Would You Just... Stop Boozing? Part Two

My sister is staying for the weekend. She's in the front room with my mum and me, talking to my mum about hotels she's been working with, looking at ornaments on the bookcase, drinking red wine. Mum also has red wine. I'm on the Earl Grey, feeling droopy tired and low and unable to concentrate. I should have more to say. This is a situation that requires booze, yet I am not boozing, so I sit there, on the edge of the conversation, a stranger even among my closest family, anxious and sober, wondering why I find everything so difficult.

I go to bed early and sit up tapping on my laptop, listening to the muffled voices drifting up from below. I wonder whether they're talking about me. Liz asking how I'm doing, whether I'm any better. Mum pausing, unsure how to answer.

I realised recently that every situation in my life includes alcohol. I'll sit cocooned at home, in a world of screens and thoughts, and I'll only perhaps have a wine, a whisky, it's not that important. But if I go out, to meet friends, parents, to go to a party, the cinema, a meal, a day off, an evening after work, I'll have to drink.

You fall into it. It's not like getting up at 7am to swig vodka from the bottle in an unfurnished bedsit with wallpaper peeling from the walls, at least not for me. It's more drinking to relieve anxiety, shyness, as a tonic for uneasy feelings, as a bandage, a crutch, a necessity, and finally just as the unconscious routine of my life.

It's easy deciding to stop boozing. What's hard is how to deal with all the neglected life you find dried and withered waiting for you after you stop. After so many years when the answer to every question was a drink, I feel clumsy and ungainly grasping for a different solution.

Even with my sister. She comes into my room, starts looking around for her toothbrush.

"In bed and it's not even midnight, you are being good," she says.

"I'm trying."

It takes me a long time to fall asleep.

***

Next morning, however, is another day. I'm up early and writing, feel growth in my bones, rolling stretch of energy. I goof around with Liz, drink tea.

We don't know what to do with the afternoon -- what do families do? -- but the weather is good and Yorkshire is Yorkshire, so we decide to walk, a walk is the thing, out to the Peaks in ranging wilds to get lost in the heather.

But I'm glum again in the car. I don't feel like walking, don't feel like chatting or listening to them chat, feel the strain of something being required of me that I am not capable of providing. I keep the feeling in check, hide it inside, but it's there, gnawing away.

Then we meet an old man and he makes things better.

"Don't be bothering with that," the old man says as Mum, Liz and I crowd around the pay-and-display machine at the car park.

"Oh, yes, har har," Liz says, rather inelegantly, because she has no idea what to say, but someone has to say something.

"Don't need no ticket," the old man, who somehow has two walking sticks, says. "Police don't come down here. Haven't put in toilets. And got no card, do you?"

"Mm?" Liz says. "It's card payment only, it says."

"Aye, but you've got no card, do you?"

"Ohh..." Liz getting it. "Well, she's paying already." Motions at Mum. "She's too honest. But thank you." Tries to smile him away.

"Only ice cream van comes here," the old man says, not moving off.

"Well," I say, looking at the ice cream van, my eyes narrowing. "Could be undercover police. Could be a sting."

The old man turns to me, levels a long glare, turns back to Liz. This always happens.

My joke having fallen on deaf ears -- perhaps literally -- I abandon Liz, and turn to help Mum, who is having an absolute nightmare with the machine, as she does with all machines.

The old man stands with Liz, who has used up her best smiles and is starting to look uncomfortable. The old man glances towards the car closest to us, a dog-on-board sticker in its window.

He clears his throat. "Dog... on... board," he growls. He looks at Liz. She looks at him. he walks off.

We could not be happier. A Thing has occurred, a genuine Thing, and it was just what we needed. We growl "dog... on... board" at each other all the way down the trail, cracking ourselves up again and again.

***

The peaks take our breath and roll it into deepening valleys and over sharp rocks up into cavernous sky, as they always do. I can never believe we live here. The Earth is splayed clear and hard below us, heather and rough trees poppling out to the horizon, the wind cratering and crushing -- jagged Northern land majestic yet cruel, making you aware more than anything of being on the side of a dying rock-planet looking out, into the allness of space. We stand and feel small. We breathe. We take photographs.

***

The release lasts the duration of the walk, and the ice cream reward, right up to the drive home. I scroll through the photographs Liz has taken, seeing my gimpy thrust-armed skeleton self, over and over, hair whisping loose from skull, morose chub-cheeked scowl though felt I was smiling, one shot after the other. What a beast I look, I think secretly in the car, handing the phone back, saying not a thing.

