Dark Thirst

I can't believe it. I appear to have lost another passport. I wasn't even looking for it, I was actually looking for my food handler's certificate, which I haven't needed in the 18 months or so since I got it. Suddely I'm going to a hospitality agency tomorrow and they need to see it and I cannot find it anywhere. And along the way I realised that my passport was not in the passport place. I found the one that I thought was missing three years ago when The Dreaded One and I went on the big trip (TDO had removed it from my passport place and put with her stuff because she thought it was safer there... and not knowing this, three days before we left I had to get an emergency passport replacement. I found that the original had been in with her stuff a year after we got back from that trip).

But now... I have no idea where the food handler's certificate is or the passport. It's not in The Dreaded One's stuff... it's doing my head in.

But I did find this advertisement. That's me at the end of the table, lots more hair than I have now and much more cheeks. I was a bit chunky back then.

And if you know me, you'll appreciate how funny it is that I am some kind of poster boy for alcohol restraint. It is deeply funny. I have been uber booze monster at times.

I have a story brewing called Dark Thirst. Companion story to the one about the time I overdosed on drugs. Booze, when it gets its claws in, it ain't funny. Hangovers? I laugh at them. Hangovers are nothing compared to proper addiction. Hangovers are a walk through a field of daisies. Booze addiction... it's a monster in a cage. It rattles that cage and jangles your nerves and fucking owns you, and the struggle to get through that is a kind of hell. You don't sleep it off. It's just not that easy. It really is fucking awful.

But if you are lucky, you get through it. You find a kind of peace. You appreciate being in control. You say goodbye to the anxiety attacks and the fear and the constant nausea and feel happy that you can just pick up a fucking glass of water without shaking so much you spill it everywhere.

Mostly, people haven't suspected a thing. I am nothing if not a trouper. Some days, some weeks, when I think about them, I really don't know how I made it through.

So yeah, the poster above, it's funny because when booze is fun it's the best. But the poster is also uber ironic given what I have been through.

Life. Funny old thing.

I'm hopng to write Dark Thirst soon. It won't be light-hearted (though there might be funniness in there), but I feel the need to write about it. There's no point going through this shit if you can't use it.