On Alcohol

I almost never drink alcohol. I'm here today to explain why.

I've seen a lot of alcohol problems in different older, adult family members over my lifetime. Interestingly, all the people I can think of either were bipolar or had been treated for psychiatric illnesses in the past. My grandfather is the most obvious example -- I never saw him drunk, but I never saw him without a glass of alcohol in his hand either.

Other family members were slyer, but their alcohol problems still showed in little ways. Drunken phone calls, big bottles of alcohol left out with the trash, and other things.

I also saw the effect alcohol could have on someone's innocence in high school. It seemed like all the popular girls around me were forever talking about birth control and pregnancy tests. I'll never forget one particular incident.

I was sitting in math class, and the teacher was letting us work on our assignments in class. There was a low buzz of chatter throughout the room, with students talking as they worked. Some boys talking behind me were loud enough for me to be unable to avoid overhearing them. I can multitask, so I listened as I worked.

One boy -- who had a girlfriend he kissed every afternoon outside our math class -- was talking about the many girls he had fucked at the latest party. They had all been drunk, and he'd fucked about three different girls throughout the night. One girl was so drunk that she just kind of lay there. He relayed this with great humor and exaggeration, and he and his friends laughed as they rated the girls. They talked about getting the girl with the best score a fake trophy from the local 99 cent store.

Later, at the end of math class, one boy had noticed me listening. He seemed to automatically assume I wasn't one of the girls discussed -- I wear nice jeans and classy sweaters, don't wear makeup, have short hair and glasses, and have a kind of reserve to me that forbids popularity. I guess I must have been paler and more shaken than usual, because the boy said, "I'm sorry you had to hear that. These girls, they need to learn to respect themselves." In other words, it was the fault of the girls. They got drunk, they took the risk.

I promised myself I would never end up like that.

One incident really cemented it for me, though. I grew up next door to a certain man. He had it all -- he had a great life. A pretty wife, a job he liked working on cars, a nice house with a pool that was near the beach, a couple of dogs, and lots of friends who came over every weekend.

But this man had a drinking problem. He drank heavily every weekend, and had ever since he was a teenager. He came over one day, pale and sweaty. It was me who opened the door. "Do you have some Advil?" he asked, shaking and twitchy. "My head and back really hurt."

I went inside to get the Advil, and I heard a horrible, heart-wrenching scream from outside. I ran back to the doorway to find the man lying face-down on the ground. He'd had a seizure.

An ambulance was called, and the man ended up being okay. The seizure was small. The EMT said that the seizure had been caused by excessive drinking over a long period of time. If the man didn't stop drinking, another, bigger seizure could happen again.

The man promised to stop his drinking habit. But then he hurt his back at work, while saving another man from being crushed by a car. He was lying around his house all day, bored and in pain, and he started drinking again. He hated himself for being unable to quit his drinking habit.

One night, he got on his motorcycle and drove out to a local bar. He drank in the bar for a while. Then he got back on his motorcycle and drove out in front of an oncoming semi truck. No one could tell if he'd done it on purpose or not. He was dead on impact.

The whole town went out to his funeral -- everybody had known him and loved him. My family went, but I didn't go. Not because I didn't care, but because I'm selfish and I hate funerals. This man's death had shaken me deeply. He'd been a good friend of the family, and his horrific death because of alcohol frightened me.

I sat there in the quiet, empty house, and I thought about him. Probably throughout the whole funeral. I sat down, got up, sat down again. I paced a lot. I couldn't stop thinking about how he had died.

In the end, I promised myself: I would never get into drinking. Not at parties, not with friends, not ever.

And because of this, I have always stayed away from drugs and alcohol.

On Dying and Religion

I have faced death twice.

The first time, I was about nine. I was walking outside in the summertime wearing a pair of shorts, on my way to a friend's house. I walked out my front door and down my walkway, and I saw something small curled up on the end of the walkway. I stopped, puzzled, and stared at it. Then I ran inside and got my Dad.

