My Name's Michelle And I'm Not An Alcoholic.

Vodka wasn’t always how I coped. I didn’t start using alcohol to deal with all my mental and physical shit until I was in my late 30s. My marriage was with an abusive person. And hemochromatosis made it feel worse.

Hemochromatosis is a Hemochromatosis is an iron disorder in which the body simply loads too much iron. This action is genetic and the excess iron, if left untreated, can damage joints, organs, and eventually be fatal.

Hemochromatosis is an ailment for which testing is not consistently done. Meanwhile this DNA mutation causes a bunch of shit, so we're just living with a disease that causes:

• Cirrhosis (liver damage)
• Heart problems
• Arthritis (joint pain)
• Diabetes
• Gallbladder disorders, such as mine. My gallbladder ruptured because of iron overload.

Many women don’t get diagnosed until after menopause, since that’s when our natural blood loss stops. Most doctors I’ve talked with don’t know much about HFE. A recent study found that only about 1 in 100 people in the U.S. are correctly diagnosed with this condition, even though it can be very serious.

The short story is that this disease affects a person's head and heart. It also affects the liver, spleen, pancreas, and gall bladder. It was the rupture of my gallbladder that led to the surgery that left me mentally fucked. 

Nobody looks for hemochromatosis here. By the time anyone notices, it’s already too late. When my brain felt broken, a drink is the only thing that makes sense.

After the summer of 2017, I forgot who I was, and people kept telling me I was an alcoholic. I couldn’t remember anything else about who I was, and I literally prayed every day that I would die, so drinking quickly became an innate part of what was left of whatever I’d been.

By the end of that first year, fear took over. I didn’t want to feel anything or care. I was completely alone. I had no one, no family, no money, no memory, no car, no license, and no home.

Alcohol was the only thing that felt like home. I thought about drinking myself into the ground, and I didn’t mind. I wasn’t a mother, or a writer, or a wife. I was just a ghost with a broken brain. Life kept moving, but I was gone.

Most of my friends who worried about my drinking really cared about me. But none of that made sense. I still needed notes so knew where I was when I woke up.

Michelle, Feisty, whoever I was. Nothing seemed real. My brain was gone. Words didn’t stick. All I had was the feeling of abandonment, moving through the world like a half-dead thing.

Later, after those lost years, I found myself in a sterile hospital room in Dallas, in a semi-coma due to hepatic encephalopathy from ammonia poisoning. 

The sharp, clean, antiseptic smell hovered in the air, mingling with the constant rhythmic beep of the heart screen beside me. This was the moment where my life turned; the faint sound of the screen was like a lifeline, pulling me back from the precipice I hadn't realized I was teetering on. I knew I did not want to be back in some sterile hospital room with all the highpitched beep beep beeps pumelling my inner ears.

At some indecipherable time after the hepatic encephalopathy coma, someone called just to say hi and see how I was doing. By then, I’d been on heart drugs for a while. I called one of my dearest friends to this person that since I’d been taking meds for my erratic heart, I’d been a lot more... calm. I hadn’t been craving xanax and vodka, which, for me, had become an increasingly constant and overwhelming want.

At some indecipherable time after the hepatic encephalopathy coma, someone called just to say hi and see how I was doing. By then, I’d been on heart drugs for a while. I called one of my dearest friends to this person that since I’d been taking meds for my erratic heart, I’d been a lot more... calm. I hadn’t been craving xanax and vodka, which, for me, had become an increasingly constant and overwhelming want.

After that conversation something finally clicked for me. One night I went to sleep and woke up knowing that I wasn’t going to drink anymore. 

And I didn’t.

My name is Michelle, and I’m Feisty. I’m a little crazy, a bad ukulele player, and I’m not an alcoholic.

That’s why I haven’t touched a drink in seven years.

A white mug with bold black text that reads "I POURED MYSELF A CUP OF AMBITION" sits on a wooden surface, with blurred windows and brushes in the background.

Amnesia and Mental Health

I feel like I’m breathing through dirt and shards of pain, and that’s all there is. I don’t think I’ve truly given up, but it all feels like bullshit. How many times have I tried to take my own life? Many. And I was terrible at even that. 

I need a hug, a real connection with someone I love and trust. I want to feel safe and escape this lonely skeleton hole I claim as my body. I’m on so many medications, mostly for my brain, but I don’t know if they’re helping. If they are, I can't tell because my sense of self is reflected in the disorderly chapters reading to themselves, inside my cerebrum.

This headspace makes it hard to write because I’m afraid to open that wound in my mind-that now feels like a dangerous place to explore. When I was 20 I hopped on a plane that landed in Prague. That was really scary—it was so much frightening then my first trip overseas. In Prague it snowed; I’d never been that cold before. 

