…I just cannot stand alcoholic rants, or people who present convoluted reasons why I should manage them. I attempted to manage one some hours ago and I am well aware that I am throwing it right back, and that in that sense I am mimicking it.
But I am outright allergic. These rants, and their justifications, are a dangerous drug for me. I have every reason to believe I am best advised to avoid them entirely, no matter what anyone else may say.
I also notice that people who spend too many of their waking hours drunk end up having their entire being infused with that delusional state. I think that being in Reeducation was like being on one long bender.
As a child I vowed that when I grew up I would never be cold to people and never to refuse to listen. I had reasons for this, but I note that all rules have exceptions. Listening and understanding are not always the kind things to do.
*
At the first level living within a certain structure was our job. It was food and shelter, but also decency itself. It was the only game in town. It was the world. Thine was the kingdom, world without end.
At later levels these principles were no longer true. They even revealed themselves to be antithetical to survival. Yet I still feel compelled to obey them if asked, and I could also drown the people who make such requests as easily as country folk drown kittens.
Yet I still do not realize how utterly outrageous some peoples’ actions are. I do not realize it until I see my reaction.
*
I am recovering by taking the day off to paint the back door. I went out and bought a CD, something I almost never do, to console myself. It is excellent, although there is a fair amount of noise in some of the cuts. I am not sure this was the disc recommended to me, however – it may have been this. I turned the compost, full of cypress needles and spring rain, and it smells like redwood dust.
The actual name for the drunken phone call I took from my colleague the other night is assault and battery. I am recovering but it is a great waste of time and energy, and I do not want to go through anything like this again.
*
This is my general catalogue of reactions to events like those to which I refer:
1. Buying clothes, spa products, skin creams: a reaction to bullying or emotional battering. A repair attempt. I keep a list of things I need so that what I buy them on these occasions is not superflous.
2. Smoking: a reaction to having been intruded or imposed upon. An attempt to put up a veil and to retreat into the self.
3. Staying home: a defense against the incontrollable possibility of invasion and bullying.
4. Exhaustion, lightheadedness, confusion: I have let someone beat me to a pulp emotionally and not realized that was the name of what was happening.
5. Obsessive blogging on these issues: means that whatever happened, really was bad, and I may have been complicit in it out of pity for the perpetrator, and I was cornered somewhere, and I did not know how to make it stop.
And I am repeatedly told I should feel sorry for the poorly behaved. I do not believe pity is the correct response.
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 
I’ve said it before, but I have figured out once again how to express in a nutshell what I so dislike about people 12 Step groups and Al-Anon: they want you to negotiate and bargain with drinking and the drinker. They want to pull you into their underworld. I like these people significantly less than I like addicts.
I may need a support group to help me deal with my drunken colleague, but I am not sure where to go.
It has also been explained to me quite often that the reason Al-Anon wants you to stay in a bad situation is that it believes that if you leave, you will just get into another one.
As I have said before, I think this is the height of disrespect and projection.
Finally, consider this: every time I have an alcoholic act up at me, where my anger ends up settling is at those who would say I “should be able to handle it,” and my internalized voice which says that the fact that this happens means there is something wrong with me.
That is also what Al-Anon would say and it is why I think Al-Anon, that victim blamer, is so pernicious and mean, and why I think it is an ideological state apparatus.
OK. I have had enough. There are more posts coming up on this, though, so be forewarned.
My health used to be very bad. I used to come down, very easily with colds and ‘flu, and when that happened, my mind made emotional reference to my father: “This is how he wants you to be, small and weak.” That added another level of infuriation to the frustration of being unwell.
The link between the susceptibility to illness and my father later became clearer to me. It was he who had taught me (or rather, compelled me) to turn all of my aggressive energies inwards, against myself. The more I had genuine reason to be angry, the more likely I would be to come down with something, because my inner levels of tension would rise to the point that I was just not coping and would be susceptible to viruses.
When something clicked in my head about what was going on – ie. the actual dynamics of it — I understood that I could save myself by turning my aggressive energies outwards, in self defence, as I was biologically designed to do.
The susceptibility to illness disappeared. My thinking processes became clear. I was reborn.
The allergic reaction is good; means it’s not catching…
Reeducation taught me to turn aggressive energies against myself. Of course my earliest education had also taught that, but I had unlearned it … Reeducation reignited it. It really is better to turn them outward … being self aware does not mean being agressive.
The “drunk” called me up again, with a new crisis. Caught me unawares. I told him I thought he had a drinking problem and he said it wasn’t that, it was OCD. But it’s like having a drinking problem — it’s an addiction to an emotional state, to frustration and anger.
I said he needed to get a life and stop focusing on small things that happen in our department but it is clear he doesn’t want to do this … although he does want more dinner parties. I’d be glad to show him around and so on if it were not so clear he wanted to enmesh. This all is somewhat worrisome. I am vulnerable to it because I know he is suffering and I’d be glad to alleviate it. But I greatly fear that solutions are not desired as much as misery wants company. I fear.
And he ostensibly means well, but *is* abusive, in terms of trying hard to engage people in such a way as to bring them down. Depress them so they will be company. He has no idea how many activities I have outside the university. I’d be happy to show him how to live if I could, but I’ve tried that before on people and it hasn’t worked. He’s got to take initiative on this … yet he’s only interested in work and parties. It’s a problem. One I can’t fix, but that is going to keep biting me. Hm.