My name is Sean and I'm an alcoholic.

I debated for a long time how I'd start this post. Should I get to the point, or would that be too melodramatic? In the end I decided to split the difference. So, yeah. Alkiehaulick.

Then there's the other question: Would people be pissed off because I worried them for no reason with that abrupt cut-off and incoherent follow-up, or would they just be happy that I was back pretty much safe and more or less sound? Normally I'd think I'd be being egocentric to ask a question like that of myself, but I've looked at the comments for the last few posts. Total strangers want to know if I'm okay, which is both--what's the word--flattering? comforting? surprising? pleasing? well, it's both that and embarrassing considering how shittily I've been acting. Looking through those comments I can also see that some of my oldest and dearest friends want to know the same thing, which is all those things I just listed, only doubly so. Humiliating. And then there's Amy, who--I can't even begin.

The long and the short of it is that nothing "happened" on Thursday. I just got tired of writing, tired tired tired as Chris Rock used to say. I was also more than a little exhausted by the issue about which I was writing, which I hope you'll understand. So I gave up on trying to wax eloquent about it and slapped the little orange Publish Post button. And then I grabbed a beer. That's it, that's all, except I'm not sure if I was without a drink for the rest of the weekend. Drinks and pills, too, might I add. Mild enough for a while. After all there was only so much to go around.

What really set it off was when I went out on the deck on Sunday morning at dawn after waking up to use the bathroom and saw a half-eaten golden retriever in my neighbor's yard.

Have you ever seen a black explosion? Like a big burst of dark like the Death Star exploding in reverse negative? Like when you press against your closed eyes with your fingertips and you see those big black blobs--that kind of blackness, only bursting. That's what I saw then.

After that--fuck it, I'd be lying if I said I didn't remember much. The part of me that could still formulate coherent and complex decisions decided that I didn't want to let Amanda know about this, and I didn't want to run the risk of her spotting the body when she woke up. So I slipped on my sneakers, crawled down the side of the deck, swung against the side of the house, and dropped down. I grabbed a shovel from the shed and hopped the back fence. Immediately you could tell that our neighbors weren't around anymore, at least in the traditional sense. The sliding glass doors from their deck were broken and the boards were torn down on one side. My guess, which as I'm sure you all have experienced is no longer just a guess but instinct from your solar plexus, was that the family had taken care of whatever had happened and split, not that they had all been slaughtered and were wandering around in there someplace. Four or five revs a few yards away from us? We'd have heard about it by now. Fuck, I probably would have heard about what DID happen that night if I didn't go to sleep pretty much toasted. No, that's not fair. I slept with earplugs in as always. Maybe that's dangerous, but it's definitely the only way to get a good night's sleep without waking bolt upright every time your sleeping self hears a noise.

Anyway, my hunch was right. I peeked through the hole and there was one on the floor face up with its forehead bashed in, the skull shattered and cracked like an eggshell where the skin was torn away. As usual lately it was old, an old lady. I tried to ignore the fur gummed to its lips but obviously I couldn't pull it off.

It didn't take too long to dig the hole and bury the doggie, poor doggie, poor man's best friend. I'm sure I overexerted myself because my arms still ache. (Remember Ronnie Cox in Deliverance?) The bright idea came after I filled the hole back up and slid the table back over it. It was difficult to do all that climbing against the force of gravity with the bottles and the cans, but I managed. When I was rummaging I found a backpack they'd left, so that helped.

It was pretty much downhill from there. I already have a tendency toward bouts of extreme self-pity and nihilism, did you know that? It doesn't manifest itself very often, but there it was. Strange things can set it off--one time it was because Ol' Dirty Bastard died. Another time it was because of the Pakistani madrassas. This time the cause was obvious, and I'm sure you've felt it too. Only this time I was loaded for bear. By the time Amy woke up I was half in the tank, and she immediately grabbed some things and went down to the Leopolds. Didn't I understand what this did to her? Not just because she needs me, but because she's scared? The emetephobia--what the fuck is wrong with me that I didn't give that more thought? But I didn't. She left me alone, which was fine by me.

At some point Sunday, Kurt came home and found out what was going on. He came upstairs to talk some sense into me. I told him okay, fine, I'll go easy, just send Amy back up plese, because I really love her. She didn't want to come back up because she was terrified I'd vomit--she'd come up when I was sober the next day. That went over great, as you can imagine. At some point late that night I apparently started making noise, which besides being annoying is dangerous. Kurt decided to come up again. When he got there I was sipping Jack from a big red cup, like I'd done at the Game this year when some stranger handed me a cup of what I'd thought was beer. I did a lot of yelling of the words "fuck you" from what I remember/have been told. Before I threw the cup at him I drank a shitload too much of it. The next thing I can vaguely sort of remember is crawling down the deck again. I can only see flashes, remember little snippets and sensations from then on. This is only the second time I've ever blacked out from drinking, you know. The last was at Matt O'Neil's party freshman year when I helped make that grain and grape concoction. Then I remembered saying to myself "I'll pour myself one more cup and then head back over to that conversation I was having." I was found several hours later passed out around a toilet that several people had used while I was sleeping there. One shoe was missing. At some point I'd screamed about how "dope" (that was the word I used) one guy's female friend was while that friend was standing right there. That morning I had to go to class, still drunk, hung over, bursting at both ends, could barely make it back to my dorm room to get my books first, felt like it took two hours to walk over there, missed half the class from being late and being in teh bathroom sick, I think I'd prefer to talk about that now rather than this.

In my own defense even as far gone as I was I remember thinking I needed to get as far away from Amy as possible to vomit, which I did, again and again.

I woke up because it was hot and sunny out and I felt like I was on fire. I was wedged behind the dumpsters at the Walgreens up the road. The second I realized where I was and what had happened I got sick again. This is going to sound stupid, but I literally could not decide which was worse, leaving myself out in the open completely incapable of defending myself, or disappearing and leaving Amy thinking that I was dead. She would never forgive me, ever ever ever. As soon as I could get my sea legs back under me I ran back home as fast as I could. There was a crew parked outside talking with Kurt. They'd been looking for me, of course, so nice of them. I went inside and back upstairs and suddenly the whole hangover hit me at once. I was vomitted out thank Christ, but I could barely move. I fell on the bed and the last thing I heard before I crashed out until that afternoon was Amy crying.

I don't really want to talk about what we said to each other yesterday night into this morning. I'm kind of apologizing to you for that. I'm tired of the reticence about dealing with this issue in my family. Hell, I'm even reticent about saying which member/s of the family need to deal with it, as you can gather. But you don't need to know. Only Amy needs to know and she knows it. All the old issues, the dishonesty and lack of self-control issues...totally different context but too fucking familiar. We are still married, I think. But not through any effort on my part.

I nearly threw away my wife, my home, and my own life this weekend is what it boils down to. I thought writing about it would help me wrap my head around all this but I'm not sure that's possible. I don't want to be destroyed by this, any of it. I don't want me and Amy to be destroyed by it. I love you, Amy, I love you so much. I'm sorry. No more, no more.