Ladies and gentlemen, I have temporarily taken the pledge. Last night's glass of wine ballooned into 8 or 10 glasses of wine, which seems to have completely breached my emotional dikes. The resulting tsunami took out a couple of small villages. The beaches are littered with the bloated corpses of livestock and mud-covered husks of cars.
That's a fancy way of saying I got drunk and suffered a total emotional wig-out... unfortunately, much of it splattered on Biff over the internet, turning a simple breakdown into an international incident. I'm sure that getting confirmation of Gray's impending liaison with The Wow Girl (taking place, no doubt, even as I type), had more than a little to do with it. Add to this the unfortunate coincidence that Biff had upsetting news from his own emotional arch-nemesis recently, causing him to retreat just when I was hoping he'd prop up my shaky sense of self-worth. I was needy and cloying, picked fights over nothing, misconstrued almost literally everything he said, and ended up a quivering mass of jelly sobbing drunkenly into an empty wine glass. (This last, at least, Biff did not witness, since he was at a safe distance and we were communicating only through Instant Messaging. So you see, it could – believe it or not – be worse.)
Needless to say, I'm not particularly proud of this. The term "mortified" comes to mind... among other, rather less savory, ones.
But one good thing did come out of it. I had a sort of epiphany. I looked at myself, this pathetic lump of self-flagellation and loathing, and realized two things: 1) that I have a lot further to go to divorce recovery than I even dreamed; and 2) that it wouldn't have been nearly as bad without the half-gallon of wine washing over my brain's emotional centers. In other words: the wine doesn't help. I may be "self-medicating," but the medicine is, probably quite literally, killing me.
I realized that if I don't change the direction I'm headed, I'm going to wind up where I'm going. And that is not a happy healthy place full of flowers and fluffy bunnies.
So I have to get a grip. Stop drinking, take control of the choices I make, and especially stop expecting poor Biff to prop me up. The guy has his own baggage to carry, and the fact that he didn't immediately pack up and move to Alaska last night should be all the assurance I could possibly expect after that tawdry little piece of theatre. I have to get the focus back on finding my own way over this thing. And the only way out is through. Last night proved to me that there are no short cuts, and nobody is going to give me a get-out-of-heartbreak-free card. I just have to deal with it as it comes and stop pretending it doesn't affect me.
So after all the bizarre and needless drama of last night, I am grateful to Biff for showing up today. We had made plans to take Grayson and his friend John to the ballpark to go snow tubing, and then have dinner at my place. To Biff's credit, he showed up as planned, which surely proves that he is a saint. Or a masochist. I haven't decided which.
Soooo, all of this brings me to what we will refer to as "the great snow-tubing heist." I paid $13 a person for 2 hours of tubing at the Brick. Sadly, they WAY oversold the tickets, and we waited in line for more than 30 minutes for one 10-second ride down. It was so not worth a second 30-minute wait. Even the boys couldn't face it. What a dud. I couldn't believe I'd paid more than $50 for the privilege of standing in line. It was as bad as Disney, and without concessions. It wasn't even a great run. So we just came back to the apartment and the boys played Grayson's new Wii games while Biff and I lounged on the sofa and talked about our respective emotional train-wrecks. We do at least have that in common, perhaps more than anything else. Though since I seem to be, in spite of it all, some sort of crazed optimist, I like to think there's more to it than just that.
So, tonight I'm watching cartoons with Grayson and chastely sipping gingerale, pondering possible ways for me to Get a Life, save my self-respect and heal my broken heart, all without sending Biff, (or anyone else,) screaming into traffic.
Any suggestions? Anyone? Anyone?
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