Resolution 2010: Love thyself

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December 31, 2009

Lorraine C. Lordi

"Under the Influence" is a compelling essay by Scott Russell Sanders that reveals one man's lifelong struggle to come to terms with his father's alcoholism, a disease which ultimately unhinged a family and destroyed his father's life.

When I assigned the essay for my freshmen writing students to read last month, I knew most, if not all, would be affected by this piece in one way or another. It's honest writing, loaded with details, including many synonyms we use for people who abuse alcohol: pickled, plastered, polluted, soused, stoned, smashed, bombed, blotto, trashed, wasted.

In my students' written responses to this piece, though, I never anticipated the nouns they would add to this list: uncle, aunt, grandfather, cousin, brother, best friend, mother, father.

An 18-year old woman with thick, auburn hair wrote, "Mom said Dad was a lost cause. So she packed up my younger sister and me and drove an old U-Haul from California to New Hampshire. Six months later, I made the soccer team. That same day, I heard Dad died of liver failure. I was twelve-years old."

With equal honesty, a thin, pale student shared his story: "I never saw my father without a drink. My mom said she was holding on until I graduated from high school. Then she would leave him. But last December, my dad left us. During the ice storm, he went to work for the power company and got lost. That's what the newspaper said. But my mom and my sister and I knew the truth. He had his best friend, that bottle, in the front seat with him. He didn't get lost and die because of the storm. He died because he was drinking."

And yet, another tragic memory: "I remember crying and whispering to my mom when I saw her lying in her coffin, 'Wasn't the love of me, your nine-year old son, enough to make you happy?'" This response came from a quiet young man with clear blue Irish eyes. He never expanded on the details of his mom's drinking or of her death. He didn't have to. The struggle was clear: If you love well enough, can you save another person from his or her own demons?

In a word, no. Psychologist tell us that people harboring secret shames and fire-breathing demons feel so guilty and unworthy that they don't believe for a minute that they are loveable. Embracing that untruth, they - we - can't even love our own true selves. In fact, we no longer even remember who those precious selves are.

Somewhere along the way, our true spirit gets lost in all the muck and madness of the whirling, spinning world. Maybe it gets lost in childhood. Or later, when we leave home and journey on unsteady legs into what feels like an apathetic and impersonal world.

Whatever the case, if we don't realize how valuable we are and how important our lives are in the whole web of life, then we harm ourselves - with booze or other drugs or other compulsions. In the process, we alter the lives of all those around us, too. The little son weeping at a mother's coffin. The daughter whose father never saw her play soccer. The college freshmen who goes home each weekend to console his mother.

Among my 32 students, at least half of them knew someone who hurt themselves with alcohol. An uncle with three young children who is now in jail. A father whose raging temper keeps a young woman from going home. A best friend who died in a car accident. An older brother who lives on the streets. And on and on.

You don't have to wait until New Year's to make this simple resolution: From this moment on, promise to love and take care of yourself.

You deserve that. So do your loved ones. And so does the whole world, too.

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Lorraine Lordi lives in Londonderry. To order her collections of Derry News columns or sign up for one of her writing workshops, go to www.plumriverpress.com.