Ponder

Growing up I would take sips of my parents’ beers as they sat and watched us play outside on hot nights among the chirping crickets and locusts. Those tiny tastes tasted gross back then and within seconds I would go back to being endlessly entertained by my simple surroundings.

The year I consumed my first alcoholic beverage marked my transition away from that blissful and innocent period of life when a child can find happiness in almost anything. I had just turned 13, had dark brown hair, pale skin, and just started wearing real bras. Youth was leaving and the more gone that it became, the more that I needed something else to help pass the time.

One day during the summer before eighth grade, I was at home with my best friend Ashley Womack and we were as bored as two teenage girls stuck in the country could be. Sitting around and singing to my Matchbox 20 and Jewel CDs could not keep us content anymore.

My brother and sister were gone. My mom was at work as she often was. And my dad was in route to Mexico with his friend Albert. Ashley and I thought we were safe. We brought my parents’ 6-pack of Coors Light from the laundry room refrigerator into the living room, sat down on the rough forest green carpet in front of the loud TV, and popped open our first beer. It still tasted disgusting, but now I didn’t care. Our giggling, laughing, and joke telling could have been a result of the alcohol, or it could have been due to the adrenaline we got from breaking the rules. Either way, we had found a way to laugh.

Each of us had drunk one full beer and we were almost done with our second when we heard the sound of cowboy boots stepping onto the hard kitchen floor. Seconds later, not long enough to hide the evidence and chew some gum, my dad appeared. He yelled at us with his intimidating, deep voice. What were we thinking? Well, we thought you were in Mexico.

So began my relationship with alcohol, the magical liquid substance that can create pure fun out of thin air. For people who grew up in small towns, eighth grade probably doesn’t seem like an early age to start drinking. A combination of having nothing to do and having a store that sells alcohol to minors makes it quite easy. Driving around back roads with a six pack of Keystone becomes a perfect Friday night; hanging out in a pasture and drinking whiskey with friends becomes the most exciting thing you’ve done all month; Going to the river with tequila and a blender becomes what you do every weekend in the summer.

Drinking helps us get through the strangeness of living in the middle of nowhere without going crazy, though some still do. It becomes a big part of who we are; just listen to pretty much any country song.

Alcohol has given me some fun memories. At a party held in honor of my 16th birthday, I got drunk on Everclear and later used it to light my hand on fire like all the guys were doing. The flames did not go out as soon as expected and I ended up with second-degree burns, but recovered quickly. Several times when I was a junior and senior in high school, I brought Parrot Bay rum to school and would pour it in all of my friends’ cups. We’d have a great lunch period and then go to Chemistry class. In college, a mixture of alcohol and David Bowie created some of the best dance parties ever to be had.

Looking back at other points of my life, it is pretty obvious that my drinking got a little crazy. Hanging out in an alley behind Sixth Street at 2 a.m., making out with a tattooed cab driver, being kicked out of a Cross Canadian Ragweed concert. A couple of times alcohol has made me an emotional bitch who yelled things I would not care to repeat here.

On mornings after times like these, I think about the many people from small towns who start drinking early and continue to drink quite heavily. My dad, siblings, ex-boyfriends, high school friends, and others. My uncle grew up on the same ranch as I did and he drinks multiple beers every day. When I took some of my college friends to Florence for a weekend, he drunkenly fell off his horse at the local beer joint/rodeo. The man who lives just down the county road from us, grew up in Florence and has a reputation of drinking an entire case every day.

I recently realized that I have not been sober for longer than 2 weeks in the past eight years of my life. I am seriously beginning to suspect that my intense hangovers are my body going through short-term alcohol withdrawal. Because alcohol helped me to have fun growing up, sometimes it is as if I can’t have fun without it. The other day I read about how alcohol can increase your chance of all cancers and heart disease. Why do I spend so much energy being vegetarian if the five glasses of wine I drink every Friday and Saturday can give me cancer anyway? Why I am trying so hard to get my dad to cut back on his nightly glasses of whiskey for health concerns if I myself throw these concerns right out the window?

I am tired of my dependence on alcohol and have decided to take a break. My goal is to go a month and then transition into a perfect state of being able to moderate, because that’s always been hard to do.

It has been nine days without a sip and it hasn’t been that hard. It’s more of an annoyance, like when others are having a glass of red wine and I immediately decide to have a glass as well but then remember, or when Joe needs me to help him meet the $10 credit card minimum at bars. When we go out I get tired sooner and want to go home. And I want to eat more. But last night, while soberly playing Balderdash with friends, I enjoyed my favorite food of chips and salsa, laughed so hard that I cried, and won the game. And today I felt great.

I suppose I am trying to revert to that childlike state of having fun, laughing, and being endlessly entertained by the pure existence of life itself. So I guess my break is also a sort of experiment to see if this can be done or if alcohol really is as magical as that summer day when I got tipsy for the first time.