trying.  It is simply not worth your effort or mental health to worry about idiots you can’t control.

So here’s the questions.  Answer them honestly.  Then ask if you can do anything about it.

  • Do you have at least one friend? (And no, this does NOT mean a social media friend.)  Do you have a friend who would go to jail with you, for you, because of you, or in protection of you?
  • Do you have a family that loves you?  (Notice this does not say that you have to love them in return.  Remember, we’re trying to go simple. You can worry about your family issues Friday.)
  • Are you proud of the effort you put in at your job?  (Notice I did not say, “Do you love your job?” Most people who are searching for thankfulness do not have a positive view of their job.  But you can be proud of your effort even when you hate the job.)
  • Is your education sufficient to change jobs if you so desired?  If not, is that door still open?
  • Are you embarrassed to be around people, whether those people are known to you or unknown to you?  If so, why?
  • Do you have access to everything you need to survive?
  • Do you have access to things that entertain you or otherwise make you happy or fulfilled?  (Notice again that it does not say you take advantage of these things. We are only asking about having access to them.  Think simple. Really, really simple.)

Here’s an addendum to the last two questions.  Are the ways in which your needs are met a source of pride, comfort, contentment, or embarrassment for you?  In other words, are you proud of where you live or the condition of your house?  Are you embarrassed at your monthly grocery budget?  If yes to either of these, why? And if you can honestly say that you are content with your place on this Earth, that is an extreme source of pride.

In the realm of social thankfulness, most of the time there is (or was) an element of control that you either have or once had.  Money, whether the situation is good or bad, can usually be traced back to how well you performed in school, what job you chose, what financial decisions you made, etc.  Not always, but often.  Where you live can either be familial in nature or what was at one time borne out of necessity.  Your ability to make, keep, or increase the number and quality of friends is often based on social skills learned and developed long ago, but there is a definitive mental health side to friends, especially in that of making friends.  If you have no confidence in social settings, making friends is nearly impossible.

Once again, though, go simple if you are struggling to give thanks this year.  Be thankful for that one friend, that house that will never be much bigger but at least it has a good roof and electricity, that family member that still sends five dollars in your birthday card like you’re still eight years old.

It is completely trite and commonplace to say, “Look at what you have that other people don’t,” and while it pains me to write something so pedestrian and finish with it, if that is not one of the most accurate statements in the Cliche Hall of Fame, I’m really not sure what surpasses it.  It’s just so true.  Find those little things, and I’m betting a bigger truth will emerge.

In Conclusion

I sincerely wish you a happy Thanksgiving.  If you read this article because giving thanks is difficult for you, I especially hope you celebrate the hell out of it.  The holiday itself can mean nothing.  It doesn’t really matter if you love Thanksgiving or hate it.  It doesn’t matter at all.  But if you can learn to be thankful even when you hate everything around you, including yourself at times, and you can do it in November or May or August, you’ll never dread the holiday season again.  And that is definitely something to be thankful for.

Irony

November 14, 2018 by Denton 2 Comments

Irony

Little known fact:  there is an entire website based around the actual definition of the word “ironic.”  The site argues that “Judging by its constant, and sometimes baffling, misuse, it is clear that irony is a very misunderstood concept.”  I would wholeheartedly agree.

The website is actually pretty entertaining.  It is even interactive.  You can submit a scenario and the users of the website will vote on whether or not the scenario is ironic.  For instance, the users of the website are 63% in favor of the following being ironic:

A tree dedicated to George Harrison has been killed by beetles. 

They are 83% in favor of the following being ironic:

There is a song about the phobia of music.

However, 58% find the following to NOT be ironic:

I fell in love with my worst enemy’s sister.

The word ironic is, of course, synonymous with Alanis Morissette, and the website isitironic.com dedicates an entire section of the site to address the argument that her song “Ironic” contains no actual irony.  For the most part, this assessment is accurate (it’s mostly coincidence and luck,) but the website also proves that irony can be subjective.  Just like with the percentages above, something I find ironic might only come across to someone else as merely a coincidence or a fluke.  The creators of the website give absolutely zero credit to Alanis for creating a single piece of irony in her song.  That’s ironic, huh?

As an aside, I was once in love with Alanis Morissette.  She was my bad girl crush in college.  I always wanted to go to a theater with her (insert mischievous emoji.)

Anyway, I seem to have been overtaken by irony lately, and the first example is hard to argue.  I think I could submit it to isitironic.com and I would get close to 100% in favor of it being ironic.

What happened was that I paused recently to perform a two month reflection of my blog.  It has been exactly two months since the day it went public, and I decided I had to make some changes to the aesthetics and language and features and take my wife’s advice and stop cursing in my blog posts.  She said she didn’t have any control over what I said, but she didn’t have to like it.  She presumed others would agree with her.  I’m guessing she’s probably right about that.

No, I don’t really believe curse words are real things because damn near anything can be deemed a curse word nowadays and curse words were defined by stupid people, but I like the way they add a certain amount of emotion and passion to my writing (especially when it’s a passionate subject like addiction.)  And there is no denying that people stop and pay attention when somebody is cursing at them, but is that really the voice I want to see on here in a year or ten years?  She was right.  I haven’t changed the presence of them in everything I’ve written to this point, but I have added symbols where letters used to be and I’ll do better moving forward.  I should be a talented enough writer to be able to add emotion and passion without them.

The other big change I needed to make early on was the branding.  Up to this point, I’m well aware that I was branded as an “addiction blog.”  I wanted to make that much broader, and with an early reflection, I am able to do that.  It’s foundation will always be in addiction and how to live in sobriety, but there are a lot of subjects to tackle in life as a non-drunk.  

For instance, most people who see anything about my blog posted on my Facebook wall are non-drunks (as far as I know.)  But might one of them be interested in my take on education in a high poverty high school with very poor parental involvement after nearly a decade of experience working there?  If I was simply an “Addiction blog,” non-drunks wouldn’t click on that.  But I can guarantee you I have some insight on that topic that might be valuable to a lot of people.  Or how about being a forty-something father of a newborn?  There is an audience for that.  If I’m simply an “addiction blog,” I’m alienating audiences in any and every subject matter I write about.

So if you are reading this, I hope you will allow me to reflect, as we all need to do in our careers, our marriages, and anything else that matters to us, and make some necessary changes that will make my blog better and more appealing and hopefully make me a better, more well-rounded, less vulgar person in the long run.  

Ultimately I decided to brand myself an “Owner of an Unsettled Mind” because it describes me almost too well.  If you saw the desktop version of my site previously, you saw that it said, “A Blog about Addiction, But Mostly Sobriety.”  Now it says, “Owner of an Unsettled Mind, Clueless as to What to do With It.”  I literally could not describe myself any better, and now I am not handcuffed to topics solely about addiction and sobriety.  Besides, I hope one day I still love to write and I barely remember addiction.  That’s the dream anyway.

So what about this is ironic?  Nothing so far.  But it needed the backstory.

