‘I wasted time and now doth time waste me’.
Now there’s a cheerful thought to begin or end your day on. It’s taken, of course, from Shakespeare’s ‘Richard II’, the scene in Pomfret Castle near the end where the doomed king ruminates on what has led him to this place of hopelessness and death. I recall a very dear friend of mine, who also had addiction issues, being blown away by these words when I – pointedly – mentioned them to him. ‘Fuck me Jordan’, he said (he always used my surname) that’s brilliant’. It is indeed brilliant but also impossibly sad and, as my friend clearly recognised, pertinent to the life of an addict. The amount of time wasted on drinking or substance abuse of any kind is immense, the effect tragic. Hours, days, weeks, months and then – you realise with horror – years go by and the only thing that has changed is the extent of your problem, which has simply become much worse. In the meantime, you’ve missed out on all manner of things that you can’t get back or re-live.
When you’re younger of course, none of this seems to matter very much. As for Richard II, I read and saw it first when I was about 16 and, despite being walloped over the head by this particular line, I went on to waste more time than your average person, always playing catch-up in life, or so I felt. I truly dread to think of the time spent wasted on drink. Not so much the socialising, happy aspect of it, which I’ve certainly enjoyed. The camaraderie and warmth that spring out of ‘normal’ social drinking are genuinely warm in my memory and have brought me lifelong friendships with people I love and trust. What you waste comes as the drinking gets worse. The time spent nursing increasingly ruthless hangovers, sometimes all day in bed and on into the next. The time spent with doctors, psychologists and in hospital, when you could have been with your kid, or doing just about anything else worthwhile. The time wasted on being wracked with anxiety, guilt and self-loathing. The list goes on growing, along with a rising feeling of terrible foreboding.
Whatever our religious or spiritual beliefs we all know, in our hearts, that we have only one life to live. You can believe in, but not rely on, notions of an afterlife which may turn out anyway to be – as Christopher Hitchens once noted – ‘a celestial North Korea’. But with just this one life in mind every moment needs, really needs, to count, because it surely won’t come again. This moment here, the one you’re living in right now, is precious to us all.
Of course, if you’re living in active alcoholism the only moment that counts, the moment you begin to live for, is the moment when you can drink again. Not that long ago, I used to sit in a cold sweat waiting for the very moment when the liquor store opened. I recall walking through the open door of the nearby bottle shop at 9:58am, to a weary look from the guy, who then had to watch the clock on his till until 10am ticked round and he could legally serve me. Longest two minutes of my life and another two wasted, to add to an already long list. One of the highlights of my time in active drinking was discovering that a nearby pub opened at nothing less than 8 in the morning. I couldn’t believe my luck. ‘Used to be 6’, an old local told me ruefully.
However you try and cast it, for me at least, a moment spent drunk is a moment wasted, a moment where I could have been more alive to other possibilities or even a moment spent gently noticing the life that unfolded around me.
But there’s little point in wallowing in regret, another favoured pursuit of the addict. What’s gone is gone and here I am now, living in the moment more fully than I have before, each word I write an expression of that. I’ve wasted time for sure, we all have. The aim, of course, is to be aware and not wait, like the doomed king in his castle, until it’s all too late to bring back.
One day at a time.
Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash
Be the first to comment