Not Somebody Else’s Guy

I’m grateful for a new year. I’m grateful for year-end deals. I’m grateful for unexpected adventures. I’m grateful for an open heart and a pirate-y outlook. I’m grateful for the life I get to lead. I’m grateful to be sober today.

Mystery ?? Button

song of the week:

I think if I were to do the work, the numbers would reveal that I’ve listened to this song more than any other over the last ten years. By a pretty wide margin. When I lived in DC for all of those years, a denizen of the bars in the P Street/Logan Circle neighborhood (Shaw, too and also probably Petworth), this song would be on repeat as I kind of drunkenly bopped around the neighborhood(s) looking for adventure and that next drink. Those things were inextricably linked for me back then. Getting that drink was the actually the thing that was connected to everything in my life.

It’s the first Friday of 2025 and things are feeling pretty good over here at Pirate HQ. I had this grand plan for this semi-holiday week that involved lots of relaxation coupled with checking off an unlikely number of projects, taking advantage of what promised to be a quiet week at the law firm. Well, a pesky naming rights deal that took until last night at 10 to get done, had an impact on my plan.1 But, it’s all good, very good, in fact. It’s been almost exactly a year since I got the chance to join said law firm, and I know everyone gets tired of hearing this, but when I let things work out the way they’re supposed to, instead of how I think they should go, well, things work out the way they’re supposed to.

I could try and do the happy, slappy thing where I talk about finding gratitude for even the shitty things, put a creepy/happy clown face on tragedy, but I’m going to take a slightly different tack: This approach works better because you really don’t have that much choice. I spent a lot of 2023 trying to find the next gig and it was not an easy process, we’ll just leave it there. I had lots of ideas that I pursued very diligently, put my full persuasive powers on display, and it took me roughly nowhere.

Things changed when stopped trying to evaluate how I would feel about the outcome, and focused instead on what I was feeling at the moment and expressing that authentically. This sounds pretty basic, I know, but the thing is that us alcoholics don’t really have a great or very accurate sense of ourselves. That’s a big part of the reason this alcoholic became one, the false belief that I wasn’t funny enough or smart enough or appealing enough to be enough for anyone. When I discovered alcohol, it was like standing on the prow of a ship and spying a vast undiscovered land for the first time. I had found the missing piece—the thing that made my life manageable and made me palatable to the world at large.

Well, maybe not always so palatable. There were a lot of years I would have told you that I liked the SOTW for the music only, that the lyrics had nothing to do with it. I’m sorry to say that I’ve put more than one person through the realization expressed in this song. I’m just going to say that my 5th Step and 8th Step and 9th Step, well, those are pretty long lists and kind of daunting endeavors. Being somebody else’s guy was something of a common denominator.

I’m going to tell you from personal experience, this is a dangerous song to have on a playlist that is not completely private.

There might have been a fairly epic Ex- vs. Next situation a number of years ago, where both parties discovered that you could follow people’s non-private playlists on Spotify and both parties knowing my proclivity for expressing myself through music, decided to do just that. It was then discovered that you could see who else was following said playlists and then stalk their social media posts to see whether they were posting links to said songs with either hopeful sunrise-type pictures or bare branches in winter.

This hypothetical situation might have escalated fairly rapidly and might have generated lots of wtf-type comments in texts, emails and even phone calls. I guess there might have been a view that having this song on a playlist was expressing a deep but smirking view of myself. I would scoff and say super-inflammatory things like, “Lighten up, it’s just a song.”

Like I ever think that way.

For the record, I was in rehab again during this hypothetical episode and, at some level, it did provide a much needed distraction from the nonsense that attended being forced to repeat rehab again. In rehab terms, I was the kid who had to repeat the 4th grade at least three times. That sounds terribly callous when I look back on it, but it’s emblematic of where I was and who I was back then. I think my worldview was summed up this way:

No one got access to the real me, that was kept strictly locked-up, even from myself. I’d get involved in a relationship and begin playing the part that I thought was appropriate and that would often work shockingly well, for a while. However, playing whatever role I thought was necessary for the sustenance of this particular relationship would start to chafe. I’d start to feel resentful and unseen and start to blame my relationship counter-party for not being more insightful or intuitive.

