Catherine Wing: “Self-Medication”
I hate New Yearâs Day. Thereâs something dull and numb about itâbeyond the hangoverâthat never fails to feel disheartening. Some years ago, when I was still lucky enough to be living in Seattle, my writing group proposed to meet on New Yearâs Day as an antidote to the annual drear. Even if we had no new work to share we would at least write something and fend off the prevailing sense of the wasted day. So on January 1, 2008, we were somewhere in our pre-writing preamble when my good friend Ariana mentioned that she had decided not to drink for a while. Now, Ariana is no heavy drinker, quite far from it, and she went on to explain that she was doing so to remind herself where her edges wereâbecause alcohol, it seemed to her, is a kind of situational softener, and she wanted to be reminded of her sharper aspects. By which she meant her more difficultâedgierâself. The poem âSelf-Medicationâ was born entirely from this idea. What are we at our edges and …