A Baffling Breakup
Face It: It’s Time to Break Up
Before it turned into a reckless love affair, it was a friendship filled with discovery and possibility. I experienced what this friend could do for me, never asking anything in return. Always there to lift my spirits and unequivocally the one to encourage me to say and do outrageous things my otherwise reserved self would never have dreamt. Some of them I couldn’t even remember.
It was that good.
Oh, we had our rough patches. I’d swear off our friendship for weeks at a time, then come back raring to go. How did I think I’d ever be able to survive without you? My whole self, my identity, was wrapped up in you.
Alcohol and I called it quits 7.28.14.
It was a messy breakup and a long time coming. We had endured two longer stints apart, the first was fourth months, the second was three months. In that last go of trying to make it work (i..e controlled drinking), the friendship had turned into a relationship of punishment. We couldn’t co-exist and everyone around us knew it. Our relationship would have to exist in secrecy if it were to be a thing at all.
It was hard to keep a secret that wore itself on my movements. A misstep here, the slip of a mobile phone there, the darting, jittery slights that betrayed my un-sober state. Five months of exhaustion trying to keep a friend who demanded all of my time and attention at bay. The same friend that pulled me away from any threads of healthier friendships or activities. The whole thing was really quite baffling, to use a common AA term.
In the end, I loathed to be seen in public with them at the most depressing place in the world – a barstool at a lonely bar, dropping all sorts of cues that I’d be meeting “someone” soon, that I wasn’t really drinking alone. What a ruse. I knew my best friend was right there at the bar with me, my hand curled around them like a blanket while they were the one providing me comfort. There was no one I was to meet.
The night it ended, I had been at a bar. It was a late July summer night when twilight arrived around nine, which meant you could still get a decent amount of drunk after five and still be home before dark. And it was a Monday, we didn’t want to be out too late. By eight, maybe I’d had four pints of beer in frosty mugs. It’s hard to be specific. The night’s quota didn’t seem out of line given our history, but the physical effects were obvious to those around us, especially because we were supposed to be a secret.
The secret fell away at home. None of my attempts to modify my drinking – drinking less, getting home early - mattered to bystanders. They could see how this friend and I didn’t mix. We were toxic. They would have it no more.
Huddled up in a ball, tucked as far into myself as possible to recoil the upcoming violent decoupling I knew was unavoidable, I let in the pain. Tears later that same evening, unfurled in my bed with the last thread of that friendship unraveled, I exhaled. It was a shaky exhale with the notion that tomorrow morning would be a Tuesday. What an odd day to start again.
Start again I would. And my most baffling friend would not be invited.
