Category: alcoholism
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Motherhood Can’t Fix You
Mothers are archetypes in lore and mythology for good reason. It’s not just the power to give birth that sets them on an imagined pedestal; it’s the array of supporting qualities—edgeless compassion, unwavering kindness, the glorified selflessness. The role of mother was both captivating and terrifying, because it simply wasn’t me. What metamorphosis would I…
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Bad Influence
Ted wore square hipster glasses and slicked back his thinning hair. We met when I was 23 and he was 30, which seemed really, really old, like Dad old. It’s probably why I trusted him more than I should have. The night we met he drunk drove me home from a dive bar, pulled over…
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Muse
In love, despite any efforts to stray—my “type” has always remained—the artist. As artist-lovers know, the path can be colorfully romantic, but, often unrewarding. Male artists are sensitive, but selfish, they are passionate, but mercurial, they are full of hope, but also self-doubt. For the women in their lives, it is a constant battle between…
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Relapse
My landlord went crazy sometime at the end of June. To tell the background of my summer homelessness would mean attempting to articulate the irrationality of human behavior. Does that sound vague? It was meant to be; partly to spare the landlord in question, and partly to spare myself the wrath of publicly declaring one…
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My Break-Up With Booze in 12-Steps
Arguably, my longest relationship has been with alcohol. This was almost natural, since I went to high school in Wisconsin where we started constructing beer bongs before we could drive. As a fourteen-year-old, I remember a friend’s dad mixing me hot toddies at the bar in the basement (which also functioned as a taxidermy studio). He…
WAYWARD BETTY 