malaise. fancy for sad.

I can tick the signs off on fingers, the signs that point to my having been an alcoholic when I was living in Anchorage during the spring/summer months of 1998; that is, the epiphany just occurred to me.  It slid in, stealthy, and gained steady traction as I idly stirred a fuzzy memory.  This while going through the monotonous motion of patting J's back while he struggled against falling asleep for his nap a little while ago.

• the night I played pool, staggering drunk, with a fellow I'd only just met a little earlier that evening; a guy I knew I would generally disdain hanging around, but, hey!  I was drunk, so who cares. 
• the night, as the sky grew pale, that I fell on the stairs (of which there were a whole two) leading up to the matchbox house I lived in with several other people, the one-bedroom hovel with a basement full of boy stench and fetid socks and bong-water stains and putrid drunk breath heavy in the air, the bedroom I shared with the other girl, my side neat as a pin, pretty things arranged and tacked on the wall, her side scattery and disheveled; the bedroom that had no door (unless you count the one that I hung after purchasing it at the local hardgoods store, the door that was for an RV, the one that didn't actually close because it was too short).  while carrying a pizza.  slipped on a puddle.  bruised my thigh from hip to almost knee.  this was bad, because I'd decided, aching in this choice but feeling I had no alternative, to go back to dancing, after having been fired from my job working for one of the cruise lines.  which leads to the next bullet point:
• the night I went from sitting at a bar in the wee hours with a few of my crew mates from my job working for one of the cruise lines (but not on the ship; on the inland train, the cruise train, that toured from Anchorage to Fairbanks and back) to waking, slow, pained, clotted in the brain, next to one of the crew mates, a guy who had just been dumped by his longtime girlfriend, someone I wasn't REMOTELY interested in, someone who happened to be the brother of the fella I'd been seeing earlier in the season, the fella I had a heartache the size of the state over.  waking to the realization that I would truly never have a shot at that fella after this pathetic mess.  waking to the realization that I was TWO HOURS LATE for the train; waking up and racing, heart a-jangle, to the phone, to call! and! explain! my! mistake! and realizing, too, as I dialed, as the phone sang tinny in my ear, that it was useless, because everyone who had missed the train before then had always been fired.  no exceptions.  moot tears sizzling along my burning cheeks and spotting my knees to no avail.
• the night I was molested by my roommate.  as I begged and pleaded and screamed and hit and swore and pleaded and begged and cried and finally quieted to a whimper that did not cease, a whine I heard as his hands roamed over me, like a mosquito buzzing, that I could not completely discern, nor shut off.
• the nights I spent at that man's house, as the summer waned, the one I was semi-dating, mostly against my will, but my will was broken and battered by the late point in the season at which I was seeing him.  he wanted it, and I gave it because I did not have the strength to keep him at bay, although my old self would have laughed to hear something so ridiculous.  it was ridiculous.  i was ridiculous.  although he was sometimes quite gentle, and sometimes I almost convinced myself that I liked him, but mostly I just hated him, throat full, with clenched fists cloaked in silence.
• the night I blacked out at my co-worker's apartment, the bartender at the local dive where I'd managed to get an every-Saturday-night shift working as the cocktail waitress after being fired from the cruise position.  how shocked I was at his accusal of my drinking as being a problem when I woke up, groggy, on his sofa in the morning.  terrific.  the shame crept in, black and crepe-y, hanging loose about my throat.  I slunk away like a guilty dog.
• the night I was so depressed I'd told my only friend that I wanted to commit suicide and asked her to check in on me later, and she didn't.  because I was such a sack of complain-y shit.  everyone I worked with was convinced of it.  especially after my roommate told our entire crew that I'd - I don't know what he told them, specifically, I only know that after the night he molested me, he got on the train the next morning before I did and passed the word along that I was a slut or something like that.  so that tainted me, his words, his enhanced abuse, and then my drunken antics later in the season only deepened the hue of their disapproval.  I was guilty before I even had a chance to explain what had really happened (the tale no one believed, because he'd already convinced them otherwise).
• the night I - oh, the nights.  how many nights there were.  how many, many nights.

(I will never love Alaska.  It is not Alaska's fault.  It's loads of things, things I long to make sense of, things I may never come to terms with.  It has been close to ten years and I still can't seem to bury the anger and hurt and violent, slashing gray pain.)

But, somehow, it feels good to talk about it.  Needs airing.

*****
Updated to open comments, because maybe some of you have a story that needs airing, too, and you don't want to air it elsewhere.  Or you don't feel safe talking about it on your blog.  Or you'd forgotten it until now.  Anyway, I shouldn't be selfish and hog the microphone.  Here.  Take it.  Dump that shit right out.  Then let's dance wildly and yell swears at the fuckers who hurt us and flail our middle fingers in the air, and then - you know what?  then let's just move. the. fuck. on.

