2011-01-05

Out There.

One of my best friends got me Mary Karr's Lit for Christmas.

I read a lot of memoirs. I read a lot of memoirs about recovery. Some of them are really whiny and self-serving. Some of them aren't. So far, I am enjoying this one.

There's a chapter where Karr perfectly describes the tiny, tiny world of the active alcoholic. I always find it sort of funny when people in recovery speak ominously of going back "out there," as if the act of drinking again represents some vast dark wasteland.

For a lot of us drunks, "out there" actually covers astonishingly little ground. For Karr, she was the self-appointed "empress" of a "small kingdom" on the back stairs of her house. She reigned there every evening, no matter what kind of weather, drinking a tumbler of whiskey and listening to her Walkman. It was, Karr says, "the only space in the world I had control of."

I laughed out loud when I read this -- a short, sharp bark of recognition. Sitting propped up in my magnificent new bed with my two formerly feral cats slumbering at its foot, I recalled my own "kingdom," which was an old futon couch wedged into what would have been a dining room, if I'd had dining room furniture or bothered to have people over for dinner.

Next to the futon was our stereo. I would come home clutching my bottle that I'd purchased at one of three different liquor stores I frequented (I'd rotate these, of course, being careful not to go into the same one two nights in a row, lest the staff think I was an alcoholic), curl up on the futon and drink, while listening to the same 3 or 4 songs over and over and over.

I'd create very elaborate concerts in my head as I'd do this. When I was drunk I tended to favor sentimental singer/songwriter dreck. I'd imagine myself as the singer of these bawl-y ballads, playing to an audience of ex-boyfriends and every single person who had ever been mean to me. Over and over again until I'd pass out.

Sometimes I'd switch things up a bit and sit with my laptop. I was particularly fond of picking fights with various internet phantoms, waging flame wars until I could barely make out the screen in front of me. I'd get to feeling very self-righteous until I'd have to stumble into the bathroom and puke.

That was my kingdom, and I was every bit as fiercely protective of it as Karr was of her back stairs. Because as pathetic as it was, it was the only safety I knew. Futon, bottle, stereo. Futon, bottle, laptop. It was a very small place.

I hear people talk about "out there," and I get what they're saying. For me, it's going "BACK there" that keeps me vigilant, that keeps me just frightened enough. Because being "out there" means only positive things to me, the woman who 8 1/2 years ago couldn't imagine getting off that futon couch to even pick out a different CD. It's a big, big world out there.

lisamcc at 7:40 p.m.

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