Alcohol

In one of my favorite episodes of How I Met Your Mother, the gang discusses the steps it takes to become a New Yorker:  1) See Woody Allen, 2) Steal a cab from someone who needs it more than you, 3) Cry on the Subway and not given a damn what anyone thinks, 4)Kill a cockroach with your bare hand

Except for the cockroach (I used a shoe...) and Woody Allen (does Kate Winslet count?), I'd consider myself a half New Yorker, after 5 serious years here. The revelation hit me around 2:30am on a late night local A train. As I sat in the flickering darkness, I let the tears stream down my face without a single care what anybody on the train thought of me. I was sad and I didn't care how crazy/depressed/suicidal I looked to my other straphangers. It was 2 in the morning! Leave me alone! And so, I stewed in my melancholy for 16 agonizing local stops. As soon as I crested the stairs into the cool night air, I quickly opened YouTube. I needed to hear "I'm Not That Girl" from Wicked (Granted, I never saw the show, but I know that song...). It would justify my tears. 

After two more replays, a thought penetrated the boozy thickness of my mind: Cruella has a megaphone. And it's alcohol. 

Long gone are the joyous days when I could drink gallons of rum and coke and end up dancing the night away or laughing my head off. Now, alcohol makes all of the nastiest Cruella thoughts echo inside the deepest recesses of my mind. These thoughts increase and magnify into deafening, spiteful comments that torpedo through the boozey haze and straight into my heart. And I become sad.

I don't want to blame alcohol. I'm sure that's not its fault and if it knew what it was doing to me, it'd be truly sorry. Doesn't change how alcohol affects me now. It doesn't matter the occasion I may be celebrating or trying to forget, drinking makes me sad. I may appear happy and seem to be enjoying myself, but as soon as the bar lights dim, I am sad. The darkness after the party is when Cruella is the loudest. She screams all my insecurities and imperfections so loudly I can't help but focus on them. My boozy brain can't seem to focus on the light, fun spirit in which the alcohol was imbibed. My brain becomes a hazy, spiraling pile of self-hatred. And I fester. And festering leads to continued sadness.

I don't want to be sad. I've spent a lot of time these past few months being extremely sad, and that is not some place in which I want to continue existing. I've tried distractions: helping others, aerial yoga, dramatic life changes, Teen Wolf, but nothing seems to work. Nothing except cupcakes.... And the rational side of my brain knows that is wrong. Those cupcakes aren't really soothing anything or making anything in my life better. But they quiet Cruella. And right now, I'll take the quiet over the roar of melancholy.

So, I'm breaking up with alcohol. I don't need it. What I need to do is work past the sadness and find the light again.