Control
As you get older and the world grows more complex and nuanced, you face a choice: fight to maintain control over your reality, or lose confidence in your ability to influence the world.
It occurs to me while looking at my past behavior—that of “managing” people, lying to get my way and control a situation—and in that of my mother and father: a strong desire for control over the world around us.
Yet my mother and I share the same quiet behavior: drinking to excess. My theory on this Sunday afternoon is that being drunk gives us sweet contentment: an unspoken awareness that we don't control the world around us, and the plain outward acceptance of that. We strike up conversations we never would've otherwise had, smoke cigarettes we “quit” years ago, and carry on with strangers that we don't see a future with.
Our fight for control is an unconscious one that manifests in very conspicuous behaviors and routines. Perhaps the only way out is realizing what I'm really doing when I go for a drink. Around friends or not, I'm looking to give up my tight illusory grasp on my environment; to forget, for a night, my fantasy of control.
And why can't I just do that sober?