A couple of weeks ago, I had this light bulb, oh-my-god-this-is-genius idea for a blog post.  It fell in line with my re-branding because it related to both those people struggling with addiction and scores of people who have never taken a single sip of alcohol.  It was more mainstream.

The topic was depression.  I had a not-too-severe episode a couple of weeks ago and I immediately started writing so I would not forget the feelings and thoughts and lethargy associated with a depressive episode.  I got a couple of pages of good notes while in the throes of depression.  It has happened sporadically for my entire adult life – sometimes minor and lasting a day or two, sometimes major and leaving me wondering how best to leave this world – I’ve just never talked about it or written about it. 

I really wanted this post to be that post.  And it will be one day.  Just not this week.

Anyway, I handled my depressive episode much better than I ever used to (when alcohol and tobacco fixed EVERYTHING) and I talked to my wife about it.  What I discovered was that the talking helped, but she still didn’t really understand depression. She probably never would.  So from that moment, I couldn’t stop thinking about how I could explain depression in a way that she could understand.  It was as if I owed her that.  If she has to live with – and love – a man that would struggle with depression the rest of his life, the least I could do was help her understand it.

Well finally an idea came to me, and I had 2500 words written in a single night.  It just flowed and made such perfect sense to me that I just knew it was going to be one of those viral posts everybody dreams might happen to them for all the right reasons.  I mean, this thing was GOOD.  Everybody was going to see depression in a new way.  People who had never suffered would suddenly understand it in such a way that empathy was effortless.

That’s the way it sounded in MY head.  Every word was perfect in MY head.  It was amazing.

Right up until I asked her to read it and she said she didn’t understand it.  And then, because I needed a second opinion (because she was clearly WRONG,) I sent it to somebody else who described it using the word “convoluted.”

And now the irony.  That was three or four days ago.  I spent every minute Sunday and Monday rewriting and editing and changing and deleting and adding and cursing and can I tell you the only thing that happened?  I was writing a blog post about depression, and it was depressing me.  And not half-heartedly so.  I was getting seriously depressed.  I just couldn’t get it right.  I rewrote it ten different times in ten different ways and still couldn’t get it right.  I had to write this article about the irony of it all because I had to step away from it.  

And when I drove to work today, all I could think was, “Holy crap, my entire life has been ironic for the past two months.”  Here’s how:

  • I started a blog to help fight addiction, and now I’m addicted to my blog.
  • I was physically healthier when I was an active addict.
  • There have been scores of times that I have mentioned how reclusive I was during my days of active addiction.  Well guess what I am when I’m sitting at my computer writing alone?
  • Writing was supposed to be the release I needed, and most of the time it is, but sometimes it makes me feel even more stressed and insecure than I did when I was drinking.  That’s a minor one, but it has happened several times.

Anyway, that’s all I have for this week.  I’ve written ten thousand words in the past week and this is my shortest blog post yet.  Isn’t it ironic?  Don’t you think?

Yeah, I really do think.

 

I Want to be a Movie Dad

November 7, 2018 by Denton Leave a Comment

Movie Dad

When my daughter was ten, she and I pulled off a pretty decent series of pranks involving hard dinner rolls.  We were at Disney World, of all places, and we ate at one of the “character dining” places at the castle.  Since she and I don’t care for bread that could be weaponized, we devised a plan to leave these sturdy but small balls of bread in unsuspecting places throughout Magic Kingdom.  So we loaded them up in napkins and smuggled them out in the backpack I wore all week.

If you’ve been to Magic Kingdom, you’re familiar with the strollers you can rent while there.  They have a wonderful little canopy on the top to keep the sun off the kiddies, but when an unknown parent turns slightly away from their stroller, the canopy makes for a nice spot to place a dinner roll.  Like a little dinner roll hammock.  When said parent turns back around, lookie there, a snack.

But we were just getting started.  I think we snuck about eight dinner rocks out of that restaurant.  In addition to the stroller canopy, we left one on the counter of the ice cream shop and I dropped one in a lady’s giant bag that was on the ground beside her.  I know there were a few more that I can’t remember, but that’s okay.  That just means they probably weren’t very good additions to the prank.  Failures improve us as people, even when we’re only looking to get better at pranking with dinner rolls.

The best one while we were at Magic Kingdom was this man we stalked all the way out of the park as we were leaving.  He wore a backpack and the two zippers that held the bag shut at the top were about four inches apart, leaving an opening into the main part of the backpack right at the top.  I was going to get that dinner roll in that backpack if it killed me.  My daughter had smiled and laughed so hard I wondered if she enjoyed dinner roll pranks more than Disney World (the answer was yes, she did; we still talk about this.)

So we followed this man for probably ten minutes, just waiting for him to get trapped and be forced to stop right in front of us.  It was a tough job as long as he was moving.  Had I tried to get it in there while walking, I surely would have pressed against the backpack unexpectedly and he would have felt the nudge and accused me of trying to steal from him and called the cops or something.  What I did not really consider until later was that there were hundreds of people behind me who could probably easily tell what I was trying to do.  It did not concern me even a little bit.  My daughter was euphoric.

It didn’t happen until we got to the Monorail waiting area.  The hordes of people finally had to stop.  I took the dinner roll, slowly separated the small opening at the top of his backpack, and simply dropped his bedtime snack right in the backpack.  It was really quite easy.  And it was REALLY quite easy to give my daughter a memory she has not forgotten and probably never will.  I can still see the sheer elation on her face when I finally got that dinner roll in his backpack.  And the dozens of people who watched me do it didn’t say a word.

We had only a couple more dinner rolls after that.  We saved them for the hotel.  I cannot begin to tell you how long we searched for the perfect spot to leave those last whole grain balls of steel, but I will NEVER forget it.  The first spot we settled on was the hostess stand at the hotel restaurant.  It was during dinner hours, too.  We didn’t eat dinner there, but we were walking around just checking things out, and when we noticed the hostess walking away from her little podium, we made our move.  

We stayed close enough that we could be considered to be just resting or mingling in the lobby, but we kept our eyes on that hostess station.  When she got back, she picked up the dinner roll from right on top of her podium and looked around with this, “What the hell is this and who put it here?” look on her face.  It was priceless.  MasterCard commercial priceless.

On our floor – I somehow recall it to be the eighth floor of the Best Western Downtown Disney – there was a fancy dresser just as we got off the elevator.  I have always wondered why hotels put dressers in the middle of the hallway, and yes, I have opened all the drawers at various hotels multiple times because I always wonder what they keep in there.  The only thing I’ve ever found in any drawer at any hotel in my life other than people’s trash was a Swiffer Duster, and that was this past summer in Utah.

Anyway, we decided to put the last dinner roll right on the top of the dresser for anyone who might need a quick carbohydrate-fueled pick-me-up on their way to or from their room.  It was boring, but we were kinda tired of looking for places to put them at that point anyway.  The best part about that last dinner roll was that it was still there throughout the entire next day.  Somebody finally disposed of it (or ate it) much later that evening.  It was awesome.  I recall my daughter being as excited to get back to the hotel to check on the dinner roll as she was the entire day at whatever park we played at all day.

