Hugs to Headlocks and Green Algae Guts
Despite my vigorous scrubbing, the damn sixty-four ounce, “self-detect container” (manufacturer jargon) looks like it has a thin coat of pond scum coating the clear pitcher. How are pond scum and spirulina different? I wonder. Each time I enter the kitchen, I’m blind to the clean counters and floors. All I can concentrate on is this disgusting Vitamix. It’s the “Cadillac of kitchen appliances” a colleague reassured me after I dropped half my paycheck on this all-in-one device more than seven years ago. This sleek, knobbed beauty took her noble stance on my cramped Brooklyn countertop in 2014. The events of 2013 led me to make the splurge because this was the year. “The year I quit quitting.” Although, that’s not entirely accurate.
I quit drinking on December 29, 2013. In the months between all the quitting and the blender buying, I lacked any presence of mind about all the shifts in my perspective. The quitting, the blender, the meetings, none of it struck me as shifting my priorities towards living. I hadn’t realized how much my life revolved around how to speed up dying. The Vitamix represented a financial commitment. And it sure has opened some doors micro-nutritionally speaking.
These memories flood back to me as I grimace at the machine like an abusive mother slut shaming her daughter. “The very sight of you disgusts me,” I say. I contemplate if white vinegar could remove the film. Then I think, I should find out how they treat ponds overgrown with plankton. This looks like algae. Are algae and plankton any different? I should google it.
Eight years ago, if you told me this would consume me, this cleaning obsession, I would have laughed you right out of town. Moreover, if you told me I’d made a wise investment in the blender, I would have assured you I wasn’t the kind of girl who made wise anything, let alone investments.
When I was nine years old and everyone at my aunt’s wedding merrily electric slid across the dance floor, my instinct was to find their abandoned cocktails. Throwing them back quickly to avoid getting caught, the warm sensation that washed over my little body melted my fears and anxieties. This is what magic is. From the ages of nine to eleven, I became strictly a social drinker.
I was born wound too tight. Drink loosened the coil. The sensation of drowning started before I ever went swimming. I was always gasping for air. My parents’ tumultuous relationship scared the breath out of me. I recall panting and fighting to get air into my lungs when I heard their bodies crashing downstairs. Occasionally, I’d hear my name when they fought, and this convinced me I was the source of the conflict.
Both of my parents struggled with mental health issues, and I never knew what would trigger them. Once, when I was seven, I lost track of time while playing at a neighbor’s house. Realizing this, I hopped on my purple Huffy and peddled home with all my might. It didn’t shave off the extra five minutes. I was still late. As it went, I was too stupid to get the time right, so now I could practice reading the clock up in my room by myself. I cried all night long. This time, I could account for the infraction, but other times it was hard to pin down what precisely I’d done wrong.
The ultimate evidence of my gross negligence came a month after my thirteenth birthday. My mother took her life. This act solidified the suspicion I held about myself my entire young life. Soaking my pillow with tears, clutching my Winnie the Pooh stuffy, all those nights in my room alone based on some infraction, I believed my mom didn’t love me. Like a mantra I’d say, “You’re a bad girl and mommy doesn’t love you.” “You’re so stupid. You just cause problems for mommy and daddy.” I had these thoughts any time I was alone or with my mom, especially. In adult words, I’d say I formed a core idea that I was fundamentally unlovable and deeply damaged. Whatever the words, kid or adult, the feelings of “knowing” this about myself was too intense. I yearned to change these feelings. But the yearning mutated into compulsion.
My mom’s death overwhelmed me with a sense of impending doom. On my walk home from the bus, I’d think of all the ways I’d failed to get help for her. At night, I’d lay in bed frantically retracing my “stupidity,” wondering what tragic event I’d set off next. Having watched my family endure the pain of two suicides, I couldn’t actively end things the way of my mother and her brother. So, I got to work in private. I didn’t recognize that the mood-altering substance abuse was “passive suicide.” I thought I was just having fun.
Despite almost two decades of consequences, I had to use. In 2012 and 2013, I was ninety pounds, shaking all the time, and unable to care for myself or nurture relationships. I was barely employable. To look normal on Fridays or Saturdays, I’d go out with friends. But after an hour, I’d pull my signature “French goodbye,” leaving in the middle of an outing. Trying to drink normally was torture. Seeing how people sipped wine felt like a personal affront. I drank to get a job done. Without my friends, I could use like I wanted. That meant either being alone in my apartment or going to the bar next door to my house. In the end, I didn’t want to risk anyone I cared about knowing the destructive things I did.
One of the lighter incidents included using the subway platform as a changing room. Having barfed down the front of my shirt, I solved the problem by buying a dress at the American Apparel next to the bar. Then, I went home to drink. I changed out of my barf shirt into the dress on the platform of the F train at Broadway and Lafayette. I’m not sure whether I told myself no one could see me or whether I figured it was New York and people had seen worse. I left my dirty clothes on the subway platform when I got on the train. The next morning, I was relieved I hadn’t done this along the side of Atlantic Avenue. I’d nearly gotten run over by a car just a few nights earlier. I didn’t want to think of getting run over half naked.