That was usually enough to change the trajectory of the relationship; From an orbit that was circling the globe with surprising little friction and stunning views, to one that started to dip down into the flame-producing gravity until the whole thing just ceased to be, burned to a cinder. Alcoholism is a malady that afflicts the capacity for self-honesty. I began drinking as a consequence of a lie I told myself: That I wasn’t ever going to be able to manage the world without it, that the change wrought on me by drinking was necessary preparation for interaction with the world at large.

Later on, alcohol supplied the lies without even really needing to be asked. Alcohol let me say “f*** it,” to just about everyone and everything, whenever necessary. Alcohol let me ignore the consequences of my behavior, let me pretend that nothing really mattered or could affect me. Alcohol created a cocoon where I didn’t have to care about the world or anyone else, a place where I could safely hide. Of course, it wasn’t so safe for everyone else. Their experience was nothing short of bewildering: Falling for someone, things seeming effortless and fantastic and then suddenly nothing’s quite right, doubt and uncertainty replace the weightless feelings and then comes the sudden, blindsiding crash. The moment when they realized I wasn’t really their guy.

I’ve done a couple of 8th and 9th Steps and have started on another one. I know there are people who believe you can knock the Steps out in 30 or 60 or 90 days, and if works for people, that’s very cool. For myself, five years in, I find that I’m still coming to understand what I did and why, and still coming to understand the consequences for everyone else. I know I have perfectionist tendencies that lead me to procrastinate, but I do think that what I owe people and myself as part of that process is some understanding of what happened and why. Not like this:

I tell people that the ultimate beneficiary of the 8th and 9th Step is the alcoholic. I don’t think it’s necessarily connected to being forgiven or absolved; I think the value comes in the self truth-telling and acceptance. A proper 8th and 9th Step requires being honest with oneself about what really happened and why. I don’t think you can seek to make amends to someone else until you’ve taken yourself to the woodshed and had your own “come to Jesus” moment.

The other consequence of conducting a self-honest 8th and 9th Step is discovering the true nature of love. Maybe the rest of you know all of this, but I was an alcoholic since I was 15 or 16 and I have a lot of catching up to do. It turns out that the essence of love, the thing at the very bottom, is acceptance. I wrote this last week and have been thinking about it since:

I see those magical people, and my grandfather is the leader of that particular pack, as the people who helped me find the person I was meant to be. The way they did this?

They were themselves and they accepted and loved me for who I was.

The most damaging lie I told myself was that people couldn’t love me for who I was, that it was necessary to divine what they wanted and play that part, instead of just being myself. Unfortunately, that’s not a path to a sustainable, happy life. I had to learn that the hard way and too many times. What I’ve finally learned over the last five years is that acceptance, along with gratitude (they are linked) is an unbelievably potent force. It’s acceptance and gratitude that is at the bottom of real love, I believe.

I’m glad it’s 2025. I typically don’t relish odd-numbered years, but this somehow feels different. It’s possible I’m living in a bit of a cocoon these days (the word keeps coming out of my mouth), but it’s very different than the alcoholic faux cocoon I once inhabited. That was more of an escape vehicle, something I could jump in and speed away from the scene of a crime or a heartbreak. These days, I’m trusting the process, believing in myself, accepting myself for who I am, accepting others on the same basis and letting whatever it is that is supposed to happen, finally happen.

I’m hopeful, happy, hungry and ready to get after it this year. I have no idea what the year has in store for me, but I know this, I’m my own person these days. I finally have a sense for who I am and what I’m supposed to be doing and it’s completely liberating. I spent a lot of wasted years trying to be somebody else’s guy. You know the song I can’t stop listening to these days and how it ends.

I’ve done a lot of foolish things, that I didn’t really mean, I could be a broken man, but here I am, with the future in my hands

Happy Friday.