The Garden

Dear Duncan,

I read your last entry, I Went Too Far, and wept, as I have several times over things you’ve written of late. I weep with understanding and empathy, with familiarity, and a desire to end the pain…yours, mine, all who feel the emptiness and loss you so eloquently and hauntingly describe.

“Battling terrible demons at dawn” is heart breaking and devastating, but God, Duncan, please don’t even joke about taking even one drink to drown out the sorrow. I assure you it would be a futile attempt at getting a day off. Not only would it be futile, it could well lead to further destruction and despair.
I have only myself to hold up as an example of this, and though unsolicited, I’m going to tell you what happened when I took that one drink after 7 years of sobriety. I’ll offer here an abbreviated version of the events as I have neither the time at this moment, nor the inclination, to completely rehash the last year of my life. But I want to share with you in an effort to show you what a mistake it could be.

Some background: After having been abused by a caregiver from age 8 through 11, and starting again at 16, I was diagnosed with HIV in my early 20s. At that point in my life I had no idea how to deal with what had happened. In hindsight, of course, I could have maybe mentioned this horror and dealt with it in a way that mainlined the circuitous route to “normal, healthy adult” I ultimately ended up taking. Instead I slid further and further into a gripping despair that followed me right into the heart of adulthood. Instead I tried desperately to numb the pain by any means necessary. For me, any means was alcohol and eventually other things.

I experienced my great crisis in my 20s when I was diagnosed. Well, I guess it started earlier really, but surely it culminated and became defining then. At that moment in my life I had reached the edge of madness; from that point on my life became an unending desert…a Faustian nightmare…and I began to see the civilized world as a jungle; one in which I was wholly unable to protect myself. The repercussions of that year have reached far and for a long time kept me imprisoned in an unyielding stranglehold. It was all drawn out so woefully. I survived, to be sure, but I was vulnerable to the continual relapse that had me on the verge of terror or in fear of madness.

I was healthy for a long time. I got sober at 30. I had relationships, friendships, a decent career as a writer and editor. I had a life, and I lived it well.

Last year my health started to decline. Some of the meds weren’t working and I was starting to suffer physically and emotionally. The fear was overwhelming. I’d fought hard, and had been fighing for most of my life against one thing or another, and now this.

I couldn’t connect anything. I felt like the synapses in my brain were just firing at will, wildly, madly, with no regard for sense or logic. I started to write maddeningly. The more I wrote, the more manic I became. It kept me awake, which saved me from the Terror for a while but it also made me dizzy and nauseous and fidgety and restless and anxious and stupid. As much as I feared sleep then, I craved it because I didn’t have to deal with the thoughts and decisions and reality. And the pain. I needed to put the emotional pain to rest. I could’ve done without the physical pain as well. It hurt to breathe. And blink. And swallow.

I needed a day off. I took a drink. And then another. It numbed me. It also led me to some bad decisions. I wanted to tell the world to fuck off. I wanted to tell the virus to fuck off. The way to do that, I decided in my haze, was to quit the meds and ignore the disease’s existence.

I wrote obsessively back then. By day, work. By night…well, by night, the wrath in those pages… I became a machine. It was the midnight disease all over again. I rose, I wrote, I slept fitfully, I wrote some more. The afternoons and evenings drifted on the slow river of half dozen or so strong cocktails. And the memories slipped to the bottom of each glass, becoming more distant, less threatening.

One day off led to one week off, and then a month. I was numb, emotionless, but I was getting sicker. Infections starting setting in, the pain got worse. I landed in the hospital on several occasions for various horrors. By the time I came to my senses, quit drinking, and realized I had to face my past, present, and future, by body had paid the toll. I’m still paying.

It’s a year later and I am thankful every day that I have come out the other side of this nightmare. The struggle never completely ends. I still deal with nightmares, and insomnia is still an issue, but it gets easier and easier to work through. I’ve had to reach back 30 years to begin to heal the child I was in order to accept the adult I am. I certainly no longer hate myself, and that’s pretty huge but I will continue to deal with the consequences of drinking and coming off the meds.

It’s not worth it. It’s not worth it, even to joke about.

With good thoughts, I remain, yours sincerely,

Michelle