Empathy is not a difficult thing if you allow yourself to reach into your consciousness to the depth of your own weaknesses.
I am a drunkard — somewhere deep inside. But what you see on the face is a responsible man — comported, almost saintly, with a sparse history of lasciviousness. I have been dead drunk twice — once in my roaring juvenile years at a college party, in which I ended up at the dorm toilet. The other was at a cousin’s wedding after the birth of my first child, where I vomited on fellow clubbers, got barred from the club, and had to be babysat in an idling car by my kid brother for whom I inadvertently spoilt the night. The rest of the time, I am normal as normal can be but what you don’t see, are the many times I buy the solitary bottle of whatever, get home, and drink — swig after swig till the bottle is done. What you don’t see is the struggle of never being able to stock the fridge with alcohol because I will forget water exists.
One night, bottle by my side, my naked body wrapped in a flimsy towel, I woke up past midnight on my bedroom floor — the running air conditioner had provided just the right temperature to keep me smothered in the cozy comfort of my spirit-induced stupor. As I stood up from my fallen state, it felt like an otherworldly sort of trance in which I stood outside myself looking down pitifully at my sleeping figure — prone, vulnerable, and weak. At that moment, I saw a man on the ground bound by his vulnerabilities — no different from the many versions of him in grime-filled gutters, neon-lit arcades, or in miserable heaps somewhere around the world, gathering dust and the disdain of others because he is just too weak to walk anymore, and too tired to stop. Here I was, sharing the same fate and the same destinies with these people, albeit in the shame-proof enclosures of my home, and this humbled me.
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