alcoholic bones: inherited but still mine, without stopping i remember i ain't no winehouse

Without stopping. I hadn't had one of those without stopping nights in awhile. The one that the motion propels you through with the help of alcohol and banter and the next place until you wake up the next morning to your head feeling as if it might explode. You write a letter: dear head, please don't fall apart. Not now. Love, me.

See I used to have without stopping nights all the time. In my younger years- the debut of adulthood and experimentation- I wonder if I mix these three alcohols will I hug the toilet later. Oh most likely I will. A weak stomach. I do. Have. Later in my working years. When I had cash to burn. Burn and a job I didn't like. In a group of friends. Who all seemed to follow suit. Or when I was depressed about what I wanted. My only solace was the pouring down of the medicine ordered by me. It felt so comfortable. It felt like home. For it was.

Not everyone has a bones such as mine. These alcoholic bones originally believed to be from my descents- my grandfathers or great on both my irish sides. No closer in my body these bones made a tight fit around the joints. Closer to me. Around the veins and organs and the pulsing in and out. Not just my grandfathers, and maybe a few cousins, and maybe a few aunts or uncles but the closest you could get. My parents. Both. Of. Them. No one told me. To watch out because of my parents. No watch out because of those far away folks, they said. No one wants to say. Addiction you have inherited and dysfunction now not distant relative but your sibling. Living in your home. No one says it. For denial is the way you go on in the island of my family. So it has been. Until. One day you realize. These bones. These ways. Are part genetic. But part learned. And feel like home. It is scary to admit aloud in someones eyes but dysfunction is my friend and alcohol could be the only home you've known. Comforting things not so comforting.

But it changed for me. Not in meetings. Not in saying aloud my name is kate and I might be alcoholic. Hi, Kate did not reverberate against my ears. Not in my dad checking me into rehab and me saying no, no, no. No intervention. No I walked the line the best I could. Until I had to slow it down. I wasn't figuring myself out anymore. Binge drinking became less cool. And so did the throwing up. And wasted days. I was running away from who I was. What was too hard to feel. So now I don't drink like I once did. I go out regularly and might have a beer or two. It might be because I am happier. It might be because I thought about it. It might be I never wanted to be a drunk. Destroyed and broken.

But as I wake up in this brightest room in all of the mission. My head ripping apart and my fear of my stomach release. I can't help but think without stopping nights are still part of me. Even if they don't happen as they once did. Even though this hadn't happened in almost a year. I will always have these nights a piece of me that wants to keep going and not caring. Until the am. In the brightness of this new day. And I realize I can dabble in the without stopping nights. But I am not built for them as I once was. I turn over and will my head to stay in one piece and roll into an embrace. My head will stay in one piece. I got to keep my heart in one too.

jumping trains- from the bullet to the slow

enjoy your weekend- i hope this amazing weather holds. and as always thanks for stopping by- all my gratitude. . .

Comfort. I left the comfort of the bullet train of endeavors of love recently. It was a conscious choice. Not like many I have made in the love department. But I was once comfortable in the quickness of the fall in love or lust or like and it was so fucking exhilarating that I just kept doing it. I didn’t care if the moments didn’t stretch out. I wanted more. Just another hit. Maybe I just was meant to have moments and brief love affairs and the happily ever after would just be reserved for me in mini infatuations or relationships and my I do would happen more than once.

But as I started thinking, as I do, I realized, the comfort of the bullet train of heartbreak was starting to wear on my soul. Wear me down thin. I started taking in the research and the facts for I was once a researcher. Lapsed maybe. I was once a sociologist- not sure if you can retire from that. But an analyzer of my own life as well as others might be my favorite pasttime. Sometime. So once I begun to realize that the movement was too quick I kept on falling and then forgetting to put out my hands. I started to review the scratches and scrapes and bruises. Not just the ones on the outside but the inside.Those are the hardest to look at it and understand.

So after 2 plus years in San Francisco after my east coast tenure: 1) I had survived-not used loosely-dating a married man- I didn’t know and just to make it extra creepy he was cop. So when I broke it off with him he actually had a gun on his person. Not the best scenario for safety emotional being the least of my worries. 2) I survived dating a man who most definitely had something going on in the mental department for he and I broke things off and not soon after he tried to swim to angel island. 3) I dated a man who I thought liked me enough to be pleased by me. He wasn’t. I found out I was one of many. And then he got back together with his x right after he made me met her. 4) I fell in love with someone, someone I thought I knew. Until his once in awhile habit of cocaine became a binge. And I tapped out. Well not right away I tapped back in and jumped back into the ring until I couldn’t anymore.

So needless to say the bullet train has stopped working for me. I decided to get on a slow train that makes all the stops and doesn’t leave on time and sometimes sits and idles for hours because someone tried to cross the tracks at the wrong time or it was too hot or the acela was slowing things down. There is time to walk around and write. And look around and see it all. I can even grab a beer or some bad food-overpriced of course. It’s nice.