Or not. 

Whatever.

*****

Even later update:  How sad is it that I only just now, this instant, realized that I could have turned the asshole in, the one who molested me?  It NEVER occurred to me.  Also, something I realize as a result of knowing I could have done that, is that it hurt to have no one believe me when I said I'd been molested.  It made me not believe it myself.  I still sorta don't believe it.  I mean, I know it happened, but if you made me swear that it was a true molestation, in the dictionary definition sense, I'd waver.  Because I felt like it was my fault.  For being drunk.  For being pretty and desirable and drunk.  Dot-dot-dot.  Etc.

Huh.  Kinda gobsmacked.

Comments

[qt]

Oh, Alaska. You are not the only one that learned some hard lessons there. Is it the size of the state, the knowing that if you REALLY wanted to, you could make yourself disappear there?

Thanks for sharing this - I know it probably wasn't easy.

[lildb]

thanks, Neen.

sigh.

[slouching mom]

I continue to be in awe of your honesty. It's relentless. I do think you are too hard on yourself, friend. I wish you weren't, but it's probably what makes you you.

I am sorry that you had to go through that. There are so many predators out there.

[Mignon]

During my alcoholic period I had a stream of serious boyfriends. In hindsight, I probably had sex/gave head/did other experiments under duress. I'm thankful it's all in hindsight.

Your low period was unhealthy, no doubt, but Slouching Mom is exactly right. Way too hard on yourself.

[Melanie]

Mind if I rant a minute?
KThx.
Damn stupid fucking world, where all women have to be that extra bit vigilant, that extra bit afraid of getting drunk or being in a situation where control is taken from us, because of something so common as a vagina. Where there are men (and women, too, I suppose) who are willing to be rapists and molesters over something as small as this little inlet into the body.
I am so fucking tired of these bastards, so damn tired, and as my daughters get older, I get madder and madder. I wish I knew how to go about starting a lobby for more severe and stringent sentencing for sex offenders.
Damn stupid fucking world..
And (((you)))
I would have called to check on you, Debbie.

[julia]

You just picked the scab off some nearly-healed shit that I've never really dealt with.

The fact that you can put this out there like that is pretty awe-inspiring. I don't know that I could, without sounding like a whiny, self-pitying cow. Once again, you amaze me.

[jen]

whew. i have a place like that too, a lot less exotic than alaska, yet stinkass all the same.

honey. it's so true, what melanie said.

[dodo]

parallel lives. we'd have been great drunks together, but likely not done each other any favours in the long run x

[Jennifer]

While I don't have a whole summer haunting me, I have one night. Where I was exceedingly dumb. In Amsterdam. It has never been exhumed and compared to your story, it is relatively small potatoes...

I wish I could make your suffering go away. I wish I could find your molestor and totally pound the living crap out of him on your behalf.

But I can't. Only know this: they didn't believe you but we, teh internets, we do, we care.

If you are exhuming this painful part of your life because you are feeling some of the same feelings now, email me your number, though perhaps you already have someone you trust you can talk to. If you want to talk, I'm ready to listen.

[Andrea]

Is Kansas as remote and desolate as Alaska? It was that one night when I was 16 and naive enough to think that drinking in a room full of strangers (mostly male ones) was safe just because my friend was across the room dealing with her own boyfriend troubles.

I woke up the next morning a different person, thanks to an asshole with a babyface and a black hole where a heart should have been.

I didn't report him either. For the longest time, I blamed myself for my drunk status, even going so far as to tell myself I deserved it for getting so drunk and being so stupid. Somehow, through the years, I've managed to shift the blame where it belongs, onto him. I'm not the only one who made bad choices that night, but I didn't rob someone of their innocence either. Or of their virginity.

Fucker. My revenge is knowing that I get to spend the rest of my life with a person as awesome as my husband, who erases that one bad night every time he touches me.

[Steph]

It's funny about your updated comment b/c a similar assault happened to me in college and it never once occurred to me to turn the bastard in. Looking back on who I was then, who I'd become, I'm ashamed and horrified.

This had to have been hard for you to share, but I'm so glad you did.

[Deb]

Its all been said so well already. ditto melanie, ditto slouching mom, ditto for all of us who have survived this shit.

YOu, my friend, are amazing. LOVE YOURSELF, dahling

light to you

[Mary]

The many nights I drank myself into oblivion and was sick all over myself, hunched over the toilet. The many times I drank until I lay with my head across my arm on the table, crying over music on the loudspeakers as everyone laughed at me.

