I went on a special tour to the top of the Cathedral, built in Viking Times in red sandstone and still the highest point in town. It made me remember the summer before I left home, taking magic mushrooms with friends and wandering through the graveyard. A memory of my mouth around one of the pillars. I was trying to eat - or to kiss - the cathedral. I had big ambitions.
Always wanting more. The easy answer, the promise of ease after a few beers, a bottle of red will give me great ideas. It became a delusion of transformation or freedom, I never ever got there, by the end I would be crying or in seizures where my wrists and jaw clenched while I foamed at the mouth. The promise that never delivered. I'm trusting that, like grief or heartbreak, this desire will fade. Because although I take the praise when people say 'well done' I am fraudulent because I still want to drink and at times think it's impossible that I won't again. Yet I don't, day after day.
A nihilistic part of me, when I hear that someone has 'drunk themselves to death', finds the idea attractive. They did it to themselves. Free. And I plot, if I get to a year sober and still haven't got work, still feel like this, then I might take a job in a warehouse, move into a bedsit, cut myself off and give in. It would feel so good to give in.
But I purposefully put barriers in my way. Even writing this down is a way to get rid of it. Last night I went to a meeting, only the second one I've been to on the island: older men, one with an accent so strong I could barely understand him, another who knew my parents. I left smiling at hearing these chaps talking about their feeling and experiences - something rare and special.
I am learning that I can still be cheeky/fliratious/brave without booze, but do it while being in control. If I master this I could be unstoppable - but I still stifled by bruised confidence and anxiety. I guess these things take a while.
Tonight I'm back in the caravan and the weather has turned wild again. The whole place is shaking and the wind and hail crashing against the windows, like being at sea.
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