I Dream of Jeannie's Bottle

I remember the days of looking in the mirror and hating the person looking back at me. Toward the end of my drinking I literally spat at the mirror, because I thought who I was was the result of how I felt. If I felt like garbage, that meant that it was because I was a piece of garbage, and on it went through a host of negative emotions and hostility. I was the picture of belligerence, seething out of control. That’s when the alcohol stopped removing me from myself. I deplored that gal in the mirror and believed she had no right even to be alive—yet there I was.