At home I make a risotto while they drink gin and tonics, and the rice won't final-soften, the greens lose their colour; Mum has bough frunched-up instead of flat-leaf parsley, in the end the meal tastes of nothing, I reckon -- they cry yum but I know better, and I have a headache and I'm frustrated and I want wine. They have wine. I have water.

My sober mind is so neurotic, itchy busy and aware and alert. Gently-blunting alcohol, underwater-green rounding the edges and sliding thoughts happily into place, has always, mostly, worked -- there's a reason I do it. The problem is that it blunts everything else, my writing sense, my willpower, my drive, my flame. And the hangovers are the pits. So jeering sober spike-thoughts it'll have to be.

I want to watch a film, feel without alcohol that'll be second-best escape. Want motion and sound within which to hide. But Liz isn't so keen, we can't decide upon anything. She won't watch The Grand Budapest Hotel or The Darjeeling Limited, they look too "weird" and "annoying". She won't watch The Sweet Hereafter, too slow a drama.

I tell her she's close-minded, she should give something different a chance.

"Leave her alone," Mum says.

Liz says she isn't sure she fancies a film, if anything it'd have to be easy-dumb, like Olympus has Fallen.

"Definitely fucking not," I say.

"Who's close-minded now?"

"Piss off."

Mum makes that little noise that means she's about to suggest something, beautiful Mum so shy putting herself forward, even with her own kids. And no wonder, because:

"I think back here I've got... Yes, here it is -- we could watch Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe?"

"Unngh," I sigh.

"God, no!" Liz says. "For ten years you've been trying to get me to watch Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe. I am not going to watch some film called [voice dripping with disdain] 'Fried Green Tomatoes at the Effing Whistle Stop Cafe.'"

Mum looks crestfallen, as always. "Rob's right, you know. You are close-minded."

Liz and I burst out laughing. Sweet old Cath pushed finally to a little sass, plus of course our shared understanding that for no discernible reason neither of us will ever, as long as we live, watch that DVD of Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe. And after that, though it has taken long enough, everything is finally OK.

We end up not watching a film. I say I don't mind watching the first episode of Stranger Things, which Liz wants to show me, but then we never put it on, sit instead with legs resting on each other on the sofa, Mum in her rocking chair, and we read our books; Liz helps Mum set up an Instagram account, searches on Google for clever writing hashtags for me while I copy my blog posts across to Tumblr; and we sit tapping away, heads down, on our phones but together, not the perfect family but a family, like all the rest, and the night sways on and perhaps the not boozing does have something going for it because Mum looks up at one point to see her two children sitting with her and murmurs that she is perfectly content, and for the first time in a long time I'd have to say that I agree.

Would You Just... Stop Boozing?

Well, yep, I've done what I always do. Fallen into that routine of getting a drink after work, because one can't hurt, because it's either a lonely trudge to the bus stop in grey cold to wait while the wind howls and dead-eyed office workers jab at their phones, to then hustle onto the bus trying to smile at the driver who is trying to smile back, both of us with faces like sad stone gargoyles, to sit then and jab at my phone, scrolling, scrolling, 40 minutes of this, crawling in rush-hour traffic, then 15-minute sore-footed hump from bus stop, exhausted after day running around the bar, to collapse in my room and sprawl for the evening bathed in the soft glow of my laptop screen in an empty room as I nod slowly off -- it's either this or get a nice drink of one of the nice ales I've been selling all day, to reward myself, just a little reward -- and so I get a beer and fall backwards and let it catch me, let it hold me up -- and then halfway down the glass here's Steve, trundling in in his workman gear, that stiff swinging gait of his -- "Hullo, Bobby", "Hullo, Stevie" -- and it's nice to have a friend, nice to have a beer and a friend, after a long day, and we sit and drink and laugh misery-blues, and wait see if we can get anything going.

And then Little Rob is finishing across the road, good old shuffling slouching heart-of-gold Little Rob, so we go over there for one, maybe two -- and then it's mid-shifters at mine finishing, here's Liam Straw and Zoe, heading over now, and suddenly this thing has momentum, suddenly we're together, we're a group warm and good, and everything feels all right -- Steve is buying a round, more money than he can spend on his alone self, and I move on to rum, and then I get one back because that's Right, and Straw has no money but he's ours so we've got him, and it's not long till the guys on the close will be done, the voice deep down knows I should go home but who's listening and it's all lost anyway and we share drinks and this is good.

