Last night, my wife woke me up with a phone call to tell me about her trip in LA to visit her friend, Dina, who is recently in (and then out) of rehab for alcoholism. She arrived in LA on Friday and her friend suggested they go get dinner at a local restaurant, where she promptly ordered wine. My wife, unaccustomed to this kind of situation and not a professional therapist or counselor of any kind, was taken aback, but not wanting to be an enabler, ordered water for herself. Over the course of the next two days, she saw firsthand the struggles of someone grappling with the realities of addiction. She saw how family and friends, uncertain with how to confront such situations, either distanced themselves or tried to act as though things were normal by extending invitations to Dina to come celebrate a birthday at the bar. She saw how Dina's mother passive-aggressively texted her about not responding to messages promptly. She saw her friend, who has just joined AA and has a sponsor, drink and admit to spending an afternoon in the preceding week in the bar.
As I lay there listening to these things I thought about my own struggles in adulthood. I have struggled with depression and axiety, feeling of inadequacy. I have amassed formidable debts from education, moving several times, and I have failed brilliantly in several endeavors. My wife and I are currently long-distance, trying to move our careers forward, but it has strained our relationship. I think back to simpler times when the future legitimately seemed bright. As a child, or in high school, and college. I think back to myself at those times and all those friends, crushes, and interests I have lost contact with. I feel so disconnected from past versions of myself that they seem as though they were different people. As I sit here alone, blogging into a void, I wonder if Dina has similar reflections on her own life. At some point there must have been some granule of hope that led to her life path. She, like me, like my wife, is outwardly successful. Through careful tending of my social media, no one who knows me would ever know my internal struggles and burdens that are depriving me of sleep. At times I myself don't realize how much they are weighing on me. And then, like a flash flood, sheer panic roars in while I am on my couch watching re-runs of shows I have seen so many times I could recite them verbatim, but they bring some level of comfort and predictability into my life so I keep them on in the background while I sit at home. I wonder if Dina is thinking about the same things; if she remembers herself as a young child in school, where the greatest challenge was deciding what color crayon to use for the sky. When mistakes came without a price.
Funny how quickly things can change. We are all still relatively young and yet I feel that time is racing by. Each year passes faster than the last, and I seem to be enjoying each one less than the one before. I am not sure if this is a normal progression of happiness. I have seen studies which show people in my age group tend to be entering the least happy years of their lives, and then things start to improve again, but if I recall correctly that seems to be a decade or two in advance. I have little cause to complain - I have my dream position, and my future should be bright, when viewed on paper. But every day feels like I have fallen in quicksand and I sink a little further every day.
I think about Dina, and then I think about how often I go to the grocery store for beer. Or how quickly I go through the most recent bottle of whiskey I bought. Then I look for the accepted standards for determining who is an alcoholic, as though that can help justify my current consumption. I'm not there, but I feel like I could go there easily enough. I understand how Dina could have gotten there. Through immense pressure placed on her self, loneliness, and the lost innocence which is never coming back again. A sense of impending doom that never really goes away. Anything to make us feel like laughing again.
Part of me keeps some amount of optimism. I am a capable human being, but I am also deeply flawed, and its in adulthood that you must confront those stark realities of not being the person you always thought you were. Recognizing that the shortcomings in our lives are, in fact, serious shortcomings. And the worst may be yet to come. And despite achieving all of our dreams, we have sacrificed so much of ourselves that we may never be happy, but also recognizing that if we had sacrificed our dreams we would also be plagued with regrets and yearning. A recognition that perhaps some of us are just doomed to be happy because we lack the grit and creativity to somehow make "all of this" work. And yet, though it seems as though it erodes slightly every day, I retain some optimism.
Photo from Pixabay