One Mammal

Tag: alcoholism

  • The Underwriter

    Next in the gallery of rogues that is my psyche is the underwriter. The underwriter, as the name suggests, is working constantly to assess and mitigate risk in my environment. She is constantly trying to predict the worst things that could happen. For example, say my partner goes away for the weekend. She is telling…

  • The Diffident

    If you hadn’t already guessed, my therapist is into family systems therapy. She’s encouraged me to write about all my different “parts” or personality components. She tells me that acknowledging and expressing gratitude are the first steps in reconciling and connecting the disconnected and warring portions of the psyche. At 18-months my son is roaring…

  • The Bruiser

    For someone with a crushing amount of insecurity and self-esteem challenges, I don’t present that way. This is in large part to a persona that has been a longstanding topic of conversation in my monthly check ins with my therapist. Recently I’ve decided to call her “the Bruiser”. The Bruiser appeared early in my life…

  • Dear Darwin,

    I’m writing this with some embarrassment, but total sincerity. We met at a strange point in my life. I had just escaped from my decade-long romantic relationship with an end-stage alcoholic. I had just started to unpack the toxicity of that relationship as well as the impacts of growing up with a closeted alcoholic, my…

  • Daddy Issues and Cake

    For as long as I can remember, my relationship with my father has been strained. This truth is challenged by a small collection of baby photos that suggest we didn’t start this way: young me handling tools next to him working on a car, me standing watching him cook in the kitchen, us playing on…

  • Collateral Damage

    When I was about 8 years old my father lost his job.  Unfortunately, it was part of a string of job losses which lead a once promising engineer-turned-business man onto the path to un-employability. My father, among other mental health challenges, is an alcoholic. Not in the conventional, obvious “rock bottom” sense, but in the…