>>I am really scaring the h**l out of myself. Not even trying to control the narrative any more, just hanging on. My name is Mike and I am an alcoholic. I am going to go into rehab.
>>
>>Yeah, sure, as my friend Marie said so many times. You like to say it but you can't do it. You won't get help. It's just your stupid secret. You drink because you want to drink, period.
>>
>>Push send, dummy.
>
>Mike - I'm floored. I had no idea and I'm sorry to hear that you have this problem. OTOH, like everyone else, I'm glad that you've reached the point to recognizing it yourself and are preparing to deal with it. You know that I'll be pulling for you.
>
>I'm around this week, though not necessarily at my desk if you want to talk.

Hi Tamar,

I may take you up on that. One of these days. Just promise you won't preach to me, OK? I have heard a lot of sermons from my own head already and they haven't done much good, have they? I think I am more the tea and sympathy type than the kick in the a*s type.

That was another Marie phrase: tea and sympathy. That's what you want, she said, and I'm not giving it to you. You can have everything else but I'm not giving you that.

She's gone now. The other day she told me off and then some.

She was everything I wanted in a woman. (In a person, really, but it's always more interesting when it's the opposite sex, isn't it?). Smart -- smarter than me, and I don't say that lightly -- witty, sexy, caring. She made me feel great every time we talked. And now she's gone. So I pour vodka into that empty place in my soul.

I sound like such an idiot, don't I? I could observe suavely that love makes us all idiots, another Marie-ism. She's gone. That's the long and short of it right there.