LIVES OF MEN

LIVES OF MEN

And Eric started to cry, almost uncontrollably, as he tried to tell us of a dream he had.  It was a recurring dream about drinking. Powerful it was, because it was filled with a sense of yearning that he had not felt in years. Frightful it was, not because of the feeling of compulsion to drink but because it took him to places that he could never enjoy again, doing things he could never do again. 

The things he could never do had nothing to do with drinking, but had everything to do with a chronic illness that his wife has and that he struggles with along with her every day. Yearning for years and times gone by and for things done and remaining undone. Things promised and because of circumstances cannot be fulfilled.

And these dreams make him profoundly sad. Had he been drinking he would not have to suffer these dreams, these sleeping/waking dreams of conditions he cannot do anything about. Ordinarily and in the past he had been able to shunt these feelings of loss aside. But the grinding years and the grinding condition of his wife bubbled up this morning and overwhelmed him.

Until I joined AA I had never seen another man cry except for a brief moment at a funeral. But never as routine evocations of sadness, guilt, grief or frankly joy. And yet here, tears as an outlet for deep emotional expressions of men are on view  daily.

Tearfulness is also more likely to be seen in a room of men than in a mixed meeting. There is a natural disinclination for men to cry in front of women even if the reverse sentiments are not necessarily shared. But that has less to do with a sense of discomfiture than a sense of manly comfort when men are among men, confessing and explaining failures, faults, sins and triumphs among those who will know, almost instinctively the truth of what is being said. And if it does not ring true, the men in the room will let you know by some means that will straighten you out.

Truth, only truth, is condoned in these meetings. Half truths, lying, boasting, those are not likely to be countenanced with any degree of humor. We do not tolerate fools and braggarts.

What do men talk about when they are getting sober?

Initially, we often rail against the forces of circumstance that brought us to the dismal places we find ourselves. We complain how hard it is to stay sober. We gripe and grouse about how unfair our families have been to us, how misunderstood we have been.  Often enough, these laments are heard with some tough sympathy, for we have been there, but we are skeptical and we do not hesitate to show and speak our skepticism.

Gentle sympathetic chides are meant to keep the newcomer returning to the meetings but we are trying to get that man past the point where his life is filled with the "poor me isms" to the point beyond when a bit more perspective can be applied to his life's canvas.

But that takes time, and that is not always easy to accumulate with so many years of drinking and drugging.  And with that history our man hoods and sense of self as men has been whittled down to a dull nub which seems as if it will never be able to sharpened again. Our selves seem destined for the emotional dispose-all that our drinking has taken our lives to.

But given the time the "poor me's" the "fuckits", the "I don't giveadamns", and the "it was never my fault by hers, (his, my boss, my father's, my sixth cousin four times removed), will gradually decrease. Time will permit some shape to form where only warped and distorted perceptions existed. Then some reality will seep into the darkness of the cave of misconstrued and ill conceived misrepresentations.

How then does our view of ourselves as men change?

For me, the provider, the quiet absorber of anxiety, fear for the future, worry about fiscal security, pay for the house, pay for the kid, pay for the household, pay for the child's education, all of these took a toll and I had no idea where it would take me.  Frankly, I was ill prepared for the roll of "Provider, father, husband". I don't know how one gets prepped for such life roles but I certainly went from ill prepared to completely at sea.

And when I did not know what else to do, I drank. I drank to dull the fear of all that responsibility. (Of course, one remembers that I did not always drink to escape but when the need came, it sure was an obvious anesthetic and boy did it work well).

Jack said that when he went away to Viet Nam, he was quite happy to shoot things. The sharp focus of war made the pain of daily life a hazy dreamlike miasma that seemed less real than the blood and guts home and family survival.  But the noise in his head, how was he going to quiet that down?  

Well, there was heroin, cocaine and that good old standby - vodka. And that worked for about ten years, in and out of jail houses, institutions, psychiatrist offices, treatment for PTSD. But he kept going back to drinking.

Until he found AA and let it all out.

And cried, and cried, and cried.

What do we want to be men about? We want to be fathers to our children, husbands to our wives, and providers to our families. We want to be just like any other normal man who does not have to wake up to these demons every day, running from dreams of regret, from vacations untaken with spouses sound of body and mind who can enjoy the rest of their lives with us. We don't want to be guilty for being absent for so many years when we did have sound bodies and could have spent some times on the top of the Grand Tetons with a glass of a full bodied Shiraz in our hands.

But that time is gone and sometimes we are only left with our memories and the time we have left with the people whom we love. And the best we can do is learn to live the best we can, every day by meeting other men and finding out how it was that they did what it is that we need to do.

And sometimes that means that we need to come to meetings and share about painful things that we did and did not do.

At other times all we may be able to do is cry, cry, cry.

©  res 6/20/12