(no subject)
lj as sobriety journal (sj?) yet again... kind of.
my friend ollie is moving today with her partner to Chattanooga TN.
so my second summer at smith one of my friends lost her father and uncle... she came back to school a few weeks later but was in a real state. in processing this a group of us realized that we'd all lost parents, all 8 of us. crazy. so we started a group to help support our friend and deal with our own losses. it was super powerful and bonded us all in an intensely personal and intimate way. it was during this group that ollie and i started to become really close; we'd bawl our faces off then go out and get really really drunk as a way to blow off steam. deep stuff would come up but a lot of what we did was pretty reckless and ridiculous. lots of late night hijinx and laughing.
we quickly started to plan one another into everything we did, without it ever seeming like a new thing. of course we were going to dinner together, how else would we go to dinner? she became my closest person; i wasn't in lovelove with her but the intensity of our friendship took a big toll on my relationship with eric. besides all the stuff that had gone on with eric, it suddenly became clear that i could have a much better relationship with someone, someone who wasn't critical of what i wore and how i presented myself like him... he was really into shaming me. when he overheard me talking to ollie one night he told me that i shouldn't be with him because he couldn't make me laugh like she could, which was true. it's like we all have that one person who can make us giggly idiots and she was it for me.
when the summer ended i went to brooklyn and she returned to durham but we kept in obsessive touch, texting dozens of times everyday, visiting one another, etc. again, our friendship when we were together was mostly about these late night escapades and being willing to do just about any crazy thing we could come up with.
fast forward to me telling her that i cannot imagine living in a different city then her and us deciding to more to philly and live together. and i immediately lay off the booze. instead of being crazy fun i'm suddenly crazycrazy, trying to manage life without the outlet of booze. by that i mean both the stress relief and the ability to have the intensely good time that it can help you achieve. and the time when we were at our closest, when drinking, was gone. what happens to a relationship when the "glue" is taken away if that glue is the closeness achieved via a substance? i can't say that i changed as a person after i quit drinking but i can say that the parts of me that i drank to cover up- the insecurity, the anxiety, the social awkwardness, all became more pronounced. so to her i was probably way less easy to be around.
and fast forward to her moving out two months early from our apartment and having a conversation with me about the "dark cloud" which seems to hang over me at all times now. and was in part what made it difficult for us to live together, besides her own feelings about sharing space with someone other than a partner.
and fast forward from that to last saturday and the surprise party i'd attempted to plan for her and her partner. every bit of it that i'd wanted to make happen- small, intimate, at my house, centered around celebrating them and not centered around drinking, didn't happen. instead we're at some gross bar that only serves deep fried food out of the "fryalator 1000" and a ton of people. and i'm responsible for the whole mess, mostly for allowing it to change so dramatically from the original idea. and it's super uncomfortable and sucky and i go into panic mode both because it's clearly not what should be happening and because of my own issues with crowds and drinking and drinking crowds. so i leave.
and she is justifiably angry for what shit evening it ended up being and for me ducking out and doesn't talk to me for a few days... but does offer to hang out for an hour last night, the night before her big move, while she's on her way to dinner with other friends.
we were able to meet up this morning and she mentioned that there is an airport in atlanta if i'd ever want to visit. If.
hopefully i've taken full accountability for my part in the relationship changing so drastically rather than acting like an addict and externalizing the blame. hopefully saying that the decision to quit drinking had a huge impact on our ability to be friends isn't making an excuse for a lot of bad behavior on my part. i miss my friend, a lot. and i feel a bit... wronged. i am still totally fun to be around. i would rather get up early for a bike ride now then bike drunkenly down a long set of stairs. my love of the strange and unusual hasn't diminished. we can still stay up and laugh. there's tons of stuff which has gotten better since i quit drinking... but losing this friendship has been really something horrible.
my friend ollie is moving today with her partner to Chattanooga TN.
so my second summer at smith one of my friends lost her father and uncle... she came back to school a few weeks later but was in a real state. in processing this a group of us realized that we'd all lost parents, all 8 of us. crazy. so we started a group to help support our friend and deal with our own losses. it was super powerful and bonded us all in an intensely personal and intimate way. it was during this group that ollie and i started to become really close; we'd bawl our faces off then go out and get really really drunk as a way to blow off steam. deep stuff would come up but a lot of what we did was pretty reckless and ridiculous. lots of late night hijinx and laughing.
we quickly started to plan one another into everything we did, without it ever seeming like a new thing. of course we were going to dinner together, how else would we go to dinner? she became my closest person; i wasn't in lovelove with her but the intensity of our friendship took a big toll on my relationship with eric. besides all the stuff that had gone on with eric, it suddenly became clear that i could have a much better relationship with someone, someone who wasn't critical of what i wore and how i presented myself like him... he was really into shaming me. when he overheard me talking to ollie one night he told me that i shouldn't be with him because he couldn't make me laugh like she could, which was true. it's like we all have that one person who can make us giggly idiots and she was it for me.
when the summer ended i went to brooklyn and she returned to durham but we kept in obsessive touch, texting dozens of times everyday, visiting one another, etc. again, our friendship when we were together was mostly about these late night escapades and being willing to do just about any crazy thing we could come up with.
fast forward to me telling her that i cannot imagine living in a different city then her and us deciding to more to philly and live together. and i immediately lay off the booze. instead of being crazy fun i'm suddenly crazycrazy, trying to manage life without the outlet of booze. by that i mean both the stress relief and the ability to have the intensely good time that it can help you achieve. and the time when we were at our closest, when drinking, was gone. what happens to a relationship when the "glue" is taken away if that glue is the closeness achieved via a substance? i can't say that i changed as a person after i quit drinking but i can say that the parts of me that i drank to cover up- the insecurity, the anxiety, the social awkwardness, all became more pronounced. so to her i was probably way less easy to be around.
and fast forward to her moving out two months early from our apartment and having a conversation with me about the "dark cloud" which seems to hang over me at all times now. and was in part what made it difficult for us to live together, besides her own feelings about sharing space with someone other than a partner.
and fast forward from that to last saturday and the surprise party i'd attempted to plan for her and her partner. every bit of it that i'd wanted to make happen- small, intimate, at my house, centered around celebrating them and not centered around drinking, didn't happen. instead we're at some gross bar that only serves deep fried food out of the "fryalator 1000" and a ton of people. and i'm responsible for the whole mess, mostly for allowing it to change so dramatically from the original idea. and it's super uncomfortable and sucky and i go into panic mode both because it's clearly not what should be happening and because of my own issues with crowds and drinking and drinking crowds. so i leave.
and she is justifiably angry for what shit evening it ended up being and for me ducking out and doesn't talk to me for a few days... but does offer to hang out for an hour last night, the night before her big move, while she's on her way to dinner with other friends.
we were able to meet up this morning and she mentioned that there is an airport in atlanta if i'd ever want to visit. If.
hopefully i've taken full accountability for my part in the relationship changing so drastically rather than acting like an addict and externalizing the blame. hopefully saying that the decision to quit drinking had a huge impact on our ability to be friends isn't making an excuse for a lot of bad behavior on my part. i miss my friend, a lot. and i feel a bit... wronged. i am still totally fun to be around. i would rather get up early for a bike ride now then bike drunkenly down a long set of stairs. my love of the strange and unusual hasn't diminished. we can still stay up and laugh. there's tons of stuff which has gotten better since i quit drinking... but losing this friendship has been really something horrible.