False Hope

I had my first drink when I was seventeen.  By that age, my struggle with self had already begun. I was lost and confused. I didn’t have many friends, I had four brothers who treated me like an alien from another planet, and two parents who didn’t know how to communicate and couldn’t stand being around each other.  The night I had my first beer with some new friends was the night my life took a turn in a direction I wish it would have never gone.

I remember so clearly NOT knowing who I was or what I was doing here. It seemed to me that everyone else had gotten the memo on what to do and how to act in every situation.  I stood by wondering how they knew and how they felt so comfortable all the time.  That first beer gave me a little hope that maybe I could feel comfortable and not so afraid all the time. Alcohol brought me to what seemed like the same level as everyone else.  But it took me to places I didn’t need to be.  It kept me from going places I can only dream of now.

I thought alcohol made me fit in. I thought it made me happy. I yearned for it and sought out its comfort.  But alcohol is a thing, a substance.  I sought comfort and company in the wrong place.  All alcohol really did was deaden my senses, alter my perception of myself and the world around me, and lead me through a life of struggle, secrets and shame. I wish I could show teenage girls a slide show of my life and exactly how alcohol altered it from the first drink.  At a time when I should have begun to grow as a person and find the real me, I was wasting away in the company of a bottle.  I never found the real me.  I left her there in the parking lot of a shopping center.  She’s still sitting there under a street lamp with a bottle of beer between her knees.

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What I wish I knew then, back when I was seventeen, was that maybe I was special.  Maybe I had a special gift that if I had only allowed myself to discover would have guided me in the right direction, on the path my life was supposed to take. Alcohol wiped out that gift, smothered it, drowned it and put out its flame. No wonder I have never understood my reason for being in this life.

I am a grown woman now.  I have two teenage boys of my own.  I did make it through young adulthood and then middle age (yuck! really?) as a functioning member of society.  But that’s about it. I never rose above just functioning. I never did find myself.  I just floated along and did whatever came next, all with my friend alcohol by my side.  Now I yearn to find out who I am and what I am here on this earth for.  As I look back at the years gone by, I see how much of my life was wasted time.

Drinking does not make anything better. It does not make a girl pretty or sophisticated or cool in any way.  It does the exact opposite. Alcohol fools you into thinking you are the greatest, most sophisticated one in the room, when in actuality you are the most pathetic one in the room. No one looks at a slobbering drunk with awe and respect. They point and laugh and walk away.

My words cannot accomplish what I wish they could.  My words are just words that cannot possibly reach everyone. This is not a slide show of my lifetime of drunken stupors and foolish behavior. But it is a peek into my world as it is now, years after I took hold of a ray of false hope.  I wish I could have read these words when I was seventeen.  Maybe I would have just said NO and kept walking ahead, instead of making that dreadful mistake of turning in the wrong direction.

My wish for everyone in the New Year is for happiness and freedom. Freedom to move in the right direction and freedom be the person you are meant to be.