I want a drink

I mentioned that Debbie stayed with me over the weekend.  I should add that for three days I didn’t drink. 

Mind you, Debbie doesn’t drink.  She’s a Buddhist, and she decided somewhere along the line that alcohol really didn’t make her feel all that good.  Besides, the Buddhist teaching is that if you use alcohol to make yourself feel better (and really, isn’t that the whole point?) then you’d be better off keeping your full mental faculties undimmed so you can figure out why you don’t feel good in the first place.  Once you’ve figured it out you can fix THAT (whatever it is) and feel good permanently rather than having to mask your unhappiness with booze.  It even makes a kind of sense.

Debbie’s never asked me not to drink around her, but I just don’t.  And when she’s with me, I don’t feel like I need to.  We cook, we clean up, we talk, we kiss, we hold each other, we fall into bed … not once in all this time does my mind feel like it wants a drink.  I’m perfectly happy just spending time with her.

But tonight, after she’s driven back home, it’s all different.  I don’t know why.  I can tell that I’m feeling anxiety about the evening, because my throat and my chest are just a teeny bit more constricted than they were last night.  It’s not fear or terror; it’s not a huge reaction.  It’s subtle.  But it’s there.  And it makes my mind whisper to me, “We wants a drink, precious. Be a love and pour us something.”

Am I afraid of spending the evening alone?  It’s hard for me to understand or imagine that.  As far as I know I LIKE being alone: that is to say, I love Debbie and it’s a delight to spend time with her; but there is something deeply restful and relaxing when she leaves and I know I’ll have the apartment all to myself for a few nights.  I’ve always felt that way, since I was very young.  I’ve always needed to get away from other people from time to time, to get the kind of peace and quiet that come only from deep solitude.  It’s part of what makes me wish I had discovered meditation thirty or forty years ago.  Naturally there are times that it’s useful to have someone else around, but only sometimes.  I’m not expecting some kind of natural disaster between now and tomorrow morning, where I’m going to need the second set of hands.  I’m not expecting anything but the peace and quiet that I know I’ll have.

Only, … in that case why the subtle, almost-too-faint-to-notice-but-nonetheless-very-real tightness in my throat and chest?  In that case why do I need a drink?  I don’t know.  Logically it makes no sense.  I shouldn’t have to have a drink, and knowing that I feel like this worries me just a little.  Maybe I’ll ignore the feeling.  Maybe if I go to bed early I’ll fall asleep before drinking anything, and I know that every night I don’t drink makes the next night easier.  That sounds like a good plan, actually.

Oh hell, let’s see if any of my glasses are clean, or if I have to wash one of them first ….