And how is that for proving my point?  I remember the story of the dinner rolls, but I do NOT remember what park we went to the next day.  Crazy.

Can you envision that story as one of those feel-good, Full House kind of video montages with U2’s “Beautiful Day” playing over the sounds of our apparent gut-busting laughter and wall to wall smiles?  (I don’t even like U2, but all I could hear when I was writing this was Bono singing, “It’s a beautiful day….”  And now that’s all you’re singing, too, isn’t it?) 

Anyway, in the montage, there are clips of unsuspecting people finding their dinner rolls, some angry and throwing it to the ground, some irritated but flippant, some with a wry smile and a “What kind of knucklehead would do this” look on their face.  Near the end of the group of people who find dinner rolls, there’s an old man who shrugs and takes a bite, only to lose a denture on the granite-like crust of the roll.  It’s a make believe montage.  Why not an old man and dentures?

Inevitably, as the montage is coming to an end and Bono is reminding us not to let the day get away, our happy family bounds into the sunset laughing hysterically at our day.  The last clip is my daughter cleaning out our bag from the day and finding one last elusive dinner roll.  With near intoxicating joy, we take off out of the hotel room in search of our final victim.

I want to be a movie dad.  I want to create those kinds of video montages that will stay in my kids’ memories forever.  I want to give them the kind of childhood that will make THEM want to sit down and write one day so that their memories will never be forgotten.  And not only do I want to, I am.  I need to.  I have to.

One of the greatest things about sobriety is that I get to start over.  In a lot of ways, it’s a rebirth.  In a lot of ways, it’s a crippling mental struggle.  Depression, regret, and fighting those old feelings of doubt and reclusiveness can nearly overtake me mentally at times, but it’s still in many ways a rebirth.  Babies cry a lot, right?  So do newly sober addicts, even if the crying involves no actual tears.  Trying to forgive ourselves for ruining many, many years of our lives is tough to overcome.  It certainly doesn’t happen overnight.  

But I am starting to see glimpses of where I’m gaining strength in the areas of my life that had become either far less important than they should or, in some cases, damn near entombed by addiction.  I see how many missed opportunities I had with my thirteen year old daughter.  Even though I am learning to accept them, I will forever live with the regrets of that.

But I also get to grow as a man and realize the only thing I can do is make as many movie montages with her as I can now.  Not only that, I get a bit of a do over at fatherhood with my two year old son and whatever is currently cooking in mama’s oven (we like to be surprised.)  For them, I’m going to be a movie dad.  I even get to write, produce, film, and direct the movies now.  Totally sober.  That’s awesome. 

To be granted a second chance to be the type of father I have always dreamed of being is probably one of the most significant blessings of sobriety.  And in this case, I have to play the percentages.  Yes, I have a lot of years I would love to have back with my daughter.  I can’t have them back.  I know that.  But I get seventeen years with my son and a full life with another one once the new baby comes in January.  I can’t complain about or argue with those percentages.

But oddly enough, I struggle with exactly what type of dad I actually dream of being.  What kind of father am I when I am at my very best?  I truly do not know.  I’ve had so little experience.  I still think I suck at fatherhood more often than not.  So I had to search it out a little.  I wanted to know exactly who I want to be.  Who better to look at than fake dads.

My Favorite Movie / TV Dads

One of the first hurdles that must be eclipsed when discussing fictional characters is that they are, in fact, fictional characters.  They are nothing more than the product of a healthy working imagination. Their actions, their dialogue, even their facial expressions were originally nothing more that Times New Roman on a screenplay or script.  But I maintain that they are more than that for one main reason: as soon as they are cast, filmed, and the finished product released for all to see, their actions are believable, and anything that is believable is achievable.

Based on nothing more than that, my favorite things about my favorite movie/TV dads are no longer fictional.  I can actually achieve the most unique, humorous, virtuous, affectionate, fun, goofy, and sentimental characteristics of all my favorite characters and work towards implementing them into my own seemingly unknown fathering skills to see what sticks and what doesn’t.  

To refresh my memory but also to keep the memories organic and not tainted by how the interwebs describe different fatherly characters, I simply searched for lists of movies and television shows in each decade of my life.  I got my list of fathers pretty quickly. It’s amazing how the really memorable dads just stand out when you do nothing more than read the name of a movie or television show.  So with that in mind, here’s my favorite movie/TV dads (in no particular order other than mostly oldest to newest) and why I want to grow up to be just like them (and FYI, click on each name if you enjoy laughing):

  • Andy Taylor – The Andy Griffith Show – Could there be a more honorable, ethical, and irreproachable man in the history of television?  I’m sure it happened, but I do not recall a single episode where Andy Taylor did anything shady.  And when he made a mistake, he corrected it immediately.  And he ALWAYS had the perfect script for summing up the lesson Opie (or Barney, in a lot of cases) should have learned in that episode.
  • George Bailey – It’s a Wonderful Life – Somehow I have missed watching this the past two Christmas seasons, but I can still hear George Bailey’s voice, especially his exasperation in arguing with Potter or his confusion in his first meeting with Clarence.  He’s one of the most selfless men in movie history, having spent years helping the less fortunate through the Building and Loan he owns. And then he gets selfish. He thinks everybody would be better off without him and he’s forced to catch a glimpse of the world as if he never existed.  I think if we truly sat back and tried to unravel all the many ways we impact the people in our life, especially our children, we would impact them far differently.  But most of us would not wish we never existed.  We would just exist differently.  We would exist better.  That’s what George Bailey does.
  • Atticus Finch – To Kill a Mockingbird – To me, the most profound characteristics of Atticus Finch were his unflinching resolve to live in equality with, as they say in the book, “people of color,” and also his abilities as a father to speak to Jem and Scout almost as if they were adult children, not preteen children.  He was probably not a very interesting or fun man socially, but he was so morally headstrong that Harper Lee almost forced you to admire him, even if his parenting ideals weren’t necessarily commonplace for the time. I actually remember very little about Atticus, the lawyer, other than his stance on equality.  I remember more about his fathering skills and how businesslike they were.  But I like that approach.  He was honest with his kids.  He didn’t try to protect them from the ugly truths of the world.
  • Ray Kinsella – Field of Dreams – The man knew how to dream, didn’t he?  Just blind, stupid dreams because you only get to visit this place once.  But what if those dreams come true, you know?
  • Heathcliff Huxtable – The Cosby Show – Yeah, yeah, I know.  I look at the clips now and wonder how he could even work with attractive women like Phylicia Rashad and Lisa Bonet without being too horny to act, but I guess he loosened up for each day’s taping by drugging unsuspecting women backstage.  So yes, I know he sucks and our image of him, sadly, can NEVER be restored.  But I used to love Cliff Huxtable.  He was one of the coolest, smoothest, most cocksure dads (and yes, the dual meaning worked perfect there) ever to grace the television screen.  He was the Danny Zuko of television dads.
  • Daniel Hillard – Mrs. Doubtfire – I don’t recall the exact reasons why he and his wife divorced, but I know he was a child in a man’s body, and that is seldom easy for a wife.  I would imagine anyway. But that childishness makes him the coolest (yet goofiest) dad ever. He just wants to see his kids smile, no matter what.  That’s what I remember most about that character.  If his kids were smiling, he was happy.
  • Clark Griswold – All of the Vacation movies – Probably my favorite movie character of all time.  He’s all about the memories he wants to make for his kids.  Who else would break into an amusement park or drive into the middle of nowhere with three feet of snow, only to bring home a Christmas tree that is literally twenty feet too tall for the living room?  Only Clark Griswold.  And his sarcasm is on point, too.
  • Phil Dunphy – Modern Family – I kinda quit watching the show a couple of seasons ago when it should have ended (all sitcoms die; it’s the good ones that read their own eulogy,) but he was always my favorite character.  He is foolish and clumsy and dimwitted, but he tries SOOO hard to be the greatest dad ever and he tries SOOO hard to be his kids’ best friend.  His effort at fatherhood is just superb.  Not always something you need to imitate, but the effort is superb.
  • Noah Levenstein – American Pie – What other father in television or movie history had such an amazing relationship with their son that they managed to make masturbation not seem all that embarrassing?  Plus, he calls it “pounding the old pud,” which makes absolutely no sense and it HAD to make Jim cringe, but in some crazy way, he’s actually being perfectly empathetic to his son simply because of the fearlessness (or ignorance) to attempt the conversation.  And then he buys his son nude magazines and explains them as if he’s trying to sell them to Jim.  Fabulous scene.  Empathetic and relatable yet totally clueless. 
  • Peter Griffin – Family Guy – He sucks as a father.  Every character on the show sucks in their own special way.  And this is why I don’t think I have ever missed an episode.  So why is he on this list?  He hasn’t aged in twenty years.   Bastard.