I get drunk and lurch into awkward spider-skitting anxiousness -- they're playing pool and I should play but I can't play pool, can't do anything, and I go to the bar but I don't know the girl working -- So many new faces, I'm too old, what am I still doing here? -- and I try to act cool but I'm not cool and I'm a lost alien bug fiend -- and back at the pool table Little Rob is collecting his bag, he's on the open tomorrow, and the group is disintegrating and the happiness has gone and we are all of us doomed.

But then here's Jake and Missy, drunk, beaming, riding in on a wave of elation, in matching hi-tops and grunge shirts, bending the light around them, and we all cheer and hug and kiss, and the lurch is forgotten. Missy drinks gin and tonic and cocks her head to one side and throws out all the sass. Jake does his Jake-dance. I snuggle with them both and Jake and I talk and we're two boys and brothers and the love is eternal.

Then it's Dev Cat with my lot after the closedown and Straw and I are doing a skit and we're funny and we know it. We're in the booth behind the curtain and everyone is here and we protect one another, Baby D is beautiful yet worried, and I say words that protect him, and we get bourbon and drink it. Zoe and I are doing a thing where we laugh really loud at everything and then stop suddenly without looking at one another, and I don't know why but it's great, and the night swirls on.

They call time at Dev Cat but this can't be time so we bungle across to the Washy -- cheap Snake Dogs and Chloe eating bagged ploughman's and a mad woman is talking to us and I've got rum again and I feel bad I feel empty I feel great and it's lost all of it is going I don't know what's lost can you find what's gone we race and it swirls and will anyone find us and I can't find us but some people are getting chips and I'm getting chips but I don't eat them and I get in a taxi and go home.

And then next morning I wake up goopy and forlorn, broke-down sad and head pulsing deep-sea-rift-crash, and a tongue like old carpet, and I know I've done it again. Hangovers on my antidepressants are the worst. I eat a banana so I can take my pill and I eat two codeine also and then I go back to bed. I watch YouTube and don't get up till 4 pm, and do nothing then.

* * *

For so long I've been wanting to write more, to get up earlier, to deal with my life. And it's not like drinking is the core problem, but it's perfect avoidance -- I can pretend I'm getting back on track soon, when I get home, on my day off, soon -- but first I'll just have this one drink, I'm sad and the full solution seems impossible but meanwhile the quick solution is right here, a nice beer, medicine, and it helps, it works, even as it sows the seeds for more future sadness, and but you don't think about the future when right now you're in pain and there's something in front of you to assuage that pain.

But I spend half my wages back in bar tills, and I have brief warm highs between days of empty lows, and 2017 drifts on, the same as 2016 and 2015 before it. So I'm going to stop boozing. I don't want to stop drinking -- I like craft beer, I like a good gin and tonic, I like the idea of being someone who accepts a little messiness and imperfection in his life, who enjoys simple pleasures when they can be found. But there is a difference between a Belgian tripel once a week drinking slowly identifying notes in the aroma -- a difference between that and boozing all night after every shift too scared to go home and then hungover wailing through every day off. It is self-destructive behaviour, and it's time it stopped.

So here's this. Let's see how it goes.

Would You Just... Write a new post despite it being months since the last post in which you all but swore to write more regularly, and yet here you are, drinking after work again, sleeping till noon, killing evenings so you don't have to deal with them, killing thoughts for reasons of same, and you find yourself one night stood in your kitchen eating digestive biscuits from the tin staring not through the window but at it, at the glass, not even seeing, your eyes just resting there, zoned in truth somewhere deep down inside yourself, as you eat biscuit after biscuit, hand raising towards mouth probably the tenth now, crumbling through biscuits the way you are crumbling through life, and suddenly your vision snaps to focus and you see yourself in the glass, your reflection, and it's not a moment of clarity or anything, you continue crunching into the biscuit-teens, heading dangerously past biscuit-adolescence towards biscuit-legal-drinking-age, and you spend the rest of the evening doing Not Much As Per Usual, but the look of your eyes reflected in that glass stays with you, how little you recognised of yourself, and whether it's this, or perhaps just the new meds starting to work, but you sit down the next evening home from work after, yes, a little drink before the bus, but only a half, and you realise the moment has to be now, or you're a goner, and so let me pull back onto the main track of this question and ask, nay, beg, with every ounce of my being, for you to please, even if it is just one word, just one measly word, write a goddamned new post, right now?

OK.