I spent yesterday revisiting all my old haunts. All the places I grew up in this town. All the places I wrecked my life. All the places where I cast my shitshowness all over everything...it was painful but in a good way. It seemed that every place I went I remembered some alcohol soaked event, incident or issue. This is not to say that it was all horrible...it wasn’t. And mostly it wasn’t because none of that stuff from the past is bad to me now. All the drama and heartache and suffering was completely totally necessary for me to get to where I am right now. And right now, I feel the best I have ever felt about myself, my life and how I am showing up for it all.
I saw a fountain that I threw up in downtown after drinking a 5th of Jack Daniels with a girlfriend and then drove to the bar to go drink more. Yes, that was who I used to be. I felt badly for whomever had to clean up that mess I left.
I saw a building that used to contain everything that I wanted in this world: a legal career. I spent most of my time running away from that building and the education they were trying to provide me. I just felt so inadequate and not worthy all the time. It grossly and greatly interfered with my ability to learn and absorb.
I saw the Supreme Court of Florida where I was honored to get an interview once upon a time...I showed up without showering after a night of drinking and smoking. I was still drunk or at least under the influence, so I missed putting on a shirt under my suit. There was no time for showering. I just had to come home and brush my teeth and throw on lawyerly garb and get there. In my stupor and rush, I forgot to put on a shirt underneath my suit jacket. It wasn’t noticeable when I was standing, but when I sat down, my bra and boobs were visible to all. I was so out of it, I barely noticed until I got home and realized what I had done. Needless to say, I didn’t get the job. The girls and I were more impressive in our dysfunction...and incubated perhaps a strong desire to avoid us altogether.
I drove past the place where I was supposed to get married once upon a time...twice. I didn’t have the courage to go into the park and walk around. Too painful to think of how much I fucked that up. How much I hurt him and others. I didn’t want to wallow in that particular pain. Yet another mess in a long string of messes.
What I saw as I walked the town yesterday was my past, written all over the landmarks and a few benches. Places where my internal struggle and mental health was etched into so many places that everyday people walk by everyday. I saw in stark detail my unbecoming. But it wasn’t sad or remorseful or anything like that. It was just reality. I walked around not arrogant or proud, full of ego about it all. The alcoholic’s pride of how fucked up we were like there could be some drunken Olympics over which we could and would champion. That may sound weird but step into any barroom anywhere and you will hear the tales we tell and you will hear the ego spin its victorious fables. If you listen closely, you will hear the tales of someone drinking away their soul.
All in all, it was very unbecoming. But it was all my becoming. I had to do all those things, I had to live a life that was really just a drunken mess. I had to falter, fail and flail about. I had to do all of that so that I could become this person that I am today. Twenty six years clear of that carnage with this life that I have today. I get to do all of this. I get to be this person whom I actually love today. I still have faults and issues. I still have stuff that I fuck up. I am still self centered and selfish far more than I should be for the amount of time I have spent working on all this shit. But when I look in the mirror today, I actually love the person that looks back. I do not cut her slack instead hold her accountable, but I also love her flaws and her brokenness because it is my own. Mine. Something that I never really had before...
I had to have a very unbecoming becoming. I needed all of the shit that happened before, every fucking decimating thing to get to this point in my life where I am most content with my own company and find the company of others to be something I limit. Back in the unbecoming, I couldn’t be alone for five minutes. I was so afraid of what I might learn about myself. I was so afraid to be left alone with the crazy person that lived inside my skull. I had to exit in whatever way I could...as often as I could.
Today, while I am far from perfect, I like who I am. I love who I have become which means I have also found a way to love the unbecoming becoming. The stuff that almost killed me and the stuff that is so sad it is comical. I learned a long time ago that which you can laugh at, can’t really ever hurt you again. Because once you have survived it to a point of being able to see the humor of your own destruction, you are granted an immunity and with that comes a curiosity about yourself and others, why we all do what we do. And that seems to be at least one of the secrets of this life. Laughing in the face of the deadly seriousness of it all. You do what you do, you survive and move on. You see that if you are really fucking lucky, you will get a very unbecoming, becoming which upon reflection makes me smile and laugh as the tears roll down your face.
