An Assessment

One of the things on which I've always prided myself is an unusual degree of self-awareness. Maybe it's because as a child I was surrounded by destructive people who made the same awful decisions again and again and again. Maybe it's because I was the oldest of four siblings and got to see how different personalities walked differently down paths I'd approached earlier. Maybe it's because I struggled with a disability that forced me, for survival's sake, to get inside my own head and figure out what was going on there. Maybe it's because I spent years in therapy examining how my traumatic past informed my present behavior, whatever it was at the time. Maybe I just got lucky and happened to be a bit more observant than the next guy over.

A lot of factors fed in, no doubt, but the end result is the same: more often than not, I've been able to call myself on my own nonsense. I've been able to make an honest assessment of myself and act accordingly.

The status report these days looks better than it's looked in a long time. Independent, financially stable, moderately sane, driven more often than not by logical considerations. After a long time and much anguish, I have come to a peaceful understanding with all three of my parents, at last feel a forgiveness and genuine affection for them that in my early twenties I never imagined would be possible.

All good things, of course. But I've never been one to sit on my laurels, at least if recent experience is any guide. It's a funny thing, that; up until the age of 28, I lived under someone else's roof and rules. It's hard in that situation to know what your own predilections are because you're never able to give them full rein, and the last ten months--my Alaska-versary is coming up on March 2!--have been full of little revelations that have at times disappointed and at times pleased me.

I am, for one thing, something of a slob. Terrible, and I'm the first to admit it. You know when my house gets cleaned? How it gets cleaned? Frantically, and in the few hours before I'm about to host a group of co-workers for (store-bought) cake and (Keurig) coffee.

"I need a maid," Wise Woman groused earlier today as we stood talking in her kitchen.

"Not as much as I do," I countered. "And what's awful is that now we can actually afford help, but..."

She laughed. "There's no one to hire."

Other surprises have been of a more happy nature. It seems, for instance, that I am something of a goal-driven person (who knew?), and I have noticed a tendency on my part to set benchmarks for future achievement even when I am pretty satisfied with my present condition. The idea of not moving, not doing, not achieving, bothers me in a way I never thought it would. What sort of Southern gentleman am I, anyway?

I had this really terrifying moment over the weekend. I was putzing around my house, enjoying the moments of leisure that are all too rare here, when my nose shot out from the book in which it had been buried and I stared, full of existential dread, at the oven before me, utterly convicted of a single truth: All of this is pointless. Most of what I do each day is pointless.

Waking up at 7:15, putting the kids through their paces, making lesson plans, giving lectures, preparing dinner, enjoying a book or cribbing together the parts of a story in my spare time. Taken cumulatively, all essential to life. Taken individually, one disposable moment after another.

So much wasted time.

What does matter, then? What is worth our precious hours and minutes? And this is what I thought of: Feeling like you've reached your true potential. Feeling as if you've created something of genuine beauty. Being as happy as you can be.

Three things. Distinct, but intertwined. So what does that mean for me?

It means that, within the year, I will need to complete or make significant progress on the writing project for which I've been doing research since the summer of 2017. I approached this prospective manuscript, a young-adult fantasy about two teens thrown into a conflict involving Norse gods, with the intent to draw on my own publishing experience and write something commercially viable. I am, I feel justified in saying, rather a talented writer. My failure up to this point to have completed a publishable project has becoming a gnawing self-critical tick in the back of my mind, and I know that, lest I continue to feel I'm cheating myself, this is something I must achieve. So I will. I'll keep up on the research and mapping through June, then commence actual work at that point. The goal is to have a great deal of the book completed before summer's end.

What else does meeting potential mean? It means that, in the middle term, I will need to relocate from Gori. Right now I'd bank solid money on my returning here this August, but I am as yet in my twenties (for the next three months, at least) and as yet unwed. Hell, as yet uncourted. My string of embarrassing sexual encounters aside, I've never had an actual boyfriend, never once trusted anyone enough to let that wall come down. I want to give myself that chance during these prime years, want as well to know the happiness of easy socializing and easy conveniences. So I will be back in the fall. But come next spring, my gaze will turn to Iceport and Aurora City.

