Drinking guilt

June 25, 2004

Isn’t it fun to look back through old journals…old papers…etc? Today I was looking through the songs I’d written during my sophomore/junior year of college. One in particular makes me laugh. And laugh…and laugh…yah, and laugh some more. It was the week after I turned 21. I had spent the previous January in Germany and enjoyed the European drinking age with some fellow Whitworthians!

I had spent the month with a few people on the trip, enjoying our evenings, drinking beer, Bailey’s on ice and Chianti. I came home and wanted to go out with one of the girls after I turned 21 (yah, I had a crush on her) so we had our date all set up, but that night she called and I took the rain check. So there I was, alone in my apartment on a Friday night…and I had been all psyched up to spend the evening with a very cool girl, drinking. So…I wasn’t going to let myself down - I drove to the Chevron which was just 1/2 block from my apartment and picked up 3 Mike’s Hard Lemonades (and this was before all the fun flavors…anyone had the new Lime? It’s fabulous). I went straight back to my apartment, and started drinking them. By 1/2-way through the 3rd, my conservative/Evangelical guilt-o-meter kicked into high gear and I felt HORRIBLE for doing this, for drinking to “get the buzz” and I poured the last 1/2 of the 3rd one down the sink. And I went to be feeling like God hated me.

I woke up the next morning, still feeling horribly guilty and wrote these lyrics (it’s as far as I got):

In the Morning
My son wakes up in the morning
from a long night of repentance
The bottles are lined up on the counter
and his heart is sore from its ache

My heart broke in two
with each drink I saw him take

chorus 1
but he is my son, my precious son
and I love him, forever
for he is my son, my precious son
and there is nothing he can do
that will separate my love from him

I can’t help but look at myself with a look of sincere…well, compassion? Or…maybe my look is more like, “WTF?!” Seriously though, I told my buddy John (who was my roommate in this apartment) this story when I saw him down in Pleasanton, CA 2 weeks ago, and he just laughed at me. How can you not laugh at this young (well, it was only 3 yrs ago) conservative Whitworth student “coming of age” but dealing with all of the guilt that went along with it…the guilt from Whitworth…and from a God who I believed loved me based on whether I had 2 or 3 beers.

But really…when I read those lyrics “my heart broke with each drink I saw him take” — really, I just laugh…hysterically laugh…at myself.

Posted in General, Random

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