"Dad!" I said. "There's something curled up outside. It looks like a piece of poop."

For some reason, this seemed to alarm my father. He hurried outside to see what it was.

It later turned out to have been a rattlesnake. A baby, actually. If I'd come any closer, it probably would have bitten me. The babies don't know not to put all their venom into you when they bite (it kills them too) and if it had bitten me, I'd probably have been dead instantly.

So that time I faced death without realizing it.

The second time, I was very well aware I could die. I was in the local choir in high school. We went on a camping trip to the nearby river, which was set deep into the woods. There was whitewater rafting at the river, which is basically paddling in a raft across river rapids, and I decided to try it.

Our raft leader was an aggressive, peppy blonde woman with a ponytail. With her standing up straight in the back, shouting where to go, we paddled our way across the choppy river. Then our raft leader led us straight toward a whirlpool, exclaiming that it "sounded like fun!" The minute we hit the whirlpool, the raft tipped straight over and tossed us right into the foamy white river rapids. (The only one who didn't fall out was the raft leader. Typical.)

This was dangerous enough. But I'd gotten tangled up with another boy -- I'd been tossed into him when the raft had tipped over. We were caught underneath the fast moving water, tangled up in each other and struggling to free ourselves.

At last, I managed to push free and made it to the surface, gasping for air. The raft leader saw me and pulled me back up into the raft. I later realized the river had been moving so fast it had literally ripped some of my clothes away from me.

That time, if the river had slammed me into a rock or if I had drowned caught by the limbs of the boy, I could definitely have died.

I have often wondered what death would be like. For someone who's been suicidal, this is of absolute necessity. It's impossible for a suicidal person to avoid thinking about death.

I had a dream once. In the dream, I was floating in a... substance. It was sort of like white, sort of like silver, sort of like light. It's impossible to describe. Floating before me were people. There was a long line of people, and they were all smiling and holding hands. I remember distinctly a little old Black man holding the hand of a small blonde girl -- the two bridged the gaps between age, race, and gender easily.

I knew somehow that these people were dead, and that they were also happy. For them, there was no contradiction. These had been their living forms, but they were not their ultimate, natural forms -- these people were putting an illusion up before me, of how they felt, to try to comfort me in a way I could understand.

All of a sudden, a warm presence wrapped around me from behind. It felt sort of like a hug. I couldn't see or really even feel the presence, but I knew it was there. Let me try to explain to you what I mean.

I used to have sleepovers with my Nana, my grandmother. We would lie next to each other in the big sofa bed in the living room late at night, in the dark, and watch cartoons together. I couldn't see my grandmother next to me, but I knew she was there, and I felt safe and protected. It was like that.

And when that presence hugged me, I suddenly felt like everything was going to be okay. Somehow, I felt, that this presence was God.

That's when I woke up. It took me a few seconds to realize there were tears on my cheeks. I was crying.

I'm not sure if the dream really did come from God, but I'd like to think that it did. God didn't tell me anything specific, anything particularly great. Just that the dead are happy and everything's going to be okay. But that's all I ever needed to hear. Ever since the time of that dream, I have never doubted the existence of God.

I'm not a particularly religious person. I don't go to Church every Sunday. I have my own private beliefs about how the universe works, and I'm perfectly fine with them. But I do believe certain things. For example:

That the universe has a creator, and that creator exists around and beyond the universe. For lack of a better name, I call this gender-less, bodiless presence "God."

That by studying science, we become closer to knowing God's creations and miracles.

That when we die, a collective energy leaves us.

That this collective energy will eventually find its way back into the space beyond the universe, with God.

That our energy lives in the earth and air for a while, and thus goes through multiple existences in different bodies. That we remember subconsciously what we learn throughout our lives.

That we are punished for our bad deeds -- whatever we do to others, will eventually find its way back to us. Maybe not in this life, but sometime, eventually, it will always find its way back to us. So be careful what you do and how you treat people.

I put my faith, as always, in God.