Even when I'm not working outside of the house, I live and die by my digital calendar. If an appointment doesn't appear in the calendar in my phone, it doesn't really exist, and I will not show up for it. When I was working, or volunteering with the spouses club, this made me appear far more organized than I really am. It was all just a clever illusion, but it helped immensely. So today, when a third notification popped up on the phone (with the screen of the phone concealed by the pile of books and purse guts next to me), I thought to myself, "What am I missing? What am I supposed to do today?" Then it occurred to me. After I wrote last night's blog, I left instructions for myself. No lie, the appointment reminder read, "start drinking and writing." Most of my non-appointment notes to myself are onerous tasks or just nit-picky things that I really don't want to do, like "go get blood tests," or "buy dog food." I've had to start swearing at myself to make sure I don't put forget the important ones, like the "take dogs to the kennel, you f-------" (non pc-epithet) from last month. But today's reminder was the most pleasant one I've had in ages. I am all too happy to comply.
I had a bottle in the fridge of a super sweet white merlot that a friend brought to a party, that we never opened. It made a nice choice for this experiment. It went down like Kool-aid, and my sugar addicted brain kept me reaching for it, instead of forgetting about it as I often do. The whole point was to loosen me up a bit. The first two glasses each seemed to be worth a half a page of notes, that will work out to at least eight long sections (chapters? vignettes?). The third glass is going much slower, post-dinner, and it appears to only be worth a blog post and a movie that makes me dance on the verge of tears every time I watch it, even though it's supposed to be a sweet romantic picture. I can't look at the little girl in this movie, with her long blonde hair and big ugly glasses, and not remember my own baby at that age. It fires all my protective instincts, especially when she's crying for her daddy.
I'm still trying to dig deep, to see what I'm willing to write about. The wine is lowering my defenses enough to offer up the more painful memories, and to find the memories that lurk behind a lot of locked doors. I am good at compartmentalizing, hiding difficult things from myself. It's going to take a lot more nights like this to ferret them all out, and probably a quart or so of brown liquor to organize them and flesh them out. I keep trying to chicken out, to tell myself I'll keep my darkest secrets hidden, but that's disingenuous. I can't pretend that I'm perfect and then tell my story accurately. I have to suck it up and be brave, and tell the things that embarrass and shame me, in order to explain how I got to where I am now, and why the strength I've found is meaningful to me. And it will take many more bottles of wine before I'm done.
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