Black Cherry Polar Seltzer

It happened, finally.

    My father moved out of our family home when I was 15 years old, almost five years ago now. When we were housemates, I had become accustomed to many things that vanished with him. The singular no-show sock abandoned in the hall, or the bathroom, the stripped computer parts hidden and scattered, the Yuengling in the fridge, and the black cherry Polar Seltzer right there next to it. 

    I remember that last case of Polar Seltzer sat in there for a few months, my father being the only one who drank it. When the divorce first happened, he'd just "pop by", drop off the child support money and help himself to a seltzer; they were his, after all. 

    Eventually, my mom was fed up with looking at them and dumped the rest of the case. 

    Tonight, I bought myself a pack of the black cherry Polar Seltzers. Its a little funny to me, to think at nineteen, I'm already converted onto them. It finally happened.

    See, my dad was big on those seltzers when he was manic and declared he had quit alcohol, forever. He'd run a mile down to the YMCA and back, then chug a seltzer. It would last a couple months and then one unlucky case would sit in the back of the black Frigidaire for months, abandoned and unable to fulfill its duty of being "refreshingly natural" to it's enjoyer.

    At nineteen, I have drawn the line already, or maybe just for the first time, with alcohol. I have retreated back to what I know not to work (the black cherry Polar Seltzers) and I'm wishing on my lucky stars that I turn out differently than my father. 

    He doesn't know a word of this, he has no clue that there's a fresh case of his favorite non-alcoholic beverage silently housed next to my mom's dear Miller Lite.

    I come from what some people would call a "drinker household," my brother comfortably walks around with a 32-ounce Modelo on any given morning when he's home.  My dad used to make me laugh the hardest when he would wake me up on his way to bed after the bar, I have video after video of his trademarked Scooby Doo impression, next to him passed out on my floor a few minutes later. 

    I've known for a while that I have a problem. Last winter is a blur, I recapped it to my psychiatrist and called it a "Flora bender", I meant it in good fun, she didn't take it lightly. My problem is just that I take it too far. I can't drink without being the drunkest, and begging for another shot.

    Now, its not like I'm an angry drunk, or a crier, most people regard drunk Flora as being exceptionally fun, and a bit sloppy, a bit trashy. 

    After the winter, I swore off hard liquor, only beer, wine, and seltzer. I kept it up for a while, and I haven't had a hard drink since, maybe, March. But the craving has never left, not necessarily for the liquor, it's not like I'm just a sadist craving to feel the burning of the Svedka, but to feel so light and careless.

    I woke up last Thursday at seven AM and all I wanted was a High Noon. I hadn't drank the night before, or the one before that and recently, it's only been a couple drinks per month. I drank a root beer for breakfast, and I was grateful to have evaded the corrupting force of hard seltzer for a short while. I went through my daily tasks, and with each one, it took great strength to avoid going to the fridge and giving into my whim. Root beer with lunch, and a pre dinner one too, and nothing could curb my craving, but I figured high-fructose corn syrup is much better poison to drink than ethanol.

    Finally, I went to the convenience store, the one my father and I used to walk to when I was a kid. I used the five in my wallet to buy a tall polar seltzer bottle. It helped, a lot. I understood, finally, why my dad couldn't go without that bitter, tasteless drink when I was a kid.  

    I spilled half of it on the passenger side carpet and I dabbed it up with shame of wasting such a valuable substance.

    My mom asked me if I wanted a glass of wine the next night and I obliged. We sat across from each other and I sipped mine from the glass and read a Lena Dunham memoir, she read a crime novel and chugged it from the single-serve bottle it came in. When she finished, she let out a burp to announce the completion. God, I love this woman. This is my problem, that this is normal, this is my life, and I just don't know when to say when. That night, I had only one glass, even though everything in me was reaching out and crying for another.

    When she wakes up in the morning tomorrow and sees that damned black cherry Polar Seltzer in the fridge, I think my mom might call me, frightened that my father has broken in and started living in one of our closets. I'm ashamed to admit to her that its mine, that I'm like him and can't stop once I start, so I need a cure. I don't want to admit to myself that I'm like him, its embarrassing. 

    It's embarrassing, all of it. To think, if I get what I want, get my goal, I won't ever go into a bar and order a drink in my life. I'm most devastated about espresso martinis, I think. I have always wanted to try one, I love coffee like I work at Buzzfeed in 2015 and I've yearned for one since I found out they existed (last year, maybe?). 

    But to think of a life without waking up in a bad mood because you're sober and not ever spilling your guts to a stranger about what ails your soul, makes me content, it makes me really, really happy actually. 

    I would love to have a sense of moderation, in anything really. If my relationship with a Ben and Jerry's quart of ice cream is any clue as to my approach to moderation, then I hope that you can guess the way that philosophy plays out every where else in my life. 

    Whatever, I'll try being sober. I don't have to, like, announce it on my Instagram or tell my relatives, I can test it out and I think if I really have a normal relationship with alcohol, then it should be no biggie to stop, right? 

     My dad has said for the past 2 years that he's been sober for a year and a half. I went over his house once, though and I took note of the lack of seltzer. There wasn't any history of it either, no can forgotten under the table or dropped into the sink like an ill-mannered man such as my father would have. I don't know why it has never gotten longer, the sober streak that he reports. Maybe he just forgets? Maybe every time that he has mentioned it in the past 2 years, he had previously lost and restarted his sobriety exactly 1.5 year before. 

    I'm not sure if the black cherry Polar Seltzer is a miracle drug but, dear God, let it be. And let it work better for me than it ever did for my father. So with each sip I'm taking from the familiar can, I hope I can get a little more strength and courage to put alcohol down for good.