Absurd and Incomprehensible

I’m grateful for letting things seep in. I’m grateful for watching a storm roll by. I’m grateful for seeing what could be. I’m grateful for seeing that I have to let it happen. I’m grateful for mornings at this desk. I’m grateful to be sober today.

Song of the Week:

I feel the need to explain myself, but only slightly. I guess it turns out that I’m a pretty big CeCe Peniston fan. I think there may be two other songs by her on the daily playlist and I listen to them a lot.¹ My daily commute (because I actually love going to my office) takes me to the heart of midtown, one of the most congested places on the planet, 42nd Street and Times Square. To be fair, I’m actually at Bryant Park, which is slightly more serene, but make no mistake, the sidewalks are crowded with people who seem not to understand that walking is a mode of transportation here in New York City. If you’d like to dawdle and take in the sights, that is awesome, welcome and please make sure you stay way to the right.²

If a digression is actually directly connected to the thing before, just not obviously, does it actually count as a digression?³ Anyway, my commute and semi-regular coffee and snack jaunts during the day have me doing a fair amount of weaving through the tourist-packed sidewalks by the library and I am here to tell you, this is truly excellent music for that. This is not true of all music, I listen to the Clash a lot, but they do not produce very good walking music. And while we’re on the topic, here’s one of the greatest break-up songs of all-time:

But listening to this while traversing the throngs of the semi-bewildered? Has there ever been a reckless homicide charge laid on a pedestrian? By contrast, the sotw of the week has the effect of inducing more of a fast glide than a hard charge. More like the O.J. of the olden days, not the murder part, the part where he correctly saw it wasn’t just walking to your gate at the airport, it was broken field running and also the part where he rushed for 2,003 yards in a 14-game season—while playing for the Buffalo Bills.

Anyway, just the other day, I was headed to collect cookies and then head to the park, where I would add a coffee to the mix, find a spot to sit and not record the time in six-minute increments. This song was playing, I was picking gaps and turning corners on the slow-moving pedestrians who didn’t even realize they were playing a game.⁴ And for whatever reason, the thought that popped into my head was that while I was drinking, and working hard to conceal that fact, other people were playing a game, or maybe a part in a movie, that they they didn’t even know was going on.

One of the principle features of alcoholism is the self-ish need to control and re-define the narrative:

The first requirement is that we be convinced that any life run on self-will can hardly be a success…Each person is like an actor who wants to run the whole show; is forever trying to arrange the lights, the ballet, the scenery and the rest of the players in his own way. If his arrangements would only stay put, if only people would do as he wished…

Big Book, pp. 60-61.

One of the principles that is delineated in the Big Book is how the delusion of control generates resentments, shame, fear and anger. The fact that people didn’t behave the way I had wanted them to was evidence that they really didn’t care or have my best interests at heart. Or they had no idea what I was expecting from them.

The narrative I created when I was drinking was one of perpetual not getting what I was due. Of course, I was in charge of those calculations. The resentments and anger spawned by that flawed narrative were what kept me sitting at a bar virtually every afternoon. In the bad old days, the emotions spawned by that flawed narrative had me spending 8-10 hours a day drinking sauvignon blanc at one of my secret spots.

What’s really interesting is how this narrative is shared by so many alcoholics and addicts. This especially comes to light when reading the stories in the back of the Big Book, it’s like seeing a movie and knowing in advance when the bad parts are about to happen. I think there’s a part in every story where I think, “ohhhh, don’t do that.” Of course, the narratives are not the same, everyone has their own, but I think there are significant common features in our stories.

This is one of the great things about AA meetings; the sense of “belonging,” of peacefulness that many people find there is generated by hearing stories that are incredibly relatable. Over and over again, I hear people give voice to my thoughts and feelings and that is an important part of the fight against the shame and isolation that attends the serious alcoholic/addict.

In the olden days, I would knock off around 11:30 most days, having delivered a solid two-hours of work, it was time to go nurse my resentments for the rest of the afternoon, and the evening, if necessary.⁵ What I found is that working the Steps and studying the Big Book helped change the narrative that generated the resentments that gave purpose to the literal days spent drinking. Without the resentments and anger and fear to drink away, well, the entire exercise starts to seem kind of pointless.

I was sitting in Bryant Park the other afternoon. It was a gorgeous Spring day and they’ve replaced the ice rink with a beautiful patch of gorgeous green grass. I started thinking about the olden days, and the way I lived, the way I spent my days hiding out, drinking away the shame and anger—it just seems incomprehensible. That was the word that popped into my head and then I thought, wait, I’ve heard that word before, and in this context, even:

• “He does absurd, incredible tragic things while drinking (p. 21)

• “Our behavior is absurd and incomprehensible…” (p. 37)

My life, though it seemed successful and sometimes even glamorous, was actually “absurd and incomprehensible.” It generated the opposite of happiness for a lot of people,. most of whom had only made the mistake of loving me. Most of those people had no idea how I saw them, what I thought of them, how I felt about them. They lacked even basic knowledge of the offenses they had committed against me, which made rupture, repair and rapprochement kind of difficult.

That narrative drove my drinking. That narrative opened the floodgates of anger and shame and fear and left me awash in feelings I couldn’t manage and thought would never end. I only had one answer for that and the problem with that answer is that once I started, I could no longer control where it would lead or when it would end. That is the fundamental nature of the disease of alcoholism and the fundamental consequence is living an absurd and incomprehensible life.

The answer didn’t come to me when I interrupted the flow of alcohol into my body, it came to me after I had spent a lot of time reading and studying the Big Book and reflecting on how those lessons pertained to me. Getting sober is a lonely business, I think because it requires so much introspection. But it’s that introspection, as Bill W. warns, it must be fearless from the beginning, that changed the narrative of my life. It was the introspection that helped take away the real reason for my drinking:

The way I saw myself in the world.

These days, I mostly feign annoyance with the chaotic walking habits of non-New Yorkers (or worse, of actual New Yorkers). Truth be told, the walks I take wouldn’t be nearly as interesting or as fun without the crowds and the chance to bob and weave among them, like a very slow motion 75-yard punt return. Add the song of the week to the mix and I feel true and authentic happiness. That’s how little it takes these days. I can’t imagine spending six hours in a bar anymore—and I used to not be able to go 60 minutes without drinking. That life was absurd and incomprehensible—and mostly to me!

This is way better:

1. “Somebody Else’s Guy” and “Keep on Walkin.”

2. Also, the bottoms and tops of the escalators in the subway are not great places for discussions.

3. Asking for a friend.

4. If you see someone who resembles me, getting aggressive on the stairs at the 86th Street subway and then jogging up the escalator, it turns out you’re playing a game called “First to the Top.”

5. It was almost always necessary.