OR IS BLOGGING, WRITING?
F Scott Fitzgerald said, “You’ve got to sell your heart, your strongest reactions, not the little minor things that only touch you lightly, the little experiences that you might tell at dinner.”
Isn’t that the essence of blogging? Telling the minor things, the dinner story things with photos that fit neatly into the ” set featured image” box? Are we not the Reality TV of writing – sharing what we eat; how we mother; where we vacation, how we keep ourselves from our addictions in 7 Easy Steps? Isn’t our greatest achievement an article in The Huffington Post or a banner ad from some flashing purveyor of goods our readership is likely to buy?
This morning I need to get back to the excruciating task of telling the truth. The new technical format be damned. My purpose in writing this daily blog has always been to share my experiences with addiction and to help others who suffer.
This is the truth.
Alcohol is like a handsome guy you can’t seem to leave, who finds it sexy to chain you to eyebolts in a closet and cover your face in grey, duck tape until there is only one nostril open to breathe.
Alcohol is like a playground bully from the In Crowd who pulls your hair and punches you where it doesn’t show.
Alcohol is like the humiliating, flapping late notices from the utility companies on the front door, when you chose to spend your money on needless things.
Alcohol is like the battered reflection in the mirror – no front teeth, two black eyes – after another death defying night to remember.
And I still look back fondly. And I still scoff a bit at those who extol the giddiness of a hangover-free sunrise. And I’m not happy.
And God help me, I miss it.
Fitzgerald said, “I have lived hard and ruined the essential innocence [sic] in myself that could make it that possible [sic], and the fact that I have abused liquor is something to be paid for with suffering and death perhaps but not renunciation.”
