drinking, memories, dating
People say they drink to forget. When I drink I remember. I remember things I thought lost. I experience emotions I thought stifled. My eyes threaten tears that never fall.
That quote above is from an email I wrote to someone a few weeks ago. She writes on Substack, or used to, about post-divorce life and I find a lot of her perspective and thoughts to be helpful to me. One of her posts prompted me to write an email reply and I’m not sure if she ever received it, but the line above was included and it has stuck with me ever since.
I was just about to empty a bottle of wine, my preferred beverage of the alcoholic variety, and wanted to acknowledge as much, I’m not entirely sure why. Maybe to cover for anything out of place include in the email. I went back and read it, it seemed fine.
Anyways.
My memory, or lack there of, is something that I think about, maybe more often than I should. I worry about the why. Why do I have no memory from being a child? Why do I hardly have any memory as a teenager? I have a few memories from these periods, mostly school related, when I am with friends. Memories in my twenties are almost entirely gone. I can cherry pick a few events, maybe, but for the most part it is all blank.
Until I have a few glasses of alcohol. Wine is preferred, it is much friendlier than bourbon. I, to be honest, prefer my bourbon in the form of a handcrafted Manhattan, neat is fine but a cocktail is more fun. Bourbon is too quick, wine is a slow walk. Beer is basically water.
Wine is the drink that will make me most contemplative. That is when I can remember certain things. Still nothing from my early years, 0-19 or so, but some from my twenties will come back, early thirties. I remember 35 to now almost crystal clear, which is interesting to me. 35 is when I was finally on my own, no mom and dad, no wife, not even a dog. Maybe there is something to be said for that, maybe not.
All of my family memories before and after marriage are blank. Family memories after the divorce are a bit more clear. Memories with work, beginning with my first job when I was 15, are easy to recall and are all mostly fond for me to look back on. Same with any time I spent with friends, I can bring those up easily.
I’m not sure what any of it means but I find it interesting. Interesting in general and interesting that the alcohol will loosen my brain up to let a few more memories out. Why is that? Does it matter?
I know I’ve written about this before, probably a bit of a broken record, but this is what my mind is pondering at the moment and this is what came out when I sat down to write, lucky you.
Dating is on my mind as-well. I’ve never dated, not really. My wife was my first girlfriend, which was my junior year in high school. I’ve never dated as an adult and now I’m just 2 years shy of 40. I’m not nervous per se, just unsure. Unsure of where to start, how to begin. But the memory stuff above plays into this for me. Do I need to have a better handle on my past before I look to involve others? Am I taking this too seriously? I’m also in no rush. I feel that I am just now, after all of this time, getting a handle on who I am and so involving someone else, well, I know how I operate (people pleaser) and don’t want to fall back into old/bad habits.
Wow. Anyways. This is life, folks. Interesting stuff. I have no conclusion here, no real clear way to end this and so I’m just going to draw a line and step over it.
And here we are, on the other side. All of that stuff can just stay up there. We’ve got a new week to look forward to! New opportunities await, new challenges to conquer, relationships to foster, health to maintain, meals to prepare, time on this earth to enjoy. I’m excited!
I’ve got a bunch of awesome work stuff to get moving this week, almost all of it related to a series of leather goods that I hope to sell a bit of for Mother’s Day. All of the hold-in-your-hands work is done, now I need to get product photos, videos, descriptions, blog posts, etc etc etc for each item. That’s a lot of work right there. Plus staying on top of existing customer orders, closing new custom requests (getting paid), and working on a few really long really big really cool leather projects. AND begin working on leather stuff I am providing for the Pittsburgh Cigar Crawl coming up later in May. None of this even gets into the other bigger picture type stuff I am working on “in the background.” Stuff that takes longer, needs to really steep before it is ready.
My move out date is approaching, which is crazy. Felt like it would
never arrive and now it is just 42 days away. Insane. I’m ready but not
at all ready. Ready in my head, but reality is a lot more complicated.
Moving sucks, but I’ve done it a bunch and always enjoy the end result.
It is always an improvement for me, even when moving back to somewhere
I’ve previously lived which is the case for this move. Progress is
progress though, and not always how we may have thought it would be.
So, let’s call it there. If you read up to this point, who are
you!?
~ Aaron