Recently I’ve been traveling to Barcelona, I often go to Spain. This is the writing I get lost in—the memories and all the hurt. And many nostalgic memories. 

A woman with red hair and tattoos, wearing a black dress and pink sandals, smiles as she swings on a rope swing under a large tree in a natural, wooded area.

Phone Sex & Mental Health

Not For The Faint Of Heart

I'd often think about the guy in Santa Clara, who got raped when he was thirteen. The worst memories refuse to die.

Twenty years later, that man paid me $1.99 a minute to listen to his stories, and I was never given an algorithm for that. He raped himself every day, having unprotected sex with strangers, and then paid me to hear him. I could not fix him, and that haunted me. I felt a heavy, lingering sadness afterwards, knowing that some pains are too deep to heal. I'm tough, or at least that's what I've always been told, but moments like these make me question the true depth of my resilience.

I was never abused riding a bus or walking around at night, not even in the dark streets of the Czech Republic in the snow. However, I did get surrounded by a bunch of boyish men on a train, on my way through Slovakia. They grouped me in my seat. Instinctively, my gaze shot to the three women near me. They each appeared so engrossed in what they were each reading—they didn’t seem to notice me. 

A young man sat next to me and touched me—a poke to my shoulder. I said, 'Go fuck yourself.' It was the only time I've ever uttered that phrase and still been scared. That was a moment of resistance. Moments of violation and of standing up intermingle, shaping who I am now. I'm in an apartment complex. Dallas, technically. Could be anywhere, I don't care. I have no key and nowhere to be. I want to see trees and my son's smile. 

If it's not broken, break it. 

Despite all this, I find some solace in remembering that I am still breathing and capable of finding moments of genuine connection, even with the weight of these memories. Sometimes, I take a walk in the park or sit quietly and listen to music that soothes me, letting the words flow over me like a soft embrace. When the darkness threatens to overwhelm, I think of my son's laughter as a beacon of light guiding me through. Writing down my thoughts, pouring them onto paper, often helps me make sense of the chaos inside. These small acts remind me there is still beauty to be found, no matter how fractured my world seems.

I sit here, quiet, feeling the ache in my chest pulse with the shadows moving across the wall. My breath is small, barely enough. I haven't tried to die in a long time. Yet despite it all, there's a small light that refuses to go out. I think about my son, the way his eyes light up with curiosity, and I hold onto that. It gives me a reason to breathe on days I find it hard. I wonder if there is still a place for me in this world. 

I don't care much about what I missed. I wish I could go back. I wish I weren't sick. I wish I could see my son's first Christmas again, with the dogs who are now dead. I want to cook in that kitchen. I want my garden. I wish I remembered my son's twelfth birthday. I wish I remembered every second of January 7, same time each year.

I remember the delivery room, how big his head was, how he ripped me apart as he pushed his way out of my body. I wish I had my hammock. I wish I could smell honeysuckle. I wish I were riding a snowboard for the first time. I wish I had broken my leg because I was brave enough for roller derby. Again. I wish I still had friends. I wish I still snuggled my dogs: Fritz, Greta, and Harriet. I want my garden. 

I wish I were remembered. 

I wish I remembered more than this 10-story apartment building, this room with a bed. My entire life, I wish I had lived more of it right. I wish perfection would stay still. I stand in the middle of all these wishes. I wonder: Am I always slipping back into old lives? Can I find a way to be here now?

You think about putting the gun in your mouth. You think about dying. Maybe in the bathtub, water running, or out in a field of gravel, stones pressing into your back. Blood would trickle, maybe splatter, maybe just drip. Hair sticky, but not too much. The bathtub is easier to clean. But a field leaves nothing behind. Death is just another part of nature, a way to solve a problem. They never tell you that. They teach you times tables, that X equals zero, but they never say math's just another unknown language, or that zero is nothing at all. Just a number, just a space in your head. 

Nothing Goes Away

Now, I’m an instant photograph—an undeveloped Polaroid, seeking light to reveal myself. I’m composed of layers of amnesia—retrograde, antegrade. Pieces of who I am or once was diffuse into the painstaking, slow development of images. I’m not really an amnesiac. I, Michelle Kathleen O’Kane, am a Time Traveler. An object.

An object in time travels if and only if the difference between its departure and arrival times, as measured in the surrounding world, does not equal the duration of the journey it undergoes. In this place, the soft grey shawl and my knitting project are on my Anthropologie quilted bed. The book on my nightstand is The Echo of Old Books. My notebook, with its pinkish pages, waits patiently for more words—words I will emote before talking incessantly about myself and everything that used to be my life.

