Reminded by Portugal 3 Denmark 2, Group Stage, Euro 2012

You get used to things

And

In so doing

Assume

Some things

Must be

And can’t be changed, that to even try would guarantee failure & looking foolish for it.

June 2002

I’d become used to

Toilets full of blood I couldn’t explain

Nights bereft of memory

A life of neither hope nor direction

Mornings of “Whose blood is that?”

And

“Do I have any friends left?”

And when my drinking failed to kill my unnamed hurt

I hoped it would kill me

But it failed to do that.

I assumed that there was no other way

No possibility of my sobriety

But I had no other ideas left to try.

So I spent several insomniac nights

Channel-flipping

Chain smoking minutes

My drying blood turning liquid once more

Cop Shows

Sit Coms

Politics

Reruns

Infomercials

The 2AM Litany of Loathing

The background noise of a certainty that this was doomed to fail

I was sure to die of drink.

Cop Shows

Sit Coms

Politics

Reruns

Infomercials

Why bother drying up? Dammit it’s too late to buy whiskey…

Cop Shows

Sit Coms

Politics

Reruns

Infomercials

Soccer.

Stupid drunk: you forgot the World Cup was starting. Is this a repeat? No, it’s in Asia! It’s live at 2AM! Hope?

USA! Vs

Portugal.

We’re fucked. Portugal are tipped by some to win it all.

We’re going to lose, and I’m going to die drunk.

But USA won

3-2

I accepted the challenge,

The gauntlet thrown by our National Team doing what was assumed they couldn’t possibly have done,

And I have done for myself

What I assumed I couldn’t possibly have done,

And have done it now for 10 years.


Chris Walters, June 2012