I’m grateful for a long walk in the old neighborhood. I’m grateful for not living there anymore. I’m grateful for the people who tried to help me. I’m grateful for where I am. I’m grateful to be sober today.
I remember working on a trial in a distant state when I was a young father and a young lawyer. I was often gone for two weeks at a time; most weekends I had to remain behind and keep the team focused on the next week of the trial. One of the more poignant memories I have is coming home and having my then 3 year-old daughter come running to me at the airport.
First, a toddler running to a parent or a grandparent or a pet is usually an expression of pure, rapturous joy. I’d kneel down and she’d hurl herself into my arms. Even though it had only been ten days or two weeks, I would be struck by how different she looked, how big she was getting, how her face was changing, shedding the adorable baby plumpness. Of course, that might have been exaggerated, guilt over having to be away for so long.
I first started trying to get sober in 2010 in Washington, DC. The next ten years were a seemingly endless series of failures and relapses and lies and regret. Contrary to a large number of representations, I never had more than four months of sobriety and I was very, very frequently living the one-day chip life.
I’m not going to start on all of the crazy things that have happened in the last six months; It sure seems like the Universe likes to tie up all sorts of stuff, all at once. Just as I found myself trodding the crowded faux mutli-cultural venues of Las Vegas last month, this week I find myself on yet another scene, working my way through a cold case.
I arrived on the train, took a cab to the hotel, dropped my bags and went out to wander around and see what’s what. A lot has changed, and COVID left some lasting scars on the city, lots of restaurants and small businesses closed and gone. My favorite Chinese restaurant, they used to recognize my number as I called on the way home to hopefully lock myself in the basement and avoid going back to Day One again.
I walked past my old house, thought the new owners had predictably ruined it. I walked around Logan Circle, thought about people I used to know, people I used to talk to nearly every day, all of it gone. Not in a bad or harsh way, they moved on, I moved on, that’s what people do. I have the typical alcoholic’s aversion to the rear view mirror, it’s terrifying to see how close we came to wrecking everything, how narrowly we escaped, but knowing there was another wreck opportunity not too far up the road.
Walking through the neighborhood last night, of course, listening to an old playlist, reminded me of a lot of thoughts I used to have. It’s funny how some songs really only make sense in certain places. One of the things I can remember thinking over and over was this,
“If I can stop drinking tomorrow, I can still find a way out, avoid the consequences, things will be fine, the fact that I’m drinking right now won’t matter, as long as I can stop tomorrow”
Tomorrow always came, but the drinking didn’t stop. Although things were kind of desolate and even a little bleak-looking, even for a Monday night in February, I didn’t feel haunted. I’m glad I moved on and I’m glad I’m in NY, but it wasn’t the place that made me drink, or other people, or things, those were all just the justifications, the reason I drank was because of me. I didn’t believe the non-drinking version of me could make it in the world.
Fortunately, I was wrong. Feeling jaunty, although my feet were reminding me that I wasn’t calibrated to the DC map as was my subway-injured knee, I decided to put my head right in the lion’s mouth and went to one of my oldest and most loved haunts. When I first moved into the neighborhood, newly separated, in the early part of a years-long free-fall, it’s where I went for dinner on the first night. I sat at the bar, had a pretty decent dinner and, yeah, I drank.
The LT became my place over the years. It was pretty upscale, the windows were tinted and the bar was situated so that you really couldn’t see who was sitting there from the street. The TV’s were a little small and almost always on cooking channels, but that was okay, the bartenders were pretty engaging. I ended up socializing with them a fair amount—which is a very sad picture to reminisce about. I was the Norm of the LT.
Anyway, I went there for dinner last night. I sat at the bar, maybe even in the same seat as that first time, the place was mostly empty and the staff was already doing some of the closing preparations. I had a cheeseburger and sat looking at the bar and the mirror behind it and realizing it had absolutely no power anymore. None. There was none of the wracking anxiety, the fear, the desperate loneliness. That’s gone, maybe blown away by the storms.
I had a cheeseburger, the bartender wished me a good night as I headed out the door, I turned right, towards my hotel, not left to my old house. It’s definitely haunted, but I’m not afraid of it, just mostly sad that I lived that way, that I made other people live that way. I’m struck by the sheer amount of time I spent in those bars. Like a little kid hiding in a closet, terrified of what’s outside, that was me at the LT.
It wasn’t that long ago, but I don’t think I would recognize that guy at first. I went to all of the old places, but I didn’t get a glimpse. I’m pretty sure if you could lasso both of us, using that special time-traveling lariat, we’re not going to look like twins, except for the Arnold Schwarzenegger/Danny DeVito kind. Unrecognizable.
The coffee here at the hotel is not bad. It looks like a pretty day and I’m going to be seeing a lot of old friends. It’s going to be a good day. My sobriety finally took root when I moved to New York, but it’s not because of the “people, places and things” fear. That is precisely the fear that drove me to that barstool in the LT. The problem and the answer was me: I simply needed to believe that the person who used to hide in the closet, sit on that barstool, take those long, lonely, dark walks, could make his way in the world, just by being himself.
Love this. Thanks for sharing.