The Dirty Glass

I've been reading not one but two memoirs about heavy drinking/alcoholism: Lit and Blackout: Remembering the Things I Drank to Forget. Both are really good reads; the former contains some of the most amazing writing I've ever encountered.

As I mentioned in a previous post, since I'm both the child of an alcoholic and a former binge drinker myself, it's not surprising that reading these books would bring up some unpleasant feelings and memories for me. It feels healthy though, to be allowing these memories to come rather than putting my hands over my eyes and ears and saying "la la la la la la" as loudly as I can (which I mighta done for the first 30 or so years of my life).

This song (about drinking, of course!) from the Dropkick Murphys is courtesy of the New Englander during that first year of email exchanges that often included music:

Murphy, Murphy, darling dear
I long for you now night and day
Your pain was my pleasure, your sorrow my joy
I feel now I've lost you to health and good cheer

Darcy, when I met you I was five years too young
A boy beyond his age, or so I'd tell someone
Anyone who'd listen and a few who couldn't care
Still I welcomed you with open arms, my love I did share

Darcy, Darcy darling dear,
You left me dying, crying there
In whiskey, gin, and pints of beer
I fell for you my darling dear

You shut me off and you showed me the door
But you always came crawling back begging me for more
I showed you kindness, a stool, and a tab
Then you poured me my pain in a dirty glass
(Yeah, you left him bloody, battered, penniless, and poor)
You know, I often stopped and wondered how you made it through my door
With my brother's new non-duplicate registry ID
Well you bit off more than you could chew the first day you met me.

You weren't the first to court me mister you won't be the last
Oh, I'm sure I wasn't honey, I know all about your past
Listen to the big shot with his pager on call
You spent most of those nights in my bathroom stall
(Yeah, you got him high, but you left him low)
Mind your own business, boy, how was I to know
That he was just a fiend and a no-good cheat
Well it's all in the past bitch 'cause now I've got it beat.

My dear, my dear
Darcy, Darcy my darling dear.

I'm really grateful to have dodged both the bullet of alcoholism and the bullet of paying some kind of high price in terms of my life or limb or someone else's.

I'm also grateful for the many meeting rooms I've sat in crying, talking, listening and learning about this awful disease and its many, many ill effects. Not to mention productive ways to recover from either the disease or growing up in an alcoholic home as I did...