When out on a regular night, I realized I didn’t drink like other people. People my age out on a Tuesday night were on a date, commiserating over a loss, celebrating something, or waiting on their takeout food from the restaurant upstairs. Except for two surly, mean, retired fisherman, no one drank like I did: to find oblivion as quickly as possible.
At a company holiday party in December of 2013, I noticed my colleague covering her wine glass each time a server threatened to fill it. Lucy was the epitome of professional. Her skin was flawless, hair shiny, and clothes beautifully tailored. She was kind, a great teammate. She under-promised and over-delivered; she was an adult. I would have never imagined she knew what it meant to struggle with addiction. Each time a server passed, I joked, “I’ll have hers too!”
She just smiled. Then she shared how she had stopped drinking years ago. When I pressed, she confessed she belonged to an anonymous group of people recovering from the chronic, fatal illness called alcoholism. I was shocked.
Learning this made me confront the stereotypes I had of addicts. Without ever knowing it, she planted a seed in me. Learning Lucy spent fifteen consecutive years without using gave me hope. I wondered if people could struggle like me and get through it without becoming complete squares. This didn’t make me quit though. I needed a few more weeks of misery.
Maybe drinking is the problem, I’d finally realize after swearing to take some time off booze, finding myself unable to stop. The morning of the eighth day into what was supposed to be one drink but turned into an around the clock binge, I came to at a client lunch. We were sucking back Prosecco. I heard myself ordering more. Drinking Prosecco and faking it through the lunch made me think back to a happier time.
My best friend and I coined the summer of 2009, “our champagne summer.” We committed to having fun and doing it as much as possible with our other friend. A French one called, champagne.
Bike ride? Sure, I’ll bring the champagne for our water bottles.
MOMA? Great, let’s have a little champagne break on the way.
Dance Party? Put little bottles of champagne in your purse. Should I put it next to the cocaine? As you wish.
But by December of 2013, the booze was drinking me. Lucy was proof I didn’t have to live this way. But I didn’t know if I’d want to when all the painful feelings I’d numbed came rushing back.
The peculiar part about the embrace of addiction is, at first, the hug feels warm and comfortable. Then, it shifts to mild awkwardness. You attempt to step away, but the hugger is still squeezing. So you politely standby, waiting for the okay to let go. You find yourself still holding on and feeling kind of embarrassed. To assure onlookers of the innocence of the hug, you stick out your butt. The other people don’t look convinced by your gesture. Real uneasiness sets in; you wonder whether you’re about to get dry humped. The embarrassing and uneasy phases can last a while before being replaced by unbearable discomfort because, suddenly, getting away seems terrifying. Either living a life without booze or living one more second with it seem terrible. And while you’re scratching your head wondering when it stopped being fun, you suddenly realize the grasp is too tight. You’re suffocating. You catch your breath, have another drink, and tell yourself it is all ok.
Cleverly, without your noticing, addition moves from a hug to a headlock. Addiction told me relief was all I needed. It took my free time, my health, my safety, my dignity, my money. It reassured me in a kind voice, “You don’t really want those things. This warm hug is enough.”
At home, in the present, there is an abundance of seeds and powders. Vegan this and plant-based that. My kid’s art covers the walls and cupboards in a seasonally rotating gallery show. It’s enough to make you want to hate me. I know the old me, the one from 2012, or earlier, would kick the new me’s ass. Sometimes old voices tell me, “You’re no good. You don’t deserve nice things, you stupid fraud.” Or “Who do you think you are?” The scariest voice says, “It wasn’t that bad.” That voice will kill me. The warm, kind, inviting one who leans in for the hug.
I would have never celebrated taking a walk over taking a Xanax. Hating on healthy, trendy, new exercises made me come to life. I pointed and wagged my finger at every Tracy Anderson or Taryn Toomey celebrity trainer and thought of consumerism. Vitamix, consumerism. Chia seeds, consumerism. Paying to run a half-marathon, consumerism. Vegan fine dining, consumerism. Somehow, Jack Daniels and big pharma weren’t “consumerism.” It’s tempting to buy into the idea while I’m trying to recall whether I ever needed to defunk a bourbon glass. This damn blender.
While I submerge the blender in my sink full of bubbles, reaching for steel wool, I think of those shirts that read, “Quitting is for Losers.” It sure is. I lost my privileges. I AM a loser. Addiction hugs me until it headlocks me; and then I’m on a passive suicide mission.
By contrast, the stupid blender reminds me I chose to invest in not killing myself. I have chosen to be a quitter and a loser, for the win. Maybe in the spirit of surrender, I’ll buy myself a new container for my spinach and green sludge smoothies. Afterall, I did quit all of those things to be an adult with healthy gut flora. To my surprise, being an adult means showing up for the mundane things too. Like caring for the “Cadillac of kitchen appliances.”
-Kristen DiLandro
Kristen DiLandro goes by Kiki. She feels like her life is lived on the internet. But she dreams under California stars on indigenous Ohlone land. Her writing has appeared in New Feathers Anthology, The Dillydoun Review and is forthcoming in Drunk Monkeys. She writes a newsletter called “Aspiring to hate you less.” Kiki is working toward her MFA in Creative Writing at the Savannah College of Art and Design.