So Do I Just Put All Those Guys Together or What?

That’s more of a rhetorical question to lead this section.  I don’t even know who the “I” in that question references.  Am I simply talking about me or am I suggesting other dads find their combination of “movie dad” to try to mimic?  I guess the answer would just be yes to both.

To me, though, in addition to all of my favorite movie / TV dads’ best qualities, I have this image in my head that a movie dad is the guy that actually follows through on all the things he says “would be awesome” or things he says he and his kids “should do” or when he begins a sentence with “Wouldn’t it be funny/awesome if…”  Or he’s the man that has the balls to do just about anything to make his kids smile or feel supreme love, protection, embarrassment, importance, confidence, or outright elation with their life.  Well, I mean, I realize that’s one diverse and multifaceted dad and it essentially makes him fictional.  But that’s the kind I want to be.

There are a hundred different types of dads, however, and a hundred different ways that they are currently NOT movie dads.  They do NOT do everything they want to do with their kids. They do NOT follow through on everything they should do, and they damn sure don’t follow through on the sentences that start out, “Wouldn’t it be awesome/funny if…”   And I wouldn’t accuse others if I didn’t feel equally shitty at fatherhood most of the time.

I see the product of poor parenting pretty much every day.  More accurately, I see the product of shitty fathers every day.  I don’t have to even know them.  I see their kids.  I’m a high school math teacher at a high poverty Title 1 school.  I see a LOT of their kids.  And most of them could DEFINITELY use a time machine to go back and spend some “movie dad” time with them.  These kids are the product of homes with far too much “just go play” and far too little “sure, LET’S go play.”   It’s all about quality time.  It will ALWAYS be about quality time.

And I’m sitting in the audience with them, listening to my owns words while nodding and saying, “Yep, that’s me.”  We can ALL do better.

So I’ll leave you with some suggestions.  These are as much for me as any other dads out there reading.  Feel free to steal them. Hell, if you actually DO steal them, please take a minute to throw a comment on this post to let me know how it went. 

But try some of these.  Or create your own.  If you feel like you need to do better as a father, you probably do.  I know I do.  That’s why I can make some suggestions, but they’re just as difficult for me to achieve, too, no matter how much I WANT to be a movie dad.  Being a movie dad takes us out of our comfort zone.  And that’s scary.  It’s actually one of the themes of this blog.  FEAR stops us from doing so much in this life.  Those things lead to regret later on.  So here’s a few to get us future movie dads started:

  • Have a dance party.  This pretty much goes anytime of the day, any day of the week, no matter the gender or age of your child.
  • Challenge them to beat you at pretty much anything.  You could even challenge them to see who can color code and line up M&M’s on the counter the fastest.  Your kid(s), boy or girl, will love this, especially if they get to eat them.
  • See who can put the most lotion on mom’s feet.  This will be hilarious to the kid and good for you later in the bedroom.
  • See how many Matchbox cars / rocks / macaroni noodles / marbles will go down the slide at the same time.  And you should definitely use flattened boxes or plastic to make the slide longer, too.  Because of course you should.
  • Bubbles.  No matter how old they are, there is just magic in a damn bubble.
  • Challenge each other to walk around Walmart or Lowes until you find the most expensive item.  I don’t encourage pranks that cost a business money like switching merchandise or price placards around, but there are a million different ways to be goofy or “prankish” inside a large store.   Find five of them to start.
  • Have a snack picnic outside on a clear night.  Take a astrological phone app with you and find all the constellations.  Then create your own.
  • Go with your daughter to have a mani-pedi.  Seriously, pedicures are amazing.  If they were cheaper, I would go weekly.  And then let her pick out your toenail polish.  Just do NOT let her pick glitter.  I have pink glitter polish on my toes from my last pedicure back in August.  Polish remover is no match for it.  None.
  • Go explore the woods.  My daughter is thirteen and I told her we would do this when we moved into our house almost two years ago.  She’s a teenager and she still wants us to do this.  There will be no more excuses after I finish typing this.

It doesn’t matter if you are a shitty father, a great father, or some amoeba-like being in between.  You’re still a father to kids who deserve better than you’re probably giving.  And if you have no areas of fatherly weakness, then god bless you.  I wish there were more fathers like you. 

But for most of us, especially if you were led to this article because of addiction, we need work.  If you’re in the early stages of recovery like I am, you probably need a LOT of work.  But it simply does not matter how far gone you are.  It doesn’t matter if you’ve been an alcoholic for twenty years and you have fatherhood regrets that will haunt you until you are comfortably nestled in your grave.  You’ll have more if you don’t start now. 

In my heart, I know I was a good daddy to my daughter.  I was (and still am) probably in the top twenty percent of awesome daddies.  But I never set out to be “good” at anything I have ever done.  Why is the most important job I’ll ever do the job where I settle for average?  That makes no sense. 

Yeah, fatherhood can be VERY challenging and mind-numbing and maddening and playing blocks for the seven thousandth time can be boring as HELL, but we don’t become parents solely for our own entertainment.  But we think that way.  When it’s not much fun for us, we turn into the “just go play” fathers we never envisioned ourselves becoming.  So I plan on doing better.  I hope if you’re reading this that you do, too.  If you’re a recovering addict, I doubly expect it out of you.

