My Musings

I cannot stop humming Hozier’s rendition of this Irish drinking song. The first time I heard it, I was rendered speechless which is ironic because I have been sober (from whiskey) for over six years. Whiskey was my closest friend and also my nemesis. But I started abusing it after I returned to academia back in 2015. But the abuse wasn’t like a light switch, one day I am completely sober the next I cannot go past 5pm without a drink. It was sneaky, gradually creeping up on me till I found myself googling, “Do I have a drinking problem?”.

Turns out if you feel the need to justify your drinking by a google search… you probably have a drinking problem. Hate to say it, but there is also no judgement in the above statement. I’ve been there and done that, and due to my experiences, I am not a judgemental soul. Turns out, abusing substantives is not uncommon in academia. Once I returned to the ivory tower, I learned that a colleague had passed away unexpectedly. After a frank conversation with a friend, I learned that they were also abusing alcohol and taking sleeping pills, and one morning they just never woke back up.

Isolation and academia will do that to you. Also, whiskey. In the greatest twist of irony if you drink enough, you can pass out. But unsurprisingly, drunk sleep is not as restorative as sober sleep. I myself also dabbled in sleeping aids during the height of my drinking. Which is so outside my normal behavior that I can’t even believe that I wrote that sentence. But my memory of being drunk and taking some Benadryl will never go away. By the time my drinking got to that state, I was in my first year of my PhD. I had left my home country behind (also my now ex-husband). I was all alone in a prestigious university studying Islamic Studies, a field that was near and dear to my heart.

That loneliness paired with academic pressure made whiskey a perfect soulmate. It was always available, never gaslit me, and was easy to hide. It was perfect until it wasn’t. It was perfect until I couldn’t wait to start drinking, it was perfect until I started hiding it from my friend with benefits. It was perfect until my face started to swell and I started to smell bad. Alcohol makes you stink. I cannot remember if I smell bad or not, but when you’re drinking two to three beers and then enough whisky to pass out, you’re gonna stink.

Thankfully the second year of my PhD I decided to give sobriety a try. Coincidentally this was also the year my marriage ended. I feel like the catalyst for seeing the potential for sobriety only occurred when I was able to mail in my signed copy of my divorce documents. But that will be a story for another time.

There is a house, one enters it blind and comes out seeing. What is it?

A school.

-the ancient Sumerians.

I began my university experience a bit later than most north Americans. I was 22 when I enrolled at a local community college on the foothills of the Rockies. I was fresh off the boat too. No,  not as a first time immigrant in a new land (that would happen for my PhD), but fresh off the boat in a sense that I had just returned from an overseas trip.

I spent my 21^st birthday not in a bar drinking but on the beaches of Split, Croatia (this was before the drinking started). Why did I go to Split? Well because at the time I was living in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Hercegovina working as a conversation English teacher. I was twenty years old when I moved to the Balkans, and also a newlywed. Why? Because I had no intention on going to university and I wanted to see the world. Before Bosnia I had traveled from France to China, but Sarajevo was the longest I was living in a land that was not my own. And you know what? It was awesome!

I really love the pressure of living/existing in a foreign place. It makes life richer you know? Almost like the difference been 1% milk and heavy cream. But it’s also hard, the stretching and the pulling of my comfort zone is unpleasant. But if you do it in your twenties, it feels less overwhelming.

Sarajevo was my first experience living in a country that did not have a Judeo-Christian background, and I am so glad I did. Before Sarajevo I have never heard the Adhan. During my time there I heard it five times a day for 365 days. Before Sarajevo I had never gone to Mosque. During Ramadan that year a neighbor took me to the small, white, local mosque for prayers. I covered my head, went inside but did not participate for two reasons. One, at the time I was religious as a practicing Christian, so I wasn’t going to pray in a way that was not familiar to me. Also, two: I had no idea what I was doing.

I spent a year in Sarajevo, a year that was transformative for my twenties and thirties. While I was there, I decided that I wanted to pursue higher education. Fast forward three years I found myself sitting in an intro to Islam class taught by a Bosnian professor (In North America) who had a home a kilometer from where I stayed in Sarajevo! Truth is really stranger than fiction.

Now I am approaching my forties, it seems like that life has left me. I am no longer in Academia and am working as a doula. It was really hard to give up my academic dream but now I share space with people I love and fit in with much more than ever before in my life. Queer doulas, earthy doulas, birth doulas, and hippie doulas. We’re a radical bunch and it seems scary to say, but I think I’ve found my people.

Always

“I have spied for you, and lied for you, put myself in mortal danger for you. Everything was supposed to be to keep Lily Potter’s son safe. Now you tell me you have been raising him like a pig for slaughter—’

‘But this is touching, Severus,’ said Dumbledore seriously. ‘Have you grown to care for the boy, after all?’

‘For him?’ shouted Snape. ‘Expecto patronum!’

From the tip of his wand burst the silver doe: she landed on the office floor, bounded once across the office and soared out of the window. Dumbledore watched her fly away, and as her silvery glow faded he turned back to Snape, and his eyes were full of tears.

‘After all this time?’

‘Always,’ said Snape”

-Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

Picture this it is 1998 you are in North America and are about thirteen years old. Suddenly a novel from an unknow author bursts into the fantasy scene. For the next ten years you are immersed in a coming-of-age fiction story about a boy who lived. It was phenomenal. I am still in love with the series and recently re-read it as an almost forty-year-old person.

You know, as I age there are different themes that standout. Take the caption above. When I was twenty-two the Deathly Hallows was published in North America and this conversation between Snape and Dumbledore did not resonate at all. I barely remember registering it. But now? As a soon-to-be middle ager with a kiddo… Reading this quote gives me a frog in the back of my throat. It also makes my heart ache because at age twenty-two I did not know deeply the sorrows of life. But now? I have lived, loved and had both of those things slip away from me. I have people who I thought would always be with me are gone now. I still dream of them, but they are only in my memories.

I know the ache regret. While time has made it duller, on my nostalgic days it can be almost overwhelming. Gone are the days of innocence, the days of extreme (and completely unwarranted) self reliance that fueled my twenties and thirties. I have tried for things and they have not worked out. I have made plans, spent countless dollars trying to change my life, to be a person who I always thought I would be, only to have it fade away into what ifs and should ofs.

So when Snape said, “Always” and I feel that word resonate in my heart I get it. I understand the pain of lost love, I understand how life takes away people you always want to be close. Its hard to manage the pain sometimes, and sometimes I just want to crawl into bed, pull the covers over my face and just sink into oblivion. But I’ve been working on my resiliency, because hiding from life’s problems isn’t really a solution (neither is drinking them away, which I learned the hard way). But my friend Iffy is a business coach and one of her main things she works on with clients is resiliency.  I’m not good at dealing with the unknow which I think has something to do with where life has lead me up to now. But if I can manage to become more resilient I think it will help.

It seems like it’ll be like trying to build some muscle, because there are some days where I am very bad at it. It seems like life has gotten harder recently, maybe because in the past five years I’ve had a kiddo. But the audacity of my early adulthood is nowhere to be felt. But something that I’m learning as I’ve gotten older is not to rely on my feelings, but to keep working regardless. Hmm, maybe I’m becoming a bit more resilient.