And I find myself hatching long-term plans, too. To pursue, in perhaps five years' time, a second master's degree that would allow me to become a school principal or assistant principal. I've seen the teacher pay scale, of course, and know what the very robust number at the top is. But what do I do when I get to that top? Sit there? Forever? Unchanging? How could one do such a thing? I only have this one life, these eighty or ninety years, a hundred if I'm lucky, and I can't bear the thought of wasting them. If I could live several centuries I would, because there's so much to see and do and experience in the world, and one career just isn't enough. One lifetime isn't enough. There is a bit of frenzy within me concerning this topic, and sometimes I wish I could defuse it, but it resides there nonetheless.

My long-term eyes see books published and languages mastered and Russia visited and rungs climbed on professional ladders. Of late, however, my short-term eyes have had to do some focusing as well.

Anyone who's followed this blog for more than a year or so will know that I have long struggled with what role alcohol should play in my life. Innocent partying became not-so-innocent numbing in my middle twenties, and after a mortifying incident at the start of 2016 I gave up drinking for the rest of that year. When that deadline expired at midnight on January 1, I joined a 2017 New Year's party with gusto, only to take it too far and wake up ashamed and missing some memories, though thankfully without having humiliated myself. I allowed that I would permit myself to drink "moderately," but a voice of worry lingered ever in my ear.

"What will you do this time?" it whispered. "Will you be able to control it? How far will you go tonight?"

Alcohol possession is a felony in this part of Alaska, so it's thankfully off the table here. But back home, my summer of 2017 was something of a personal dumpster fire where drinking was concerned. I'd learned bitter lessons about drinking to the point of insensibility in front of others, but doing it alone gave me all the gratification and none of the consequences. So I holed myself up in my apartment, sad music playing and wine bottles uncorking and liquor flowing, and got utterly and incomprehensibly smashed several days in a row. After the second of these benders, from which I still carry a scar on my left knee, I forswore alcohol for good. And I meant it. But then came Christmas break, and then came the justifications.

All of them plausible justifications, by the way. That alcohol had brought positive things into my life, which it had. As a college sophomore fighting to overcome some pretty big inhibitions, I found in alcohol a useful and healthy tool for opening doors and making new friends. In moments where nervousness around men might otherwise have overwhelmed me, I found comfort and confidence. So I gave it one last try. I wanted to keep those positive things in my life, if I could.

And I can't.

I just can't. It's that simple.

I didn't do anything crazy. Didn't vomit in anyone's bushes, or drive drunk, or yell at someone and then later have to offer a fumbling apology. But I went too far. I went beyond what I said I would do. I spent several days of an invaluable mid-year respite being violently hungover as opposed to enjoying my family, and in the harsh moral clarity of one throbbing morning I realized two things: 1. I cannot control this; and 2. This is not worth it.

So I'm done. Done for life. Not "taking a break and seeing how it goes." Not "taking care of some emotional stuff" before I let myself drink again. Just done.

Because here's the thing: by and large, I've attended to the emotional stuff. I've actually accomplished a lot of what I want to accomplish in life, and many of the impediments that caused me such constant distress during my earlier twenties are gone now. Yet I still drank six glasses of wine in a single sitting on the night of December 27. Why? Because I have a drinking problem. Or, to put a point on it, can have one. I am fortunate in that simply not drinking at all is pretty easy for me. Once I get started, though, I want to keep that party rolling.

It's just in the genes. There is also, as it happens, something else in the genes that conflicts with my desire to guzzle myself into oblivion, and that something is called an ALDH2 deficiency. To make a long story short, I am missing an enzyme involved in the processing of alcohol, the result of which is that I cannot metabolize booze's central component. This makes me an exceedingly poor alcoholic. My tolerance has a sharp ceiling, regardless of how frequently I drink, and fairly small amounts elevate my heart rate, make me flush dramatically, and bring on cold shivers and sinus congestion, in addition to getting me absolutely plastered. I'm hardwired to not be able to handle drink, though Lord knows I tried. Those six glasses of wine left me hungover for two days.

This really is something best left in the past. Best left with 29.

Thirty-year-old me will never know alcohol abuse. Thirty-year-old me can feel pride in his many achievements and work forward to his many goals. To happiness and fulfillment.

What wonderful things those are to pursue.