And remember this: your enjoyment is the least important aspect of being a good father.  Fatherhood will always first and foremost be about meeting their needs by providing food, water, clothing, shelter, protection, and love, but there is a LOT of time to be memorable, too.  And when you have that time, it is THEIR smiles that matter.  But trust me on this.  If you do it right, you’ll smile a hundred times for the one time you made THEM smile.  

I never could have imagined how much I smile when I think about hard dinner rolls.

The Toughest Words an Addict Will Ever Say

October 24, 2018 by Denton Leave a Comment

The Toughest Thing an Addict Will Ever Say

When I was in the eighth grade, I made the baseball team at Cleveland Middle School just outside Clayton, NC.  This was a big deal for me because I was in love with baseball and the son of a bitch that coached the team (God rest his soul) cut me my seventh grade year.  The feeling was mutual by the eighth grade, but that coach was a fairly sour dude who never really liked me.  I guess I’ve always rubbed some people the wrong way, even as a kid.  I’m really just starting to figure that out in the second half of my life.

Anyway, one of the reasons I made the team despite his disliking me was because I was willing to do my coach a favor that year.  He had nobody to play catcher, and I volunteered to give it a try.  By the end of the season, I was probably in the top three or four in the voting for team MVP and he gave me an award for teamwork and perseverance called the Ram Award for taking a chance on a new position, working my ass off to do it well, and then actually succeeding at it.

But this story is not about my coach or about my proudest season of playing team sports.  It’s about my dad.  If he could be at a game, basketball, baseball, or otherwise, my dad would never miss one.  No matter the dullness of the cliche, he was my biggest fan.  I mean, my mom was too, but when you’re a young boy, your dad is the one you most want to please because he’s the one that plays catch with you and pitches to you and takes you to buy that new glove you wanted.

Well one day about the middle of that season, I was catching, of course, but I wasn’t having my best game.  I had let a couple of pitches get past me and I let a couple of runners steal bases.  In my defense – and my memory is a little shady on the insignificant events of that day – I recall the pitcher being a guy named Josh who had a lot of movement on his pitches, and catching was a tough job when Josh was pitching.  

My dad was like most parents of athletes at the middle school level.  He was vocal and supportive and he’d call out some advice based on what he was seeing from behind home plate, but mostly he just enjoyed watching his son play.  Well on this particular day, I was having none of this unsolicited advice from the crowd. 

So in the middle of the damn game, between damn pitches, after I was sick of him giving me his damn take on how damn bad I was playing (and I doubt he ever said one negative thing) I turned my snotty little ass around and told him to shut up.  There were somewhere between thirty and seven thousand people in the stands, depending on how much this story still stings me, but I told my dad to shut up in front of all of them.

I was young, but what I remember most about that day was how long and stressful and quiet those next couple of hours were.  I remember my teammates even seemed to ignore me. It was awful. I couldn’t look at my dad, I was terrified to look at my coach, and I just wanted to fall into a damn hole and die.  

The most profound lesson I received that day – even though I didn’t understand the lesson for decades – was not a lesson of embarrassment or thinking before I spoke or tuning out things I didn’t want to hear.  No, it was the earliest lesson I received in recognizing and realizing the profundity and gravity – and quite often the elusiveness – of our own words.  It wasn’t just the words I had spoken – far, far from it, in fact – it was the words I hadn’t YET spoken.  And it was those words that tortured me.

I understood from an early age that what’s done is done.  The past is the past and it’s staying right there.  I knew I couldn’t take back what I had said.  But the words I hadn’t yet said – that treacherous apology – is probably the earliest horrifying memory of my life.

You know what’s crazy about it now, though?  I don’t even remember the apology.  I remember the time during which the words I had already spoken and the words I hadn’t yet spoken attacked my brain like a father who caught the molester before the police did.  Just like that father, I was slowly and meticulously and almost artfully tortured by my own words.  But mostly it was the words I knew I had to say.  So simple are the words, “I’m sorry.”  But don’t tell that to a man’s pride, no matter his age.  You know you MUST say it, but it is absolutely agonizing what happens in your own brain until that happens.

If you sit back and consider some of the most difficult words that can ever pass your lips at any point in your lifetime, some of them can be downright painful to even read, much less actually have to say.  Far beyond that of a thirteen year old kid knowing he has to apologize to his daddy for embarrassing him when he only wanted to watch his son play baseball, there are words we must say at various times in our lives that are WAY more difficult than that stupid kid’s apology.  Here’s a short list I came up with on the fly.  Not all have applied to me, but these are the obvious ones to include here.

  • “I want to break up.”
  • “I want a divorce.”
  • “Will you marry me?”
  • “Your (insert family member) is dead.”
  • “We lost the baby.”
  • “I’m gay.”
  • “I plead guilty, your honor.”
  • “I’m dying.”
  • “Mom, for the next two years, I’m going to war.”
  • “Santa Claus isn’t real.”
  • “Honey, I have some bad news.  I have AIDS.  And I got it from your mother.”

Okay, so it got a little weird there at the end, but you get the idea.  Aside from asking your bride-to-be for her hand in marriage (more on that later,) there are those moments in life when you know you have to open your mouth and say something to another human being that will either crush them or destroy you – maybe both – and you would rather remove your skin with a veggie peeler than to have to say it.  

Our earliest examples of this – for many of us anyway – go back to that first or second or maybe even third really serious boyfriend or girlfriend.  It was that moment that we knew we had to break their heart and tell them we wanted to break up. Sometimes we would negotiate and haggle and barter with ourselves in our own brains for days or maybe even weeks with the anguish that this caused us.  I can still remember some of those feelings.  They were awful.

I mean, it shows I have always had a big heart and a softer side, but I am still the reason I repeat the following phrase almost weekly in my classroom and quite often to my teenage daughter:  “Remember this, ladies.  Teenage boys are horrible creatures.  Just horrible.  Do not trust a single word that comes out of their mouths.  Even the ones who everybody thinks are the good boys.  They’re all terrible, horrible creatures.”

But eventually we said it, right?  We wouldn’t have married somebody ten relationships removed from those first girlfriends or boyfriends if we hadn’t.  But when we said it, it was always accompanied by “It’s not you, it’s me.  I’m the one that’s messed up.”  And even though that was true, it was not true for that particular moment of our lives nor did the person we dump even care that we were messed up.  We said those self-rationalizing things to lessen the blow caused by the gravity of what we put ourselves through preparing to deliver the breakup speech.

And even though it doesn’t really need repeating at this point in this article, it needs repeating just in case there are teenage girls reading this.  Teenage boys are just walking, talking, conniving pieces of shit.  Remember that.

