One Long Year

Today is the one year anniversary of my sobriety. I celebrated by digging in my heels and moving forward with my new life plan. As of today, I am a student again. I registered for classes at SUNY at Buffalo that I will need to apply for Art Conservation advanced degree programs. If all goes well, I'll be able to start those applications in spring of 2010 and begin a program in the fall of 2010. Most programs are three years long, so I'll make my exit sometime in 2013. I will be 36 years old. To be honest, I never thought I would make it to 30.

I lived hard when I was young. I spent all day, every day, skating - throwing myself down flights of stairs, onto handrails, off launch ramps. Again and again I slammed my body into the ground, over and over I suffered the crippling effects of serious injury. To date I've broken: all of my fingers, all of my toes, my right tibia and fibula, my right ankle, my right heel bone, my left radius and ulna, my left wrist, 3 ribs, my right front tooth, and my coccyx. I've torn: my left ACL, my right ACL, my left MCL , my right patellar ligament, and a series of soft tissues between my ribs. I've sprained: my left ankle, my left knee, my right ankle, my right knee, both my wrists, all of my fingers, disclocated my left shoulder and hyperextended my left arm at the elbow. My injuries were sometimes spectacular, sometimes subtle, but always a reminder of my fragility and mortality. I wasn't one of the kids that thought he was immortal - far from it - the vulnerability of my body to injury reminded me every day that life was temporary.

When I thought of growing older, I could never imagine myself after 30. Not because it was old, and I was never going to get old (which I think it the common cause of this inconceivability), but because I couldn't figure out what I was going to do after 30. I knew I would be too old to skate. I knew what I was interested in, but even then I had no idea how it would translate into a job, a career, or a lifestyle. I simply thought that meaningful existence (as I understood it) after 30 seemed entirely improbable (for me), and as I maintained that improbability, it began to morph into an impossibility. I began to tell myself that I was never going to make it to 30. The way I lived my life was such that I would meet my end in a fiery car crash or a spectacular fall; I'd become the youthful martyr that all of my friends reminisced about. I didn't have a death wish. I liked living. But I had a feeling, a really strong feeling, I was just never going to make it to 30. Now that I think about it, this feeling may have made a distinct contribution to my inability to pull the disparate parts of my life together into a legitimate whole right around the age of 30. I'd told myself that day was never going to come, and when it came, all I could think was "Where's my spectacular fall?"

Needless to say, the fall never came. Neither did the fiery car crash. No sensational decapitation, nothing. 30 passed with a quiet murmur and left me looking over both my shoulders, thinking destiny was late.

Fueled by the conviction that three decades was all I had, in my 20's I lived a lifestyle full of the conventional excesses of the aimless: drugs, alcohol, sex. It was never glamorous, in fact it was often the opposite, but it was definitely propagated by an absence of consequence, or a perceived absence of consequence. I couldn't be blamed, I needed to fit it all in, I was only going to be here half the time everyone else was - or worse, maybe part of me felt like "it won't matter when I'm gone because people will forgive me, and if they don't, I'll never know." An ill-conceived plan at best, if I conceived it at all.

And, as many of you know, it caught up with me. And it caught up quick.

I feel lucky that my breakdown a little over a year ago became an impetus for change; as brutal as an emotional rock bottom is, I still recognize that it doesn't compare to the vicious character of an addict's rock bottom. I'm glad that I never had to experience that, and glad to have the opportunity to move my life away from the possibility. I've learned to live without drinking and understand clearly now that I'll probably never be able to come back to it in a casual way. It doesn't bother me as much as it did at first, because lately I've been trying to figure out what drinking did for me. What it ever helped me achieve.

Let's see: It got me laid. It helped me relax and avoid the sources of my anxiety. It loosened me up so I could actually have fun with my friends. It helped me sleep. It gave me a social crutch, a commonality to rely on. Other than those things, I was hard pressed to find anything. And when I look at those things, I think to myself: I can do all those things on my own. Getting laid is easy. Relaxing and avoiding anxiety are easy if you work hard to structure your life in a healthy way. I don't need loosening up, if I get get going, I'm just as crazy now as I was when I was drunk. Sleeping is easy if you deal with your anxiety and its sources. And finally, if I need a social crutch, I either need new friends or a social crutch that isn't going to give me a hangover. Like volunteering at the Red Cross. You get the point.

After coming to terms with all of the above, it's difficult not to feel regret. Time wasted, money spent, decisions made, physical damage done. But I know I can't dwell on it. I could've never made this decision earlier. No one could've convinced me at 28 to make the changes I've made. Because I believed I wasn't going to make it to 30. It took undeniable chronological evidence and emotional upheaval. Even then it was hard for me to believe it.

This last year has been the longest and the shortest of my life. I've been absorbed in introspection, analysis, evaluation - the days feel agonizingly long as I plod through the mental muck, but those same days shoot by on the calendar, the sun seems to rise and set in minutes. I've had to admit to myself what I'm good at, what I'm not, who I've hurt, how I've hurt them, what it's possible to do, what it isn't. I've had to say hard things to myself and make harder decisions. But I believe it's been worth it, because now it all seems a little more possible, and I don't feel like a ghost. I don't feel like someone that somehow slid past 30, escaped the eye of the grim reaper, and continues to amble along unsure of how to proceed. I'm convinced I'm actually here, convinced I should make something of it, and convinced that I can.

I want to extend thanks to every single person that has helped me make this transition; I love all of you and value your support.

Coming soon: my thoughts of re-entering academia, the first-hand accounts I'll be able to give of the current situation, and determining whether or not I'm a sell-out.