The night I got in the car drunk after a night out with the girls and drove 20 minutes to my house and didn't remember how I got there. That's the night I stopped. January of 2000.

And I agree that it's sickening that women have to be so vigilant and how men will take such horrific advantage of them because they are impaired. God, it makes me sick.

I'm proud of you for posting this---I've only recently started saying "recovering alcoholic" out loud. Before that, I deluded myself into thinking my sobriety was pre-emptive before the drinking "became a problem." For me, it was a problem from the start.

[kerrianne]

OK. So here I was, admittedly coming to your site to toot my own horn and proudly announce, "I'm back! Hiatus over! I missed! you," and then, before I know it, I'm crying, crying for you, and crying for me, unexpectedly reliving something I thought I had sufficiently buried never to be unearthed again.

That was ME. You, were ME. I mean, I was me, and you were you, obviously, but holy shit, the similarities.

I had never been a drinker. Not until college. In college, in Oregon, I drank for fun, and then drank too much. Even when I started making "going out" more of a frequent occurrence, I hardly ever drank too much. But that night I did. And he took advantage. He was my FRIEND. We had "dated," made out. Two dates, that's all. And then suddenly he was on top of me, and I couldn't move, and he was too strong, and I couldn't even cry.

Thankfully I remember very little else. I remember saying no. I remember not being able to move. He positioned me exactly the way he wanted. I looked out the window and then, ultimately, closed my eyes and passed out. I woke up and wanted to scream. Instead, I picked up my clothes, got dressed, and walked quietly away. I cried in shame and in silence for weeks. It never occurred to me to press charges until after I transferred schools. And even then, I wasn't yet convinced it wasn't my fault. Because I! got drunk. Because I! put myself there. I blamed myself for everything, and I grieved for the loss of myself. And all of my girlfriends I thought were my real friends whispered when I wasn't in the room. And so I kept drinking. Drank more. To forget. To get away from the shame, and how lost and dirty and broken I felt. Sex instantly became the least intimate thing I could do with someone. It took years to recover that. To recover me.

I'm so sorry you went through that, babe. I hate that you went through that. But I love you for being you, and for sharing your story. You are so much braver and stronger than I. I'm sending you mad loves and endless e-hugs right now.

[marcie]

Shared experiences. More common than we think. That's what you do Debbie, you bring it out. Let us know we aren't alone. I had my alcoholic stupor too, about five years before yours. Blacking out, sleeping with people I would of never touched if I was sober, etc. But hey, it's long over. THANK GOD!

[Ortizzle]

Tragedy beautifully written. With any luck, it was at least cathartic writing it. Don't be hard on yourself. You would be surprised at the stuff most of us could pull out of a hat... if we only had the same courage to put it out there.

[Ruth Dynamite]

You're so brave.

I'm certain that all this was a rite of passage, of sorts. We've all done things that make us cringe, now, in retrospect. The risks! The naivete! The idiocy! But the lucky among us learn a thing or two, as you clearly have. Me too, my friend. Me too.

[PunditMom]

Kansas. Alaska. It doesn't matter what state, I fear we all have stories that come back to us as we get older and we think, "OMG, I could have _______" or "I just realized I was ______."

I'm sorry you had to live that.

[mamatulip]

((hug))

[Her Grace]

It wasn't in Alaska, but the memories are much the same. Walking into the bedroom of a frat boy I'd met, having him turn around as he unzipped his pants and say, "What was your name again?" (I literally ran out of the house that night, thank goodness.) A broken ankle, dangerous situations, many too many of the wrong type of men...

I can blame it on the alcohol, or I can blame it on a lonely, lonely heart. Either way, though we often reminisce about how fun college was, it was some of the loneliest years of my life.

Just stumbled upon your blog. I'll be back.

[PDX Mama]

Hugs to you. It's so messed up that so many have been through this. Very messed up, very wrong. I just don't get how someone could do that to another person.

[Bobita]

Wow. (My husband actually called down the stairs, "Hon, you OK?" Because he heard my muffled sobs as I read this post.)

Me. Too. Drunkenness and a bastard-fuck who took advantage. I learned that he was actually imprisoned years later...for statutory rape of one of his 14-year-old students.

Is it bad that I hope he was ass-fucked in prison?
(Fingers crossed...and middle finger waving wildly about in honor of the bastard-fuck)

[Jenny]

Mine was killed 2 years afterward. I was afraid he'd do it to someone else but more afraid to say something. I felt bad for feeling relieved. But I also felt sad for him. And mad that I felt sad.