This morning found me once again down at the corner store, drinking free coffee, and talking to my favorite clerk. I know I am starting to sound like a broken record. I am a creature of habit. The police were out in full force this morning, fueling their patrol cars, and it made me nervous. I have terrible luck and I just knew something from my drinking past would pop up to bite me in the ass.
"Oh, they're harmless," my favorite clerk said of the police after one had just left.
"Well, when I was drinking I would do things and then not remember them the next day," I replied. "I am always worried my past is going to come back to haunt me."
"That must be a terrible feeling," he told me.
"Tell me about it!" I exclaimed. "It is a horrible feeling! I have this nagging feeling I have warrants out for my arrest."
"You still going to AA?"
"I haven't been in weeks," I replied. "I am on my sixteenth day of sobriety, though. I just haven't wanted to drink and that is a miracle."
"Maybe your cured."
"They say once an alcoholic, always an alcoholic," I replied. "I don't think I am cured. The day I think I am cured is the day I will drink again."
I left my clerk friend to walk over to that little park by the cotton mill. It was too cold to linger, though, and my coffee had run out with my hands growing bitterly cold. I walked back home taking in the full glory of all the Christmas lights in my neighborhood. A sliver of a crescent moon was on the Eastern horizon and hung low along with Venus. It was a beautiful morning, a beautiful sight, and a fine start to the day despite my nagging paranoia about the police. "What tangled webs we weave," was my thought on my past drinking as I trudged home in the predawn dark.
7 comments:
At one point, due to a previous arrest due to paranoia and fistsights before diagnosis, I remained paranoid of the police and a judge. I vowed to carry eggs in my pocket and bombard the police cars and door to the police precinct and courthouse. Luckily I did not follow through with this foolishness. If one follows paranoia to its logical conclusions one can understand the shootings and other horrors that go on. Luckily most of us paranoids suffer fear and don't act on it. It is a true suffering.
Good morning Andrew!
It will snow here today, I will gladly switch places with you!
I love how you put it! About the curing and the drinking. I've often thought of that same approach with the smokes and chokes..the day I say I am officially done having a smoke will be the day I smoke that cigarette starting that awful weave all over again for myself..so I really really thank you for this great reminder!
It's thursday..almost Sunday!! :)
Always,
Crusty~
I'm sure if there was a warrant against you in that small town, Andrew, you long since would have known it! I get paranoid just like that when a patrolman is behind my car... I start driving really stupid just because I get nervous! I'm so glad you got out for your morning walk and coffee. Do you wear gloves when it's cold?
Beautiful! as all the others!you can find me here from now on! :)
I'm so proud of your 16 days. Every day is a gift.
I can not say that I have police paranoia, but I do get knots in my stomach around them at times. Last month walking home from a store a cop in an unmarked car surprised me by questioning me for no apparent reason.
I wanted to ask for his name and badge number or simply walk away to his rudeness. I imagined him out of that car, me up against the hood, handcuffed and dragged off to jail for resisting arrest. So I politely took it as he insulted me with words.
I did not however consider that paranoid behavior. Paranoid is when I fear the GWB secret police are taping my phone or reading my email kind of worries.
My worst, I think, was when I called someone in a full state of panic, thinking my family had plotted and were coming to take me away to the nearest loony farm. "What do you want me to do," the guy said, "rescue from your family." Aye, when I looked back upon that phone call and my wild thoughts, I was quite embarrassed that I called the man.
Looking back over the past year, must say I have suffered from milder forms of paranoia.
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