Anyway, we somehow lived through those breakups and we trekked through life dreading that next horrible thing we had to say, and for a lot of guys, that thing is, “Will you marry me?”  Ninety-nine percent of the time, we know she’s going to say yes, but it is still a nightmare to actually say it out loud.  And it’s not the fear of what she might say, it’s the fear of losing that tiniest of slivers of freedom we have left.  When those words exit our lips, it’s over.  Or that’s what we think anyway.

There are probably tons of other unimportant times in a young person’s life prior to that first marital biggie when they must say something about which they will lose weeks worth of sleep and spend their days with stress headaches and maybe even run the thermometer under hot water to convince mommy that they’re sick just so they don’t have to say it today.  And then when they finally say this thing that has tortured their trivial, adolescent brain for weeks, it goes something like this: “Mom, I don’t want to go to the family reunion.  Aunt Gertrude grinds on me when she hugs.”

But the important stuff – the REALLY hard stuff – is reserved for adulthood.  We get to ask for divorces and tell our kids that their parent is dying or tell our spouse we have cancer or – God forbid – tell our spouse we cheated.  We get to suck up our pride and tell our boss we screwed up or announce to the world that we are, in fact, gay.  These are all big boy words.  They’re heavy.  They can REALLY cause some anguish before they finally leave our lips.

But none of them come remotely close to the hardest thing I’ve ever had to say in my life, and I venture to guess that when I look back on my life one day when I’m old and ornery, it will always be the hardest thing I ever had to say.

The hardest thing I’ve ever had to say in my life was, “My name is Denton, and I’m an alcoholic.”

Now this admittance is not coming from a slouch who was never faced with some difficult words.  I was a very sweet but still horrible teenage boy and had to suffer the anguish of breaking up with girls that deserved much better than me.  I have asked two women to marry me.  I have stood in front of a crowd of better than five hundred people with my two year old daughter climbing all over the pews and delivered my first wife’s eulogy.  I’ve had to admit a shitload of lies to my wife.  I’ve had to tell my daughter all about who her dad really is and was.  I’ve had some deep, heavy shit pass these lips.

But none of them compared to the anguish and torment that came with admitting I was an alcoholic.  And you may ask why and say that makes no sense based on all the other heavy shit I’ve had to say.  But here’s the thing about admitting you’re an addict of any kind:  

You can’t ever take it back.  Ever.  And it changes everything.  Literally everything.

I knew I was an alcoholic probably by my late twenties.  I admitted it when I was thirty-nine.  I finally said the words out loud that had ravaged my brain for a decade.  That cannot compare to anything else I have ever said in my life.  Any of the other heavy shit I’ve mentioned ravaged my brain for days, weeks, maybe months.  Not a decade.

But once it’s out there, you’re done.  If you admit you are an addict, you cannot go back on those words.  You can’t say, “Well, I mean, I sometimes drink a little too much, but I’m not like those people at AA or those drunks living under the bridge or like Uncle Mel when he shows up at Christmas and steals all the liquor.”  

It doesn’t matter what KIND of alcoholic you are – be it homeless panhandler, fully functioning, or Uncle Mel – an alcoholic is a person who is powerless over alcohol.  They are a person who does NOT get drunk with the fifteenth drink, they are already drunk by the first drink because they will NEVER stop with that first drink.  The drink that makes them blackout is simply inevitable once the first one happens.

If you’re an alcoholic, you already know it.  The question is, when are you going to say it out loud for others to hear?  That’s when you can stop being defined by your addiction.  There’s always a “but,” though, right?  When you admit your alcoholism, you absolutely are on your way to the day when you do not define yourself by your addiction, but you can’t think that clearly when you haven’t admitted it yet.  You’re in the stage of, “Oh my god, I can’t do this.  I can’t do forever.  Just can’t say the word or my wife will be right and my life will be over.   I can’t say I will NEVER drink again.  I shouldn’t have to admit this now. What if I learn to drink in moderation one day?”

It’s nothing more than lengthy internal bullshit, and you know it.  Sometimes it’s a decade of bullshit.

So what happens when you say it?  Well for starters, if you say it and you mean it, as soon as you go back to the bottle, you’ve gone past addict territory and into junkie territory.  That’s what I tell myself, at least. If this shit owns me that thoroughly – if I am not strong enough to say no to something that almost ruined my life – I might as well label myself a junkie and just live out my days drunk and miserable and let my family find happiness without me.  

I’ve heard of a few people who admitted they were alcoholics, stayed sober for months or years, and then decided they could drink in moderation all of a sudden.  They swear they can actually drink one or two beers and just stop.  And maybe they can.  But if I’m being honest, and you can bet your ass that’s why I write about this like I do, I think they’re lying.  I think they drink more than they say, I think they hide alcohol from their spouse, and I think it’s only a matter of time before they go full on addict again.  For most of us, wherever we were when we quit drinking, as soon as we start back up, we will be back to that low, rock bottom place within days or weeks.  

Alcoholics cannot do moderation.  The obsession after one or two drinks is just far too strong.  I do not believe that somebody who was in the depths of hell because of alcohol can ever have a cordial and mutually beneficial relationship with it ever again.  I just don’t think I’m wrong about that.

And it’s for all these reasons that it is the hardest thing I’ve ever had to say in my life.  And you know what?  It still isn’t easy to say.  It’s still a little embarrassing.  It’s still – sixteen months later – a difficult thing to wrap my head around, especially that concept of forever.  

I will never regret breaking my anonymity and telling the world about my alcoholism because I truly believe this is my calling.  I’m supposed to talk about it.  Eventually God will put somebody in my path that needs exactly what I have said and it will be a small catalyst in saving their life.  But that doesn’t mean it’s easy.  I still see people occasionally that I really only see on Facebook and think, “I wonder what they think about me when they see me.  Do they see an alcoholic or do they see someone they have come to admire?”

These questions, and these continued insecurities, are exactly the type of questions a practicing alcoholic does not have to consider.  They are choosing the easy way out.  It is MUCH easier staying in addiction than it is facing a world that no longer includes it or allows it.

I truly hope somebody reads this one day who is in that decade long anguish of knowing they are an alcoholic but refusing to admit it.  I hope they have just enough strength left to walk into one – just one – AA meeting and admit they are an addict.  I hope the recovery and the withdrawals and the mind games and learning to live sober from that night forward suck so badly that they think the only way out is back in.  I hope they think I am asking them to ruin their lives by admitting this, and I absolutely am.  I’m asking them to ruin the thing they THINK is life. 

And with that, I hope they understand that they are free to still ruin their own lives outside of addiction, but at least they can do it in a much more responsible way.  And I don’t even necessarily understand what that sentence means, but it makes sense to me.

But in all things we trek through in this life, the view forward is like taking a panoramic picture with the lens cap on.  As soon as we turn around and look back, the pictures – and their are millions of them in rapid fire succession – are all crystal clear and come with extremely detailed captions.  When an alcoholic is faced with saying these words they can NEVER take back, the future they see is not only as black as that panoramic, it is also filled with a promise of depression and anxiety and poor self-esteem and an unwillingness to escape the reclusion.  And yes, sixteen months later, I still see all of those pictures.  They’re ugly as hell, but I’m keeping them forever.  I need to remember how much this sucked.

