Wednesday, December 2, 2009

Following in His Footsteps

Saturday, April 25, 2009 

My dad passed away in 1984 from cancer.  It was a blessing after months of suffering and a lengthy hospital stay.  At the time, I was working on my doctorate and the stress of studying, working in the lab and spending every spare moment at the hospital those last few months leading up to a very bad Christmas, finally took its toll and I ended up dropping out.  Truth be told, not having him to fight with about that career path took a little of the fun out of it for me.  He often told me I was wasting my time continuing in school and that I should find a nice man, settle down and have a family.  The more he said that, the more determined I was to prove the old man wrong.  I failed to see that at some point I would want those very things at which I scoffed in my 20's.  So who proved who wrong....

In 2001 I was diagnosed with cancer myself, albeit an easily treatable form.  And after 30 years of struggling, I was correctly diagnosed with PCOS.  At that point I was smoking a pack a day and drinking with my 'friends' sometimes 3 or 4 nights a week.  A usual evening for me consisted of a 12 pack or half a fifth of Jack Daniels.  I can still remember having a conversation with the Reproductive Endocrinologist treating me then where I asked him about a warning on one of the meds he had prescribed.  The one that said "Do not drink alcohol and take this medication".  He told me I could have 2 drinks per day, but no more or I would risk damaging my liver. I asked him if that was an average of 2 drinks/day thinking that I could still go out one night and get my buzz on.  He said no.  I can still see that large and kinda belligerent woman sitting in his office arguing with him.  That would be the first time someone told me that I was an alcoholic.  And I thought he was full of shit.

My vision of an alcoholic was someone who sat on a park bench clutching their bottle in a brown paper bag.  Someone who couldn't hold a job.  Someone poor maybe homeless.  I was none of those things.  But still what he said bothered me.  Maybe because I had grown up in a home with an alcoholic.  And he never missed a day of work or was any of those things either - but still he was an alcoholic.  And once I saw that, I understood that the doctor was right.  It took years of work to let go that lifestyle - all my friends moved on to the next bar for another round and I stayed home.  I would not see or hear from most of them again.  I stopped smoking.  I discovered the gym and I began to feed my body instead of killing it.  It took a long time, but my life got so much better.  

Recently, I have been thru some deep emotional shit.  Have cut loose a couple of friends, come to understand that my mother doesn't and will never love me and been dumped in close succession by two men I loved deeply.  Those things set off a cascade of doubts in me like I haven't experienced in a long time and I turned to the oldest friends I have, cigarettes and booze, to make it better - which they did for about a hot minute.  And that led to less and less gym time until their was none.  And instead of eating things good for my body, eventually I just stopped eating.  None of that helped for more than a moment.  My body is starving, my lungs are starving and my soul is starving.  And today is the day to begin the work of changing that - AGAIN.  Easier this time because I have succeeded once and will again.  

Kids want to follow in their parents footsteps when they grow up.  That was never part of my plan, but I did it anyway.

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