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static_abyss) wrote2022-04-14 10:29 am
static_abyss) wrote2022-04-14 10:29 am
LJ Idol 2022: Week 5
We can't drink when we're sad.
The liquor tastes too sweet, too refreshing, too much like a balm to a wounded soul. When Tia Estela died, we drank with her daughters until the pain was nothing but a quiet buzz, barely noticeable above the peace of a slowed-down mind. I remember falling asleep on Vanessa's recliner, curled up into a ball as my sister and other cousins filled up the air mattress. We'd all drift to sleep only to wake in the morning and head home, the sun just kissing the horizon, all of us pretending we weren't going to be back for the daily prayer, for the daily drinks.
I remember the weather the most, the way the sun hid behind gray clouds on the day we walked Tia Estela's cross to the cemetery. She died in mid-July, on my cousin Rosie's birthday, so at least the weather was nice. Grandma also died on a cloudy day. Tia Lorena too. All of them on a weekend or close enough to give us time to prepare our prayers. I remember each of their deaths intimately, the shape of their mouths the closer they got to the end. I remember their hands, their lingering breaths, the silence that filled their rooms.
I live in that silence sometimes, in the space between one breath and the next, in that frozen moment where everything is possible. Time doesn't exist there. Reality is hazy, a laggy video with faded sound. I'm the only thing that moves at normal speed in those moments. I'm the only one who can see the fraying cable, the drip of the morphine, the beeping of the pulse oximeter, and that familiar whir of the oxygen machine. Hospital rooms are always drier than the rooms at home, the dehumidifiers toiling away to keep everything just so.
And I wonder why I leave those rooms wanting anything to chase away my parched throat?
I was going to be a doctor, white coat and everything. I was going to go from room to room, checking on the sick and wounded, doing what I could to save them. I was going to be a surgeon, looking for the points of dissonance in people's hearts, eeking out the ways in which to fix it. I was going to be a nurse, running from patient to patient with my scanner, doling out medication to ease the pain in people's bodies. I was going to be a pulmonologist, listening intently for the first sign of lung disease, that barest whoosh of trapped air that would tell me everything.
I was going to save my family.
And I wonder why the world feels so heavy on my shoulders, why I long for the way it all goes away at the bottom of a whiskey glass?
I don't know who I am. I don't know what I'm meant to do, who I could have been if I'd done all the things I wanted to and not the things that were expected of me. I don't know what stories my grandmother still had to tell us, what might live in the words she left unspoken. I don't know if my nephew will remember Tia Estela, if he knows that she loved him like she will love nobody else. I don't know who we are now that we've lost another aunt, now that we have another broken family.
I've quit my job and I can feel the guilt eating at me, telling me that it will all go away if I go look for that bottle of Macallan I specifically put away when my grandma died. We are not addicts, not medically. But I can feel the thirst in my bones, the way it would be so easy to just let go, to let the alcohol consume me until I was pleasantly buzzed, no thoughts strong enough to latch onto my brain in those moments. I look at those bottles with their amber liquid, the way the light catches on them. It doesn't even matter that I'm allergic to rye.
I have an uncle who's a recovering alcoholic. I watch him, the way he always makes sure to have a cup of lemonade in his hands whenever someone pulls out a drink at a party, at a restaurant. I watch him pretend he isn't watching, and I'm ready when a cousin stumbles by, drink in hand, to tell my uncle that one sip won't hurt.
One sip won't hurt, and that's the danger. One drink, two, and the tightness in my chest is gone. Three drinks and the urge to cry settles into something quiet, something warm and slow. Four drinks, five, six, seven, and the world is stuck in the endless space between a breath, that frozen moment right before the doctors declare the time of death.
And I wonder how many more times we're supposed to find the strength to move on. How many more crying cousins and fighting aunts we're meant to endure. How much more guilt I'm meant to witness, how many more loved ones must I nurse until their dying day?
The liquor tastes too sweet, too refreshing, too much like a balm to a wounded soul. When Tia Estela died, we drank with her daughters until the pain was nothing but a quiet buzz, barely noticeable above the peace of a slowed-down mind. I remember falling asleep on Vanessa's recliner, curled up into a ball as my sister and other cousins filled up the air mattress. We'd all drift to sleep only to wake in the morning and head home, the sun just kissing the horizon, all of us pretending we weren't going to be back for the daily prayer, for the daily drinks.
I remember the weather the most, the way the sun hid behind gray clouds on the day we walked Tia Estela's cross to the cemetery. She died in mid-July, on my cousin Rosie's birthday, so at least the weather was nice. Grandma also died on a cloudy day. Tia Lorena too. All of them on a weekend or close enough to give us time to prepare our prayers. I remember each of their deaths intimately, the shape of their mouths the closer they got to the end. I remember their hands, their lingering breaths, the silence that filled their rooms.
I live in that silence sometimes, in the space between one breath and the next, in that frozen moment where everything is possible. Time doesn't exist there. Reality is hazy, a laggy video with faded sound. I'm the only thing that moves at normal speed in those moments. I'm the only one who can see the fraying cable, the drip of the morphine, the beeping of the pulse oximeter, and that familiar whir of the oxygen machine. Hospital rooms are always drier than the rooms at home, the dehumidifiers toiling away to keep everything just so.
And I wonder why I leave those rooms wanting anything to chase away my parched throat?
I was going to be a doctor, white coat and everything. I was going to go from room to room, checking on the sick and wounded, doing what I could to save them. I was going to be a surgeon, looking for the points of dissonance in people's hearts, eeking out the ways in which to fix it. I was going to be a nurse, running from patient to patient with my scanner, doling out medication to ease the pain in people's bodies. I was going to be a pulmonologist, listening intently for the first sign of lung disease, that barest whoosh of trapped air that would tell me everything.
I was going to save my family.
And I wonder why the world feels so heavy on my shoulders, why I long for the way it all goes away at the bottom of a whiskey glass?
I don't know who I am. I don't know what I'm meant to do, who I could have been if I'd done all the things I wanted to and not the things that were expected of me. I don't know what stories my grandmother still had to tell us, what might live in the words she left unspoken. I don't know if my nephew will remember Tia Estela, if he knows that she loved him like she will love nobody else. I don't know who we are now that we've lost another aunt, now that we have another broken family.
I've quit my job and I can feel the guilt eating at me, telling me that it will all go away if I go look for that bottle of Macallan I specifically put away when my grandma died. We are not addicts, not medically. But I can feel the thirst in my bones, the way it would be so easy to just let go, to let the alcohol consume me until I was pleasantly buzzed, no thoughts strong enough to latch onto my brain in those moments. I look at those bottles with their amber liquid, the way the light catches on them. It doesn't even matter that I'm allergic to rye.
I have an uncle who's a recovering alcoholic. I watch him, the way he always makes sure to have a cup of lemonade in his hands whenever someone pulls out a drink at a party, at a restaurant. I watch him pretend he isn't watching, and I'm ready when a cousin stumbles by, drink in hand, to tell my uncle that one sip won't hurt.
One sip won't hurt, and that's the danger. One drink, two, and the tightness in my chest is gone. Three drinks and the urge to cry settles into something quiet, something warm and slow. Four drinks, five, six, seven, and the world is stuck in the endless space between a breath, that frozen moment right before the doctors declare the time of death.
And I wonder how many more times we're supposed to find the strength to move on. How many more crying cousins and fighting aunts we're meant to endure. How much more guilt I'm meant to witness, how many more loved ones must I nurse until their dying day?
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- Erulisse (one L)
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I felt the same way when my grandma died, and certainly understand wanting to take away the grief. Very poignant and well-written piece!
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