Attempting to look at a future without addiction was the most challenging encumbrance of my life.  By a LONG shot. I heard those eight words every day – multiple times a day – for ten years. Ten YEARS.  Imagine trying to talk yourself into saying something twenty to thirty THOUSAND times. It sure makes that saying about insanity seem pretty accurate.  You know the one: Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.  I was probably borderline insane by the time I actually said it.  In many ways, I still am.

If you’re an alcoholic or other addict, saying those words will ruin the life you are choosing to live, but it is most definitely not ruining your life.  An addict cannot and will not see it that way, but they will also probably agree with me, because their dream – since the moment they admitted it to themselves – has always been to live in sobriety.  But addiction is such a f**ked up existence that they prefer to maintain their status quo, even when they are one hundred percent confident that life outside of addiction is better.  Now THAT’S insanity.  It’s such a tragic way to live.

Remember all those “tough as hell” things at the front of this article that we are sometimes forced to have to say?  Those things that are so difficult to say that they cause personal anguish?  Consider a few that an alcoholic might be forced to say one day:

  • “Honey, we’re broke.  I’m sorry.”
  • “I’ll take the manslaughter plea deal.”
  • “Yes, mom and dad, I stole from you in order to maintain my addiction.”
  • “I have irreversible liver disease and have only months to live.”
  • “Yes, I was drunk at work.  Will you please let me resign?”
  • “What should I write in my suicide note?”

You think some of those are exaggerations?  Nope.  Research the name Chandler Michael Kania.  Or Amy Winehouse.  Or David Foster Wallace.  Or Hank Williams.  

Or don’t research them.  The stories suck and they will depress you.  Instead, think about how freaking easy it is to just say those eight little words.  My name is Denton, and I’m an alcoholic. It was the hardest eight words I’ve ever spoken, and they caused some pretty excruciating mental agony before AND after they were spoken, but I don’t have to really consider ever having to say the things in that last list ever again.  That’s pretty cool.  Happiness and hope eventually render the “forever” aspect of that admittance nothing more than a little bit of daily personal maintenance.

And when that happens, look at all the things that you might get to say:

  • “You mean you trust me enough to make me a daddy?”
  • “Of course, I’ll take the promotion.”
  • “We can actually afford to go on a vacation.”
  • “I’m going back to school.”
  • “The doctor says I’m as healthy as a man twenty years younger.”
  • “Saw a shooting star tonight.  I wished for a dream, not a beer.”

Just say it.  It’s going to absolutely suck for a little while, but dammit, it’s better to have life suck for a little while than to have life suck until there’s none left.  Addiction does not enhance or sustain life.  It takes it away, it drains it, it makes it shorter and less enjoyable.

If you’re an alcoholic, you already know it.  Just say it.  If you need to practice on somebody, even if you don’t plan on doing anything about it for a while, say it to me.  I won’t judge.  I mean, how could I?  You’re just like me.  Send me a message and I’ll send you my phone number so you can try it out on somebody.

If you have read the majority of my website, I have said several times that I will never try to talk a person into admitting their addiction if they don’t want to quit.  I don’t enjoy wasting my time or my energy on pointless efforts.  I sincerely hope you enjoy your addiction.  It would be better than suffering addiction and hating every minute of it, right?  Why would I wish that on somebody?  If you choose alcoholism, I choose to wish happiness upon you even if your choice is not one I would make any longer myself.  I believe in big boys and girls wearing big boy and girl pants.  Besides, you’ll need all the pants you can get when you break into your ex-wife’s house to see if she kept your box of winter clothes because sleeping in a tent behind Walmart starts getting cold in late Fall.

When Someone You Know Falls Off the Wagon

October 18, 2018 by Denton 16 Comments

When Someone You Love Falls Off the Wagon

There’s a line in Good Will Hunting that always stuck with me.  The irony of it.  The hypocrisy.  The foreshadowing. It had everything, simply because of who Sean was in real life.  After I found out Robin Williams was just like me – an alcoholic – and I heard him speak that line when I watched it again, I remember watching his face.  I don’t recall the first time I watched that movie or the fifth, but I absolutely LOVE that movie.  And as I write this, I can still see him and Matt Damon sitting on that bench in the park and I can hear his voice saying it.

Sean says to Will, “Unless you want to talk about you, who you are.  Then I’m fascinated.  I’m in.  But you don’t want to do that, do you, sport?  You’re terrified of what you might say.”

That’s more than a great few lines.  Much more.  It’s a look inside the mind of an alcoholic.  It wasn’t intended to be, but it is.  We alcoholics don’t want to talk about us, who we are.  There are a million recovering alcoholics that would drop everything to help, to soak up our words and be fascinated by them.  They would be all in to help us.  But we alcoholics don’t want to talk about it.  We are absolutely terrified of what we might say.

Robin Williams was an amazing actor to me.  He was amazing because the more I got to know about him, and the more I watched him in movies, I could see the darkness.  I’ve read stories of where other people could, too.  He covered it all up so well by being one of the funniest people that has ever lived, but his dramatic roles didn’t require a great deal of acting.

I think he loved roles like Good Will Hunting and Dead Poets Society and Patch Adams and One Hour Photo that had a darkness to them in which he could escape because he got to almost tell the world a little about the darkness without it being Robin Williams who was spilling his guts out to the world.  He got to be Sean or Adrian or Patch or Seymour, not Robin.  And every time he had a dramatic role, he got to take a little piece of his troubled soul and show just enough of it where we were fascinated.  We were all in.

All of this is complete speculation on my part, but I’m probably not off by much if I’m off at all.  Alcoholics struggle mightily with depression and reclusiveness and anxiety and some, like Robin Williams, try to disguise the torment with humor.  And he did it SOOOOO well.  He was one of the few actors in my lifetime that I was pretty doggone sad when he died.  That was 2014.  I was still three years away from sobriety.  Not only did his death hurt me a little, I remember being a little jealous.  That’s what alcoholism does to a man.  It eventually makes him want to die.

Robin Williams went to rehab at least twice.  He fell off the wagon twice. He was sober and clean for 30 years between the cocaine and alcohol days of the 1970’s and when he started drinking again in 2003.  Thirty damn years of sobriety, gone. How does a man let that happen when all around him there are people who would drop everything if they knew he needed to just open up and TALK?  He could have gone to ANY Alcoholics Anonymous meeting in America and twenty people would have sat with him all night to keep him from drinking.

The answer is that when stress or depression or some other excuse causes drinking to become a viable option in an alcoholic’s life, he or she will not talk about it to ANYBODY.   They don’t want to.  When they are at that place, it’s over.  At every AA meeting across America today (no matter the day you’re reading this,) some meeting leader is telling the group that they need to “call their sponsor” if they’re ever in trouble.  Sometimes that simply is not going to happen.  When an alcoholic already has their mind made up, which takes surprisingly little time, there is no way in hell they’d call their mama just to thank them for the lasagna she brought last week.  They want to talk to NO ONE because then they would have to talk.  

