Art and Anticrises

Because I’ve realized I’m a victim of others’ habits but ultimately a victim of the choices I make

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TW: ample discussion of substance abuse and mentions of sexual assault

For better or for worse, honesty has been my thing this past month. So bear with me and my impulse to get out of my system something that’s been brewing on paper since the end of March but brewing in my mind for the last three years, if not more.

I dedicate this to you and the summer I lost my mind over what we had. And the secret you told me. And everything you didn’t. To the highs we shared and to the ways you’d shut down, both without a single drop of a bottle. To the way you left, the way you escaped, the way you hurt me. To the way I cried for you while drinking all the margaritas you couldn’t have, but I could, that July.

I dedicate this to you and the years of manipulation masqueraded as friendship that you made me endure. To the touches you blamed on intoxication and the words you hid behind in sobriety. To the giggles and the tears and the fake apologies. To the cocktails I never paid you back for as payback for your games. To every time I smiled when I should’ve walked away.

I dedicate this to you, who didn’t know what consent meant. Despite the emails we were bombarded with. Despite your knowledge of my past. Despite your girlfriend and our friendship and the so-called respect you had for us. And for yourself.

And I dedicate this to you who ruined intimacy for me before I knew what intimacy was, tainting every kiss that came after you with a dose of fear. To you who also didn’t know what consent meant and to you who became the reason I memorized its legal definition as a way to cope when I was eighteen and didn’t even know my way around the subway yet. 

To all four of you, this goes out to you. To remind myself I know better now. And to wish you that you heal.

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I went to see Days of Wine and Roses the week of its Broadway closing because a friend I volunteer with recommended it to me. 

In reality, she didn’t precisely sing it high praises. But she painted it as an interesting musical, one that she said was very very sad. I didn’t believe her. 

I’ve realized I tend to not believe people when they tell me something is going to be very sad (how sad can it really be?). Or that it’s not going to end well (I’m sure it’ll be okay!). Or that I really shouldn’t follow my irrational impulse and do whatever my blindly optimistic mind thinks I should do about it (I just feel like I have to at least try!).

So when I walked out of the beautiful Studio 54 former-nightclub, now-Broadway theater, with tears in my eyes and in complete silence, I was surprised although I really had no reason to be. My friend said, it’s about a married couple of alcoholics who struggle with addiction as it crumbles their marriage and the course of their lives. My friend said, it is terribly depressing and very very sad. My brain thought, a picture of addiction and a representation of love in one of its most toxic yet intoxicating forms? Intrigue me and you have me hooked. Tell me it’s sad and needs fixing, I’ll be there forever. And I wasn’t there forever, it was just a two-hour show, but me showing up with my friend Ava on a busy Thursday was representative of how I operate with matters like this. That while I love being a victim (and witness) of other people’s habits, I’m ultimately a victim of the choices that I make willingly. My willing choices to be a victim of other people’s habits. And oftentimes more than habits, vices.

To your average young woman walking out of the theater, Days of Wine and Roses probably came off as a nuanced but at times romanticized depiction of substance abuse and the power it has to ruin relationships, derail lives and hurt the people that surround an addict, not just the user himself. To this 23-year-old woman, though, it was that but also more. The musical struck a nerve, not because I myself have a problem with substance abuse, but because I unfortunately have a history of becoming emotionally and/or physically involved with men who do. Because I have a past of hurt and trauma that has been tainted by alcohol, whether because of the vices of people I have loved in my adult life or because of situations where I have been taken advantage of in an intoxicated state.

I think I was drawn to this musical in particular for a reason. It’s obvious, really. 

It’s always obvious when we’re magnetically drawn to something. I find that the stronger the attraction the more likely it is we’d prefer to avoid acknowledgement of why. Yes, there are my patterns with troubled, emotionally unavailable men, which apparently extend to their representation in musical theater as well. But more than that there’s the realization that those patterns have been a choice. That there are dozens of play options in New York City any given weeknight, and I chose this one. That there are dozens of good men out there if one were to give healthy love a chance, and that despite that, I’ve chosen to engage as long as I have with people and situations that I know upfront are not good for me. That I’ve fallen and kissed and cried for a bad man one too many times, but that it’s always been the same devil just with a different name each time. That my doom and my pain when it comes to love, through terrible “friends” and even worse lovers, has always been my choice. I chose them. It was my choice.

I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again. 

Choosing. What an important word. 

