I went out last night and I currently have the alcohol shakes, but I’ve been excited about writing this blog post for the last four hours. During which time I’ve also been hiding in bed, mostly in the fetal position, listening to Brené Brown and Dax Shepard talk to people, with my eyes closed and three water vessels within arms reach, waiting for the world to stop swaying quite so much. And also very glad that I didn’t accidentally go out-out any time close to when I need to be a parent. My fingers can just about hit the right keys now, so I’ll press on.
There’s a certain threshold of alcohol beyond which I am simply not able to control my actions. Once I’ve crossed that threshold I’m basically just a product of my inputs up to that point. It’s like the human checks out and just leaves the program to do whatever it’s going to do. I’ve always felt like other people seem to more gradually progress toward incapacitation, while my brain seem to drop off a cliff quite a bit before my body stops being able to do stuff, but that could just be a disparity of perception.
I generally try to give the cliff a wide margin, because I’m always a bit scared what the human will find in the memory banks when it finally comes back online. And I know if I get anywhere close to the cliff, I’ll probably think it’s a good idea to down my drink and see if I can fly. So I try to keep my distance, but sometimes it sort of sneaks up on me.
Cliff-diving wasn’t on my agenda for last night, but there were at least a couple of drinks put in front of me that I wasn’t expecting and certainly hadn’t accounted for, so…wheeeeeee!
Now, I’ve been various shades of offputting drunk person over the years, and it’s often quite instructive as to where I most need to do my work at that time. A latent and unacknowledged rage toward men…my self-worth being tied to my perceived value as a sexual object…feeling trapped in a relationship because of what I’d been conditioned to believe love was supposed to be… You know, all the usual stuff. But this time, rather than pointing out my most tender emotional wounds, I was gifted a moment of delightful searing clarity for a completely different reason. Because last night, when I jumped off the cliff, I became my four year old son.
Seriously; I was just running around, having a nice time, getting up in everybody’s business, touching everyone, talking to random strangers trying to get them to play with me, missing all the social cues when people weren’t really interested in playing with me, not really understanding what was going on around me but using my four-year-old logic to come up with my own explanations, and then using those explanations to come up with ways to try to get people to play with me.
And, I don’t know, I mean, yeah, an adult acting like a very extravagant four year old is annoying and certainly not acceptable in polite society, but, like, I feel like I can’t be mad at myself for just wanting to play, you know? Like, yeah, you definitely need to get a bit better with boundaries and consent, Yve, but your heart was in the right place.
Coincidentally, when I was writing a description of my son a few weeks ago, after going through all the unequivocally glorious things about him, I added “his excitement can lead him to get disruptive sometimes – respecting other people’s boundaries and personal space is a big lesson for him at the moment”.
So, basically, I’ve come to the understanding that, if I’m ever going to go out-out again, I’m going to require adult supervision.