And as Sean said in Good Will Hunting, “You’re terrified of what you might say.”  I’ll add to it. They’re also terrified of what they might DO if someone finds out they are leaning towards drinking again.  When falling off the wagon is a viable option, there better not be a damn soul standing in their way or they will get flattened by the obsession that is alcoholism.  Nothing will stand in their way, so why in the hell would they call their sponsor?

That’s why it’s possible to go 2, 5, 10, or even 30 years and just rip the sobriety label up in less than 30 seconds.  That first drink was a foregone conclusion as soon as they made it a viable option. That’s how easy it is to fall off the wagon.  And it almost always happens because they WANT it to.

I had somebody I know pretty well fall off the wagon recently.  Over five years of sobriety gone in the blink of an eye.  He wanted it to happen.  He couldn’t handle the stress of life (or whatever it was; the reason doesn’t really matter) and it was enough of an excuse to start drinking again.  And then he told me it happened two years ago.  He hadn’t even attempted to get back on the wagon in two damn years.  Hid it from his family, his job, everybody.  For two years everybody that knew he was an alcoholic thought he was still sober.  That’s insane.  But I can completely understand how it can happen.

I remember the only emotions I really felt when he told me were sadness and inquisition.  I was sad for him, but mostly I was sad for his wife.   She had come with him to AA meetings a couple of times.  Just a great lady.  And it had to be one of the most deflating moments of her life.  I think about my wife in those instances, too.  How would she handle it?  The best and only answer is, “Not well.”

The inquisition focused on a very simple and blunt series of questions that are all related.  How the hell did this happen, how did he let it happen, and how can I keep it from happening to me?  But the simple answer is the correct one, and it answers all of them.  He wanted it to happen.  He never intended to call a single damn soul because they would have tried to talk him out of it.  They preach “Call your sponsor” at every AA meeting, but the reality is, when an alcoholic makes alcohol a viable option, most of the time the only phone call they’ll make is to God or the devil, depending on their anger and depression levels.  They have already made up their mind.  Why in the hell would they call somebody who might make them stop?

So what do we do as their friend?  I thought a LOT about this question during the day he told me because he asked me to join him at AA that night.  I of course said yes.  That was the obvious and only answer.  You have to support him no matter what because he would damn sure do it for you.  He could have fourteen white chips because of screwing up so frequently, but I must support him until the end. Tonight could be the one that finally sticks.  And the next wagon-faller could be me.  IF I make it a viable option.

Several weeks later, I’m still a little jolted by it.  This guy was a sobriety mentor to me and he didn’t even know it.  I looked at him and thought, “There is a man content with the ‘forever’ part of sobriety.”  And that’s a BIG word for a lot of us alcoholics.  Content.  I’m sixteen months sober and I am NOT content yet.  I’m content with today – I know I will not drink or dip today – but to say I am fully content with the “forever” part of sobriety would be a lie.

It absolutely sucks for him, but I’m okay that he jolted me a little bit.  It’s oddly healing for me.  I needed to see how easy it was to go back, especially by somebody I thought never would.  I think it’s even okay that HE was jolted by it a little bit.  When he finally got caught, it was probably the kind of jarring embarrassment that he needed to never let it happen again.  Probably.

The person I feel most sorry for is not him, however.  He did this to himself and he knows it. He’s a big boy and he’s taking responsibility for it.  He’s doing exactly what he should do in that respect. But I absolutely HATE it for his wife. It’s not fair to her.  I know life sucks and it’s not fair, but alcoholism is probably one of the more severe and chronic tribulations with which a spouse must live.  It affects literally every support beam in the foundation of a marriage.  It gives a spouse undue worry and stress every single day of their life, and what makes that suck even worse is that they have ZERO control over it and ZERO escape from it.  

Just consider the things a spouse must worry about.  Is he going to bankrupt us with his drinking? Will he get fired?  Is he going to get so drunk that he cheats on me and doesn’t remember?  Is he going to show up tonight?  Will he ever turn violent as a result of this?  Is he going to drive with my babies in the car after he’s been drinking?  

Spouses are NEVER given the luxury to stop worrying or even to take a break from it.  There is this mountainous lack of trust that has been thrust upon them, and they’re the ones responsible for dealing with it.  It just sucks for them.  I have no idea how to explain or describe that any further. They deserve a hell of a lot more pity than their damn spouse does, I can assure you of that.

But I don’t think it’s okay for me to pity the alcoholic that falls off the wagon, no matter how close they are to me and no matter how much of a mentor I consider them to be.  They do NOT need pity. Pity is the alcoholic equivalent of some random person in the crowd singing “Kum ba yah” at a murderer’s sentencing before the judge says, “Okay, that’ll be good enough.  You’re free to go.”  I really don’t think that analogy made any sense whatsoever, but that’s okay because showing pity to a wagon-faller makes no sense either.

When somebody you know falls off the wagon, your ONLY job is to support them and be there for them if they need you.  I don’t think it’s okay to say something like, “You stupid dumbass.  What were you thinking?”  That’s just not okay.  You can be a good listener and give advice when its asked for, but it is NOT your job to give any unsolicited advice or condemn them.  Every thought a man can have has already flooded his brain.  He knows every piece of advice you could give him.  He knows how everybody will react if or when they find out.  He knows how disappointed his wife will be.  But it is absolutely not my job to dole out advice to people who have fallen off the wagon.  He knows he needs to be yelled at, but between he and his wife, nobody needs to add to that yelling.

Have you ever had a boss or parent who tells you three different ways that you screwed up when you already know you screwed up?  And by the end of their diatribe you actually WANT to screw up again just to give that person a big fat “F**k you” just because it will appease your boiling anger?  And the reason you got so angry during the diatribe is because you already knew – in perfect, vivid detail – exactly how, what, when, where, and why you screwed up.  You really don’t need anybody to tell you again.

That’s how I felt when I found out he fell off the wagon.  I listened, we went to AA together, I asked how his wife was doing, and then I stepped back.  I let him talk if he wanted to.  If I had nothing unique or philosophical to offer, why would I say anything?  Everything I could have said had already gang raped his brain for days, weeks, months, or possibly even years, because he subconsciously knew there would be a day that it ended.  And he knew it would probably not end on his terms.

Robin Williams as Sean Maguire is one of my favorite characters in my lifetime.  Him playing Patch Adams was another.  It makes me want to go back after writing this and watch both of them again, but especially Good Will Hunting.  The words he says and the heart he displays reminds me so much of the dark dungeon of alcoholism, even if that’s not the actual subject matter of the movie.  You could take his quotes out of that movie and apply them to a LOT of topics ranging from addiction to depression to suicide to fear.  But then he says something that gives you a little bit of hope, even for those who have just destroyed their families with their return to alcohol.

“You’ll have bad times,” he says.  “But it’ll always wake you up to the good stuff you weren’t paying attention to.”

Yep.

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