Given that this particular #tbt falls on a very particular day, I thought I'd share the - NSFW - picture that can be seen after the jump.
 |
| Fortunately, *I'm* not the NSFW component. |
The picture was taken sometime in May (I think) of 1999, though I don't know the exact date, and it was back when I was unemployed - largely because of spending my evenings out doing things like this - and before I moved to Minnesota.
The reason I've opted to post this is because as of today it's been fourteen years since it would be at all likely for me to be photographed like this.
Not that I would be opposed to being photographed with - or at least being surrounded by - such company, but the particular state I'm in is one in which I hope to never be found again. (No, I don't mean Michigan)
This is a Jon who is very, very drunk.
Sure, this Jon is, for the most part, also happy, and having fun, but that wasn't really the most common occurrence in those days.
Still, I do sometimes miss the fun times, though the good was definitely outweighed by the bad - today I'm actually recovering from the lingering affects of some sudden illness that hit me yesterday, but the odds are that even when I felt the absolute worst yesterday the odds are I still felt better than I did the morning after this picture was taken (or the morning after that, or the morning after that, or the morning after that...).
By almost every conceivable measure, my life today, the life I've spent building - and sometimes rebuilding - over the past fourteen years is better than the life I had back then.
Still, despite the awful, vomitous mornings on which I woke up covered in my own filth wondering who I needed to apologize to and for what, there's no denying that there are things I miss.
Even though I'm not depressed and busy slowly killing myself with booze and just generally - often deliberately - ruining my life, I don't have nearly as much fun as I did back then.
Part of that is just a consequence of getting older, a lot of it is the result of never really learning how to have fun without booze, and the rest is, as mentioned in a previous post, the result of the fear of losing control and falling back into that downward spiral.
The thing is, even in the depths of the despair that drove me to systematically dismantle my life, there was this core of hope, this patient - yet largely passive - part of me that was waiting for something to happen, some miracle that would make things better, and it's what drove me to actually move out from sitting in the dark and drinking alone in my apartment to go out into the world and make some flawed, halting attempts at connecting with people, and experience life outside my own head.
There are times that I think that I eliminated the good from my life along with the bad, that hope followed despair into the trash bin, and, well, I get a bit nostalgic for the days when I could walk into a bar and there were people who were happy to see me, and there was a perfectly-poured pint of Guinnes waiting for me when I sat down, and I had a large circle of friends with whom I went out and actually did stuff.
Granted, said "stuff" mostly involved drinking, and, honestly, those friends didn't prove to be the best and truest friends anyone could have - I may have a lot fewer friends now, but they're much BETTER friends - but...well, it wasn't a good life, but it was more of a life than I have now.
And I miss it.
But only sometimes, and never enough to ever consider reliving that life.
So if there's any takeaway from this particular trip down (blurry, incomplete) memory lane, it's that if you're struggling with depression and addiction, it is possible to get on the road to recovery, however imperfectly, and if I can give any advice it's to find some way to excise the disease without damaging the healthy tissue.
Or, to put it more simply, learn how to have fun.
Meanwhile, I'll keep working on it.
No comments:
Post a Comment