When my family and I first moved to Saratoga Springs in 2008 our temporary housing was in a hotel. We were there for three months and got to know the staff quite well, especially Kevin who worked at the front desk. When we moved into our house we remained friends with Kevin and he was often over to watch football and hockey games, play poker, and sometimes to babysit my son.
I am not certain when I first learned of Kevin’s talent for writing, but I have so enjoyed reading anything he was willing to share including some of the funniest intelligent Facebook posts. And then he bravely posted this
.
Today marks five years for me without alcohol. A lot of you probably don’t know that I stopped drinking and a lot of you don’t know that I used to drink and a lot of you might not know or care one way or the other. There was a confluence of circumstances that led me away from alcohol, but I’m going to address the most important one.
A little more than five years ago, I was arrested for my second DWAI in under three years. It was a shitty thing to do and it was irresponsible and stupid. It was, in fact, the inevitable culmination of the escalating trajectory of shitty, irresponsible and stupid things that I did over the entire course of my adult life to that point. But it was also a relief. The pace at which I was destroying myself physically and mentally was just too much to keep up and I was actually relieved to be pulled over because I needed somebody to stop me. I didn’t even try to talk my way out of it. I didn’t even bother to lie. The most I could muster was a half-hearted Melville reference when they asked me to take the breathalyzer. “I’d prefer not to.”
The officers took me to jail and processed me, which took forever. There was a 20-year-old kid from the Navy there, getting processed for a DWI too, and he was begging, pleading, crying, with snot bubbles dripping down his face like a little kid and I remember watching him and thinking it was just surreal, like his desperation was so absurdly foreign to any type of emotion I could feel for my own situation. After processing me, they asked if I had anyone to call. I said no. They took me to a cell and I lay down and finally got some sleep. I couldn’t remember a time when I hadn’t been exhausted.
I woke up in jail the next morning, freezing cold, and I looked around and figured that this was it. I was going to stay in jail for however long and lose my license and probably my job. And I was ok with all of that; those were just things that were going to ha
2012ppen. I considered the possibility I would end up homeless and the thought didn’t really upset me. I would be cold and hungry and miserable and alone and I thought I deserved that. I actually had the thought that I would have to go somewhere else to be homeless, that I knew too many people in Saratoga and someone would insist on taking me in. I thought I’d probably have to go to Albany. I was done, just exhausted and completely done with everything. It didn’t matter to me anymore. I didn’t matter to me anymore. I didn’t even care that I didn’t matter to me; the thought didn’t bother me. I was sitting in a cold jail cell and I felt like I belonged there. I felt like I had finally gotten what I had always deserved, to be totally exhausted and alone and hopeless. This wasn’t me feeling bad for myself because I got arrested; it was the culmination of almost fourteen years of deliberately destroying myself, little by little, piece by piece, and hoping I had finally succeeded.
An officer came and asked if I wanted to call anyone. I said no again. “Are you sure? You don’t have a girlfriend or anything?”
“No.”
“A friend?”
“No.”
“Do you live with anyone?”
“My parents.”
“Will they be worried about you?”
“Not yet. Sometimes I don’t go home.”
“You should tell them where you are.”
I called them and I don’t even remember which one of them answered. I told them I was ok, that I wasn’t hurt, but I was in jail again and let them know what bail was and when I’d be moved to County and to come get me if they wanted but I’d understand if they didn’t and just kind of hung up. I think it was my dad because my mom would have asked a hundred questions.
I went back and sat in the cell and started thinking about how long I would be in jail and how I would pass the time. Thinking? Writing? Exercising? Sleeping? I didn’t know, but I knew that I didn’t care. I don’t know how long I was in there, maybe an hour, when the officer came back and started unlocking the cell. “County?” I asked. “No,” he said. “Your parents are here.”
When he said it, my heart sank. I would rather have stayed in jail than face them like that again. I don’t think I said anything other than, “Thank you,” and we went to the car. Try imagining how awful I have to feel to be quiet.
When we got in the car, my mom said, “You’re going to be ok.” It was the first time that anyone acknowledged that it had been a long time since I had been ok. “I don’t think I am. I don’t think I’m going to be ok. You should have left me.”
“We are not leaving you. We are not giving up on you. We are going to help you.” My mom is a stubborn lady. That was when I realized that my dream of being homeless and cold and miserable and alone in Albany was over, before it had even begun. A lot of things were over for me, but I hadn’t realized it yet.
There’s a line in The Shawshank Redemption where Red says, “Andy Dufresne, who crawled through a river of shit and came out clean on the other side.” I still had to crawl though my own river of shit, but I realized that as much as that sucks – as awful and as difficult and monotonous as it is – if you stop crawling, you’re just laying in a river of shit like a stupid asshole.
My point in writing this isn’t to tell anyone that you should stop drinking or to keep fighting whatever you’re struggling with or even to believe in yourself. Sometimes we lack the energy or the will to believe in ourselves. Sometimes we are not ok. Sometimes we don’t think that we’re going to be ok. Sometimes we think we deserve everything bad that happens to us and sometimes we conspire to make bad things happen to ourselves.
My point is to tell you to believe in the people you care about, because we all need it sometimes. Whatever people are struggling with – drugs, alcohol, mental illness, abuse, stress – tell them that they will be ok. Tell them that you’re not leaving them. Tell them that you’re not giving up on them. Tell them that they are worth the hard work that they have to do and that you will help them. Tell them that they are almost through their river of shit and they have to keep crawling or they’re just going to be laying in a river of shit like a stupid asshole. Keep telling them and keep trying.
If my parents hadn’t come to get me, if my employer hadn’t worked out a way for me to keep my job, if some of you hadn’t helped me through the hard parts that I couldn’t do on my own, I could be living under an overpass in Albany right now, laying in a metaphorical but also maybe a literal river of shit, freezing cold and alone, like I wanted. Thanks for ruining that dream for me, you stupid assholes.
And in case you missed it, his point is “to tell you to believe in the people you care about, because we all need it sometimes.”