Because the slow train for me meant that my heart couldn’t jump into something until I actually stopped and saw it. Because I just kept jumping on and off the train not paying attention to the stops or the signs. I just kept going. The slow train can be lonely and not as exciting of my love for the train of the bullet. I miss that train. Slowly I travel. Slowly I begin things. Slowly. Slowly. Slowly. Still I miss the quickness of falling. Falling. But maybe I can fall more slowly. And pull the stop when I am ready to get off. Get off this train.

playing with fire: look bitch take off my acid washed jean jacket

Playing with fire. I play with fire regularly. Not the typical webster definition of the wood and oxygen and flames and sticks and air and heat and those things. No I play with fire. The type that can burn you more than just on your skin. The first and second and third types so deep so below the surface of the abyss of you that when you play- you play with fire- the risk is great. But somehow worth doing. Worth the risk of the burn again. I like to live on the edge or so I say. Mostly I push buttons. Mostly I say things I shouldn’t. Mostly I say too much. Mostly I am too honest. Mostly I am just playing with fire even if I don’t know it. Sometimes. But sometimes I know it and still do it. Say something that will make my heart beat or stop the pulse-the pace-the flow of the room but I still do it.

I started to think about when this started. It’s hard to say. It’s hard to remember when I thought it was fun to play with fire. I didn’t understand the boundaries, of child, or girl, or white, or woman, or working class or pretty or smart or any of the other titles I have been bestowed upon by birth, by social constructs, by my genetics, by so much that is not choice and so much that is. See it is hard to remember when I started playing with fire because I was an adult child. I was the negotiator between my parents as long as I could remember. Dad on one side Mom on the other and me in between. Always. I had honest conversations about my life-about who I wanted to live with and where and when before I was done with the 3rd grade. No child can answer these questions. I looked into the judge’s face, the therapist face, my own private lawyers face at 8, my aunts, my doctors face all saying the same thing I want to live with both my parents. All the faces the same. All the words the same.

It is hard to know boundaries of age if no one instills them in you. It is hard to know boundaries of gender if no one tells you women shouldn’t act this way. Because as much we pretend we have changed, progressed- a woman and what it means to be one fits perfectly in a neat little box on top of that shelf. Still it does. If you only smile and looked pretty life would be so much easier for you. I have heard more than once.

I play with fire. But I remember the first time I played with fire not with my family but with my peers. See my parents- divorced or not- together or not- my dad with or without a new girlfriend weren’t rolling in the dough. My dad started his job 3 months before my mother gave birth to me. He climbed telephone poles and climbed his way up without a degree or an almost degree to manage systems and the such. But we were poor. Not poor like starving poor. More like we had a Volkswagen before they were cool- two of them- and I would force my father to park down the street from school to drop me off as to not have anyone see my car. I didn’t realize I was being a shit. Then of course I didn’t. I was embarrassed of that car. And the roar of it. Dad please just drop me off at the corner. I never admitted why. I didn’t want to see his face, his hard working face, look at me with despair.

So when my parents- more like my dad and his girlfriend allowed me to get my first acid washed jean jacket-I was side pony tailed and gummy bracelet and legging out full of joy and beyond belief. I probably sang a rendition of my own personal Madonna in celebration. I wore that jacket- my coolest item- the coolest item- the item that anyone who was anyone was wearing. I wore it with pride like I once wore my green izzy kid outfit or the badges for most cookies sold as a girl scout. The pride I had for being cool. My father reminded me to put my name in it. Just in case he said. Just in case you lose it. I probably rolled my eyes at him. My green glass eyes, my mothers. Every time he looks at me he must remember. Or does he? He never says. I would be rolling my 9-year-old eyes as he provided me with his black sharpie from his toolbox or art supplies. For my father had all the answers. At one time I thought he did. Even though I played fire with so many things he did tell me.

I wore that jacket as if it was my pride and joy my second skin of acceptance in the 80s-I might have even popped that collar before I knew that was reserved for the preppies. And so I wore it for a week until until I lost it. Of course I lost it. I left it out at recess while I was running my skinny ass around playing something I am sure tetherball or handball or something with a ball. And after recess I returned to where I had thrown it on the ground and to my dismay. Gone. Nothing. Tons of jackets. Piled but mine was missing. There was only the pavement, hot from the afternoon sun, painted partially from the wear of playing.

Shit, shit, shit. I decided it was time to act. I asked my friends and classmates my teachers and anyone who would listen. I went to the lost and found until they told me don’t call us we will call you. I made reward posters. I posted them in the hope that it would return to me. Return it did. But only because I played with fire. After I posted the posters everyone at hahn school knew kate b. had lost her jean jacket. Her cool.

So when I saw that girl, that girl in my jacket at recess. I had no other choice than to. To take my 65 pound-4 foot-something self over and tell her- take off that jacket. She was older than me but I didn’t care. If I could redo it I would say look bitch take off my acid washed jean jacket. Now. Instead she bought time. Playing with fire practiced so I didn’t give up. Take off the jacket-it’s mine. I knew without a doubt that was the flesh and blood of cool, my cool. Look take it off and if it doesn’t say my name- it’s yours. We did the 4th v. 6th grade stare down. And eventually she saw the fire in my eyes and realized she shouldn’t play with a girl’s first love of the jean. She took it off and there there in the black sharpie eye rolled upon it was the words- kate b.