When I was in rehab last year (Eagleville Hospital), one of the speakers t told a story about how he was stupid drunk one night and made a fort in his kitchen. We all laughed, as was his intent.
Laughing at drunken anecdotes might sound like something you shouldn’t be doing in rehab, but it was one of the most cathartic things that could be done.
Were we supporting his drunkenness? I certainly don’t think so.
Were we throwing him under the bus? Hardly, we were laughing with him.
The speaker himself pointed out why we were laughing. He said that laughter is identification. It’s a means of not feeling alone.
Of saying “I’ve been there man.”
When it came to Thor in Avengers: Endgame, there was a lot of laughter on my end.
Weight and Grief
I’ve been on what I call the “Christian Bale spectrum” in my life.
I was decrepitly skinny up until high school. The summer I graduated, I started working out a little bit, eating a bit more, and put on about 15 pounds in a relatively short period. As my life progressed, so did my weight lifting, and I slowly but surely kept bulking up. My diet wasn’t perfect, nor was my drinking, but I was reasonably muscular from about 2015-2016 with a bit of a belly. When I injured myself right at the end of December 2016, I had to take a break from weight lifting that lasted the year. My diet and drinking still weren’t perfect, and that belly got a bit bigger.
September 2017 had an inexplicably large impact on why I drank (inexplicable in scope, not in reasoning). My friends and my sister’s friends lost someone very dear to us in an inexplicably horrible way (inexplicable both in scope and reasoning, because there was no reason for it to to happen).
My processing of the grief was all over the place. In one sense, I was horrified, angry, repulsed, devastated, and I drank because I didn’t want to feel that way.
On the other hand, my processing of her no longer being with us was confused. Sometimes I didn’t cry because her “not being here” sometimes felt the way anyone else who isn’t in my proximity “isn’t here.” I’m currently typing this paragraph alone in my kitchen. Literally everyone in my life is “not here”, and that’s how it felt like she “wasn’t here.”
Deep down, when I saw people crying, I’d sometimes be able to join them. But sometimes I would feel a quiet confusion, as if they were crying because she’s “not here”, because she’s gone to the bathroom or something.
My hatred for this confusion was second to my hatred of the man that took her.
And so, while I would drink to avoid feelings, I would also drink to feel anything.
Of course, I dare not say this was the sole motivator of my drinking. To quote Doctor Sleep (which I’m sure got it from elsewhere), “we drink because we’re drunks.” If I had been sober when this had happened, would it have affected my sobriety? I don’t know, I can’t say, and I won’t say, because it doesn’t matter. All that matters is that I let it enhance my already heavily drunken state, and the damage in its wake was my fault.
Getting up in the morning for my scheduled job at the bank was what stopped me from drinking every day (though I was still doing it more than I should have, and called out every now and then because “I have a fever”).
When I quit the bank to work Uber, all bets were off. My relative weight when I left October 2017 was 210. By early February I was at 226. About a month later I was at 232. As time progressed, so did my drinking, so did my shit diet, and so did the downward spiral that was my life. I killed friendships (both long lasting and the “good to see you” type) like cattle at a slaughterhouse.
From Rehab to Sobriety to Endgame
It wasn’t until the end of August 2018 that rehab, which always felt destined to happen, became a reality. For the first time, I was in there for a week, then moronically thought I was a-okay since my hospitalization in 2014 lasted that long.
I got drunk a week after leaving, started my downward spiral again, and was back in rehab at the end of October. I got out the day before Thanksgiving, and after hitting five weeks of sobriety on the outside (admittedly a record at the time, even without the four weeks of rehab), I started a two week cycle. Rehab had helped with my minor physical dependence, which wasn’t quite at “the shakes”, though it was certainly on that path.
But simply wanting to stop was all on me.
I’d drink one night, maybe two in a row, then stay sober for two weeks. At one point I realized, unequivocally and finally, that I couldn’t keep doing this. More accurately, that I couldn’t get away with this. I had to be done.
This brings us to Endgame.
Endgame came out after I had made this decision but before my first two weeks of total sobriety (no restarting a cycle this time). My initial response to the movie was a positive one that only strengthened to this day.
But I didn’t much care for Thor’s arc.
“I’ve Been There Man”
In fact, for at least my first viewing, and possibly the first two (I saw the movie seven times), I outright disliked it. I laughed at a few jokes, but otherwise thought it was a waste. I didn’t like seeing him so pathetic, and I didn’t like seeing one of my heroes, who’s been one of my heroes since 2011, in such a pathetic spot. I didn’t like it because, well, he was a hero. He wasn’t supposed to get that low, he wasn’t supposed to be a joke.
It wasn’t until I realized I was looking in a mirror that I could start laughing heartily.
Wasting his life away with alcohol?
Check.
Obscene weight gain?
Check.
Improperly (but understandably) dealing with grief?
Check, check, and check.
Once I recognized myself in all this, I could laugh, and I could laugh because of that recognition. I was also no longer holding one of my heroes to a standard I wasn’t holding myself to (I have this issue with critics of Luke Skywalker in The Last Jedi).
I laughed at Thor’s reveal, at his Fortnite antics, thinking “I’ve been there man”, and I thought the same thing when his tears arrive at the very mention of Thanos’ name.
Because I could now laugh at Thor, I could now cry with Thor.
Sure, I may not have failed to prevent intergalactic genocide like Thor did, but I don’t like Fortnite either. It’s the “drinking to escape the bad feelings” constant that matters. These constants remained throughout the film; I laughed at his behavior during his reality stone “exposition”, I started to tear up when he started talking about his losses, and I started to laugh again when he wanted a bloody mary to escape the bad feelings.
And the constant throughout the laughter and tears is “I’ve been there, man.”
Where We Are Now
Thor’s still fat when he summons his weapons and dons his suit, and he’s still fat at the end of Endgame. I’m about 20-30 pounds lighter than I was at the height of my weight, back to the “still have a belly but in decent shape otherwise” shape in 2016, roughly. I’m still working on my shape and diet, but I find another catharsis in Thor still being fat.
Stopping drinking won’t magically take off the weight, and he might not even lose it. But so long as he’s actually working on himself, it’s okay to live with the scars that came from the past.
Thor can still be a badass when he’s fat. He can still be worthy. He can still do right.
Like Thor’s post Infinity War downward spiral, the drinking period of my life lasted about five years. I could have (should have) stopped so many times throughout that period, and the scars I inflicted on myself and others will last.
But I have to keep going. And laughing at myself in Endgame helps with that. Because to say “I’ve been there” there helps me from going back.
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