So, as of late there has been much stress around. We’re planning to move to the States. Forever. Although we’re propping open the return-to-the-UK door with Kathryn getting UK citizenship, it’s not something we’re intending to use. It’s just insurance. Not terribly cheap insurance, but insurance.
In addition, neither of us is drinking (alcohol) at the moment, at least, not really, because we’re trying to have a baby. And it seems harsh for me to be sucking down the odd cider/beer/mix-drink when Kathryn can’t. And I’m somewhat phobic of drinking alone; it does happen, but it’s a real rarity. All of this I say because I’ve been following my two favourite comics, questionable content and girls with slingshots. They’ve been covering drinking in such a way as to warrant mention by the Washington Post blog. And it’s something which lurks in the corners of my brain a lot of the time.
Sometimes I get home and I fancy a drink. Nothing particularly wrong with that; a lot of people I know with relax and have a drink at home. I’d certainly not be the first Emergency Care professional to aid unwinding with alcohol. But I don’t, or at least very, very rarely. In fact, if I’m in a bad mood I’ll almost certainly not have a drink. Because alcohol unnerves me.
I drank too much as a teen. Much more than was healthy. I was deathly unhappy, I hated myself, I loathed pretty much all of my being. And having been bullied pretty extensively I had the social skills of a hermit crab. And suddenly, in sixth form, for whatever reason I started to be invited to parties. I already was someone who’d drunk ‘socially’. I’d go out of an evening, sweet talk the slightly dodgy off-licence into selling me cider, most commonly, or doubley sweet talk my way into a bar and we’d drink.
Usually a lot.
Not uncommon for teens, at least, in the UK.
But when I started going to parties, well, I didn’t really know when to stop. Or how to stop. Once I started, if I drank enough, I could forget how I felt I was pathetic, and awful, and useless. It would go away, or at least, go somewhere I didn’t have to think about it. I could talk to people… at least, I thought I could. Christ knows whether I could. I often suspect that the reason I got invited to go to parties was that I had access to a car. A lot of my friends couldn’t drive, or if they could they didn’t have parental permission. But my mum’s battered Peugeot 205? That was freely available (as long as my mum wasn’t working). So I’d ferry-to the party and then, the morning after, ferry-home. Distance no object*.
Even when I went to uni the first time, I still drank like a fish (although by then it was much more habit than anything else).
And when I eventually worked it all out? When I finally sorted myself out, and started to like myself a little I stopped drinking. But it’s left me with this vague fear of the stuff. An uneasiness surrounding drink.
A glass of wine is fine, maybe even a few on a very occasional night out. A mix-drink here and there. But drinking when I’m down? Or fed up after a bad day at work? No.
No, then the bottles stay firmly in the cupboard.
And as I deal with countless people with addictions to alcohol at work, I often think, there but for the grace…
…and it quietly terrifies me.
* I don’t think I was a terrible person, but when I made the mistake of attending a school reunion I have to say being almost totally excluded added a certain degree of weight to my “they liked the car” hypothesis.
