It’s Not OK
It’s not ok that just when I start to hope that everything’s going to be ok, I find evidence that I should have waited a little longer.
I don’t go looking for evidence that my kid is drinking again. I actually probably go out of my way to cover my eyes, because maybe what I can’t see can’t hurt.
I know that’s bullshit when I close my eyes, and I know it’s bullshit when I look the other way, hoping, as always, to be proven wrong.
About to Fall and Just Fell
The thing is, “about to fall” and “just fell” sound about the same. So for now I can live in the illusion that he was about to fall, but stopped himself.
I actually don’t know.
I sent his person a text message.
“He’s struggling.”
She says, “He’s fine.”
I bite my tongue. To continue is to try and control the outcome. So is the initial message, but there are just some things I can’t not do.
Just stay sober one more day, and then another one, and then another one.
Fifty Years From Now
The ironic part of this is the phone call. While it was still in the hopeful phase, he called and we started to talk about what it would look like—what it could look like—fifty years from now.
His grandchildren, maybe graduating high school and not considering alcohol for the after party, just like they’d never consider cigarettes or meth, because they don’t live in an alcohol culture; a culture that expects everyone to partake.
Maybe drinking will be as rare as smoking is now.
Maybe in 2076
Maybe in 2076 people actually will just get high on life.
What gives me hope that this future is possible is that I’ve already watched it happen once.
He can’t see it. He isn’t old enough to remember the beginning of tobacco’s fall.
He remembers, like a dream, the glassed-in section at Tim Horton’s where the smokers sat, but I don’t think he fully understands that I used to smoke at my desk.
When I was in the hospital trying to conceive through IVF, we’d all congregate in the smoking room.
The smoking room In the hospital.
What Change Looks Like
In my lifetime, smoking has gone from “Be cool—smoke” to “Seriously, why would I put that in my mouth?”
If a cultural shift that dramatic can happen for tobacco, it can happen for alcohol too.
It just has to start somewhere.