I keep having this thought that I am so, so sick and tired of alcoholism. Like an endlessly degrading, rotting pillar in the palace of life, it threatens everything around it with its structural decay and infectious ugliness.

I am so sick and tired of alcoholism. It makes people talk the way it smells, and then start to look the way they talk. The ashy, droopy, gray face of a consistently poisoned person becomes a mainstay.

I am so sick of alcoholism. It robs me of the chance to know you, and instead, I only know what is wrong with you. It makes loud and obnoxious excuses for a life unlived. It is a sopping, unlovable fiend wreaking havoc wherever it chooses.

I am so tired of alcoholism. It inches us apart and slowly swallows our future into a silent, ever-stretching dreamscape of negated possibilities. Safely carved paths become untraversable, and it will send you back from where you came.

I am so sick and tired of alcoholism. I hate the round, bulbous bloating, the fake cups, the car accidents, the lies, the fights, the tears, the sick, the injuries, the slurred speech like your brain is dying, the piss on the floor, you on the floor, the bruises, the loss of sleep, the destruction of plans, the screaming, the self-hatred, the disease.

I hate alcoholism. I hate how it spreads to every crevice of humanity like weeds and flies and multiplies in family and friends. Maybe you grew up with it all around you. Maybe you forgot you swore you would never become one of them until you were already so deep in the shit, you will probably drown trying to get yourself out now. Maybe you’ve always had reason good enough than the rest of us to have another drink. Maybe you think you are above the need for self control. Maybe this is your suicide. Chances are, you know or think you know that you never had a hell’s chance in escaping its grasp. The infection started too long ago to remember.

I hate your alcoholism. It’s the key to the equation that suddenly makes clearing sense of you. That “ahh” you hear isn’t relief or satisfaction, it’s the realization that it was there almost all along—spilling gibberish from your mouth, balling your fists, and stumbling you around. Suddenly I realize it’s not your alcoholism. It’s the same alcoholism that has surrounded me since I was young—since I was born. All who know it are it. It takes different forms these days, but it is the same pillar, degrading, rotting, filled with snakes and a putrid smell, making it unsafe to travel, and dismantling this palace. I hate your alcoholism. I will never escape it until you do. I hate our alcoholism.

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