I'm Ba-aaack!

I imagine if you’re like most people I imagine, you’ve been sitting around since November gnawing on your fingernails until they bleed, glancing anxiously at the clock every few minutes and wondering just where the hell I could possibly be.  And I imagine if you’re like other people, those who have a life where I am not the center around which it revolves, you may not have noticed that I went missing late last year.  While I shudder to think of the emptiness of a life without me as the nucleus of its existence, I do take some comfort in knowing that at least those people didn’t have to suffer the pain of being forced to survive over half a year without being able to read me.

To those whose lives have been affected by my absence, I offer my most sincere apologies.  While it was never my intention to be gone for so long, I know that doesn’t make what you’ve been through any easier.  I can only ask for your understanding and hopefully your forgiveness.

In order to warm up to the tale of my whereabouts and wanderings, I refer you to an earlier post called “How To Lose Friends And Alienate People” where I disclosed that I was prone to doing some fucked up shit when I was fucked up on some shit.  The post wasn’t a laundry list of intoxicant induced embarrassing events, regrettable rendezvouses and sordid situations. Rather it was an attempt to understand and reveal myself, why I am the way I am, and where it had gotten me at that point; and, looking back, I think it was fairly accurate and spot-on … all except the part where I wrote, “I don’t have a disease or an addictive-personality.”  As it turns out, my pseudonym is Urethra and I’m an alcoholic.

Or maybe it doesn’t “turn out” because that would make it something previously unknown.  It could be that some of you or one of you read that earlier post and thought, “Who the hell does she think she’s kidding?”  I know it’s no surprise to me and it hasn’t been since I first went to rehab back when I was 22.  But when I wrote that post, as awful as I felt about losing my friends, I still wasn’t ready to say I was the a-word yet.  I didn’t want to be sober and go to meetings, I wanted to drink and go to bars.  I’d been an alcoholic and it was boring, I wanted to keep being a drunk and having fun.

You know what’s really boring though?  What’s really boring are people who have stopped smoking, started exercising, lost weight, gotten sober, had a baby or found religion and instantly lose their sense of humor and their ability to talk about anything other than how AWESOME their life is now that they’ve stopped/started/had/found ‘X’ in a way that subtly (or not so subtly) suggests that you and your life are crap and will continue to be crap until you stop/start/have/find ‘X’ just like they did.

I am not one of those people.

Did I stop drinking?  I did.  Have I given up eating handfuls of Vicodin like they they were Pez?  I have.  Do I still sit at home alone with a pile of cocaine because two 8-balls just doesn’t seem like enough to share?  I do not.  Is it true that I quit crushing and snorting a two-month supply of Ritalin in under a week?  Indeed it is.  Am I popping half-a-dozen Lunesta just to relax?  I am not.  Is my brain now free from all mind and mood-altering agents?  With the exception of the medically-approved pharmaceutical cocktail that keeps my bi-polarocity from teeter-tottering out of control; and nicotine and caffeine, which you can have when you pry them from my cold, dead, well-manicured lesbian fingers, it is.

Will my writing now be limited to the joy and wonder of being clean and sober?  Nope.  Am I going to tell you what step I’m working on or what words of wisdom my sponsor spoke?  I am not.  Are you going to start seeing inspiring quotes or cliched slogans from the anonymous program popping up in my posts?  You aren’t.

The bottom line is I stopped writing because my life face-planted so hard that keeping up on my blog was the furthest thing from my drug-addled, alcohol-soaked brain; and I stopped drinking and using because things got bad … really bad.  Not “danced on a table and threw up on my date” bad, but cops, emergency rooms and psych-wards bad.  And now things are getting better.  Not “I’m back at home and all is right with the world” better, but “selling my house will pay off some of my massive debt and it looks like I’ll get to do house-arrest instead of jail” better.  But now that the pickling and addling are in the past and the brainium in my cranium is getting back up to speed, I’m feeling ready to pick up where I left off.

So prepare yourselves to be awed and amazed by tales of recklessness, rehab and redemption … minus all the happy, sappy crappy stuff.  Look for “Welcome To My Nightmare 2 – Electric Bugaloo” where my parents run across a steamer-trunk full of porn at my house (why does your lesbian daughter have gay male porn? I don’t know Ma, ask Julianne Moore and Annette Benning … ); be sure to read “Who Tied Me To This Gurney?” as I wrestle with the question of whether to send a ‘thank you’ or an ‘I’m sorry’ card to the friend who had me carted off by the EMTs; you won’t want to miss “You’re Such A Good Listener,” the heartwarming story of the telephone pole that cared and supported me as I tearfully told it my troubles until the nice officers came and took me away; and in “The Rehab Reality Show” I’ll tell you what it’s really like to live in a house with six total strangers for thirty days … minus the cameras, paycheck and appearances on TMZ (also, stealth masturbation strategies when you realize you’re going to have a roommate and little or no privacy for a month).

It’s been a long, strange journey my friends … one that I’ll share with you in the weeks and months ahead. And while I know in all seriousness that my disappearance was hardly a blip on the radar, I do think it’s rude to drop off the map without so much as a “see you later” or “tootle-loo,” and for that I do apologize.  I’m looking forward to catching up on my favorite blogs, keeping up on mine and seeing what’s new out there. I’ve missed this and all of you … it’s good to be back.