There’s also my tendency to seek in art and literature and even my past academic work a way to make sense of those things, and people, that have wounded me the most. Art as a means of comprehension of whatever it is that haunts me in the middle of the night. Reading as validation that my feelings are real and rooted in things that exist outside my imagination. Creating as confirmation that what one has lived actually happened and can manifest itself in something that exists for others to see.

I write this and I think of all the lectures I attended on sexual assault and gender-based violence. Of all the feminist literature that sits on my bookshelf and the women-focused courses I took while in school. I write this and I think of the songs I add to my playlists, each charged with hyper-specific associations that only make sense in my head but that make me feel heard in lyrics that someone who doesn’t know me wrote. About the pages in Samantha Power’s memoir that I folded because she too struggled with choosing men who themselves resisted sustained closeness, because for her too that was the only way to avoid loss. Because she too had a “Batcave” in her head that made her feel like she wasn’t enough. Over and over again. Because she too had ideals and ambition to change the world and the drive and determination to kick ass at work, but also a tender heart that made wrong choice after wrong choice in her romantic life until she realized she was the one to blame for her choices. 

She was the one to blame for her choices. Not the objects of her choice. 

They were just being. She was actively choosing. And for a very long time, so was I.

God, did her book change me. God, did this musical too.

When we went to see this show, Ava and I hadn’t been to Broadway in a bit. One thing about Ava: she knows my mistakes very well. Too well, almost. She loses track of names but remembers enough to be able to tell who I’m talking about whenever we find ourselves waiting in a long line for a show, sitting at Hungarian Pastry Shop sharing a cheesecake slice, or snuggling on the subway home after dinner with our friends. 

I love Ava. And I think Ava loves me. Our friendship binds us to each other so long as we live in the same metropolitan area, or even the same side of the coast. I hope I never lose Ava. I’ll help her write her wedding vows. That’s how much I love her. That’s how much she means to me and the role I hope to continue to play in her life when we inevitably end up moving away from each other. Our friendship serves as evidence and a reminder of the good platonic love that I’ve nurtured so lovingly over the years, which gives me hope for my ability to do the same romantically.

Days of Wine and Roses makes you think about your relationship to substances whether you are a big user or not. About codependency, whether you fully understand the psychological definition or not. And it makes you think about relationships more broadly and how easy it is to get hooked on artificial highs, whether you think you personally do or not. No matter how positive or healthy your relationships to these are, these are topics that are often hard to think about with honesty. It’s difficult to confront that we might be flawed when it comes to experiences that are so taboo.

Don’t get me wrong – my relationship with alcohol isn’t perfect. I highly doubt that it is for most people who drink. Mine is tainted by experiences of being taken advantage of and having my trust betrayed when under the influence. Experiences that for one reason or another have tainted my relationship to intimacy. Experiences that I think about almost every day.

Using, abusing, escaping, relapsing. Funny how those words are so relevant when talking about substance dependence but also when talking about emotions. And love. Or things we confuse with love.

Women get used all the time, sexual abuse is a very real thing in modern dating culture, romantic attention is often used as an escape, and we’ve all been guilty of relapsing into the arms of someone we know isn’t good for us after we’ve said we’ve had enough. Love and desire aren’t always a vice, but they sure as hell can be one.

I know sometimes they’ve been one for me. 

I’ve always thought about love as an addiction, in the metaphorical sense of the word. So many songs talk about love as a drug, and when you think about it, nothing really gives you as high of a high or as low of a low as love does. Think about your hardest heartbreak and your purest moments of emotional and physical ecstasy. We know the line between pleasure and pain is a fine one, but what about the line between loving and hallucinating? Between hurting and withdrawing? Between craving and depending?

I still find myself in a place where I question love and its relationship to vice, alcohol or otherwise. Do you kiss me because it’s dark and we have history and I’m a lightweight and a cocktail feels like three when you’re next to someone you want? Or do you kiss me because you want to feel close to me and know all of me like you say you do? 

Do you kiss me because my lips give you a rush that’s hard to find in the mundanity of the everyday, because the office is boring and I remind you that you can feel and know and for a split second own? Or do you kiss me because you care and have curiosity and tenderness and physical affection is how you articulate it?

Care and desire. Beautifully intertwined like in my wildest dreams? Or mutually exclusive like in my best nightmares?

Maybe I should ask him. Or maybe I should really be asking myself. Or maybe this is just the way it is with love and vice.

Maybe it is.

Yours truly y con mucho amor,

Debbie