Living Out Loud volume 13: Drinkin' buddies

It's been a while and I assure you I'm still alive. This month has just been a little hectic. Last weekend was Ian's first plane trip to Boston and my mother came with us to watch him while Rich and I were doing our conference duties. In addition to being a great babysitter, it was a treat to have that much time to just chat with Mom. One thing I noted was several of her stories involved my grandparents and her friends' parents drinking. I think every single friend my mother had as a kid had at least one alcoholic parent. Apparently it was just the thing to do. Amazingly, my mother hardly drinks herself.

This brings me to our Living Out Loud theme for the month. Tell me about your relationship with alcohol. Are you a cheap date? Is your liver about to secede from your body in protest? Did you have a great experience the first time you got drunk? Do you even remember the first time you got drunk? Are you the perennial designated driver? Do you have a really great "no shit there we were" story?

Details include:

• Write something personal about yourself using the previous paragraphs as a guideline. Do not feel that you have to address each issue above. The spirit of this project is to share something about yourself; I'm just throwing out ideas.

• Once you have completed your entry and posted it, please email me the link at genie [at] inabottle [dot] org. Remember, if you don't email me, I'm likely to forget to include you in the recap!

• If you do not have a blog to host your story, you can email me the story directly and I will add it here as a guest post giving you credit. The more the merrier!

• The due date for entries is Sunday, February 7th (the first Sunday of the month) at 5pm Eastern.

• Once I have collected all the entries, I will post a wrap-up to list them all and announce a winner. The winner will receive some sort of prize to be determined but all participants will receive fame and glory and a link on our Living Out Loud blogroll.

Mosey up to the bar and bear your soul to the bartender. It's just between us.

Recap of 12th Living Out Loud project: To all the girls/guys I've loved before

This was by far one of the hardest Living Out Loud Projects so far (for me at least), so kudos to those you who rose to the challenge. It's always hard to write something personal about someone else that both you and that person can bear to read. Which is why I'm so pleased to have as many entries as I did this month, given the tough subject and my lack of promotion for it (December was a hectic month for me). Let's see what everyone brought to the table for our reading pleasure. Grace's To All the Girls/Guys I've Loved Before This is a great entry and very true to what I envisioned for this month's theme. Let's all just gloss over the train wreck portions of any past relationships and focus on how it felt to be held. And I totally agree that we have much to learn from each relationship we're in, no matter if it's the "right" one or not.

Megan's Ode to an Ex For obvious reasons Megan's subject matter is near and dear to my heart. It's been a big year or so for her as she's found a friend she'd lost for a long time and gained some more connections from it to boot. The boy she loved all those years ago is not the man I'm married to today in many ways, but there are lots of great features they share in common.

SuziCate's Love is Not Always Lovely SuziCate worried she didn't really qualify for this theme given her early marriage, but I found all her crushes and fleeting romances educational all the same. I certainly didn't have a long list of previous beaus myself. I found myself rooting for the nice guys over the hunks in her list.

Deb's To All The Girls/Guys I've Loved Before I admit to being a little bummed Deb didn't write about her most recent Ex, because I think there has to be a great story in there. But like she said, that's a little to close to home still. I did love reading her line of what she learned from each relationship. I still think there's someone out there who would be affectionate with her and give her plenty to talk about.

And my own An open love letter to my ex-husband

Again, huzzah to each and every one of you who participated this month. I knew this would be a challenge but wanted to finish out the first year of this project with a theme that really spoke to the idea behind this of sharing part of ourselves with everyone.

This month I pick Deb as our winner. Her list was simple, but I loved a lot about it. Even her preface of "for every relationship that failed there was a happy beginning" really gives a great snapshot of what I was trying to do this month. Deb will be getting a $25 Amazon gift certificate as her prize. Hooray for Deb!

As we close out this first year of Living Out Loud, I want to personally thank all of you for taking part in it. We've had 35 authors participate this year and countless readers and comments. I hope that these topics entertain you and keep you on your mental toes. I'm looking forward to the next year!

An open love letter to my ex-husband

The entire time I was in the hospital with ketoacidosis, everyone called you Mr. Powell, assuming you were my husband. I don't even know if we had been dating a month at that point (time has made all those memories fuzzy). I was 18 years old. I fell in like with you because you were funny, clever and weren't afraid to dance around in a kilt. I fell in love with you because you were honest, kind and always tried to do right by me. Our relationship from beginning to end certainly gets an A for effort, if nothing else.

Our time together seems like a different world to me. I didn't think I was really old enough to have lived multiple lives, but I hardly recognize the people I see in photos of us. We always had music playing in the living room, but the TV was in another part of the house to keep distractions at a minimum. The other day I had a flashback of patching the crotch in your jeans because we were too poor to buy you new ones when they wore out. I don't know that anyone has seen your upper lip since you were a teenager and could grow that luxuriously long red beard over it, but I remember that you had the softest lips ever. We cooked and ate many meals together, grilling even in the snow, and I have fond memories of sitting across a table from you over our plates and having your full attention.

As we spent more time together, I met more of your friends and family. I found more and more wonderful people who thought the world of you and only wanted the best for you. You have a great PR campaign of compassionate people surrounding you. Everyone was on Team Jeremy, trying to help you catch a break. It seemed like a great team and one I wanted to be on too.

You were a good player on Team Genie as well. I changed jobs and we moved across the state to a town you knew nothing about and hardly anyone there. From the moment we moved into the house, I was gone on the road, spending more nights in hotel rooms across the country than in our bed. You stayed home to tend the fires there, caring for our neurotic dogs and grumpy cats. There are lots of men who would have balked at my game plan and stubbornly stood in the way.

But you never stood in the way. You never yelled. You wouldn't even really fight with me, sitting stoically on the sofa while I stomped and ranted and worried the pets. And up to the very end, you never lied to me. No matter how many times we had a conversation about breaking the proverbial lamp, you always admitted any fault and were genuine about it. I always knew what I was getting from you. Unfortunately, it turned out to be not enough for me.

We went through more beat up old cars and W-2 tax forms each year than I'd care to remember. Together we got you a bachelors degree, almost all of a graduate degree and your first full time job with benefits.

You are a good man with a good heart. I always tried to get others to see what I did - that even if you were a bear who happened to enjoy dancing, you were much more than a dancing bear. A friend told me as our marriage was falling apart, though, I changed over the years but you never did. I think I changed into a person who could no longer be on Team Jeremy. But you never stood in my way.

Love, Genie