There was a time when everything felt possible. I wrote stories I believed in, and imagined new places and the hope of falling in love.

Memories of sharing meals with people I loved. Mimosas at brunch. Cosmopolitans before dinner. Vintage chardonnay with dinner. I wake up while driving in various cars, and I’m always the driver. Frequently, I’m on the unpopulated northern lanes of Highway 280, approaching the 92 exchange. Aware. While I’m driving, I surround myself with the color-changing hills. I’m humming along with Elvis Costello. Every day I write the book.

Now I drive west, heading toward Half Moon Bay. Always in my own car. Today it’s my blue Ford Ranger, the one I bought after my mother died. I was seventeen. She had only been gone a few months.

I pass the Half Moon Bay Nursery on the north side of 92. I drive through the edges of my town. My ocean, the salt in the air, blue sky, and the sea. White clouds stretch across the sun and water. I realize now how strange I have become.

I haven’t watched a movie with anyone in more than five years. I haven’t laughed with someone in just as long. Sometimes, something on TV or the radio pulls a laugh out of me—a quick, sharp sound. It surprises me. I hardly recognize it as my own.

Time is on my side. Gravity nudges me across cool, damp grass. Behind me, a 5’4” wide trail marks where I’ve rolled down the hill.

I’m jealous of many of the things I see on TV. And Instagram. Landscapes and cities and people at tables with white espresso cups.

“You don’t look back along time but down through it, like water. Sometimes this comes to the surface, sometimes that, sometimes nothing. Nothing goes away.”—Margaret Atwood

Hemochromatosis, Life & Alcohol

I Taste A Liquor Never Brewed

I've been thinking about when we delivered Flynn. I can still see the carpark from the hospital window. I remember the 4Runner you had when we met at NASA. Was it blue or yellow? I bought a yellow one later. It was a piece of shit, remember?

Your old blue duplex was just a few blocks from Kim's Vietnamese Restaurant. Your blue BMW motorcycle and black helmet sat in the small garage. Denise and Tom lived in Milpitas. Lynn and Larry had a green lawn with flowers across from the flute lady, where I took flute lessons.

Do you remember when we saw that flute teacher on our flight from Dublin to London? In London, we stayed on the second floor of a big B&B. We went downstairs for breakfast, and there was just one other person in the room. When we left, the hallway to the kitchen was on the left, and the large brown door to the street was on the right. We stepped outside, turned left, and walked down the road. It was my first time out of the country, so the walk felt amazing.

Sometimes, as I write, I think about our cottage in the Castro. We would step onto the patio. Behind us was the entrance to the two-story building. I wonder, did Freddy have a missing finger or just a big band-aid? Did he play guitar?

Still thinking about the Castro cottage: after leaving the big black iron gate, we would turn right and walk down to Castro Street. The theater was a block or two away, across the street. My mind drifts, and I expect to see the Mountain View ice-cream shop, the last one on the right, with railroad tracks across from it. I miss Kim’s and the lunch spots from NASA.

Sometimes I think I remember one of our living rooms, but then realize it’s just my old living room. It was in the tiny house where I grew up in Cupertino. I practiced flute near the front window. My mom was always in the garden, her hands covered in soil. I can picture the loveseat, the spot for the Christmas tree, and the little dining room. We even used it sometimes.

In Mountain View, the front door opened into the living room. There was a small dining area on the right and the kitchen straight ahead. The bathroom was to the right, the bedroom to the left, and the back door led straight to the small garage. Is that right?

Now, jumping to today: I woke up in Scotland. We're upstairs in a tavern or pub. It's around noon. We park in a dead-end alley, with the car on the right side of the street, facing the two-story building. We walk inside, turn right, and go up to the second floor. Inside, everything is wood—shiny, caramel-colored walls and a bar. The left side of the pub has windows, some with stained glass, flowers, a cross, and a pretty mosaic. Outside, the air is wet and gray. It feels like we are always walking through clouds.

Still in the Scottish pub, it's fun trying to order vegetarian food. We sit at a high table and climb onto shiny chairs. We read the chalkboard behind the bar. We're wandering through the highlands, with Cawdor Castle as our destination, maybe today or tomorrow. You order soup and a beer, and I have a cider and a salad. Later, I'll ask you to stop at a market so I can get some cookies.

A local asks where we're from and tells us his son is in New York, though he’s not sure why. He drops his shoulders and laughs, and we laugh too. Scots have big smiles and laughs, so it never feels gloomy here. We haven’t been invited to the Scottish boy's birthday yet—that comes later. We’ll see a young man carried in a chair while friends and family wave pound notes.

I've been coping better in unfamiliar places. Jay made this possible, even if he didn’t mean to. I never feel unsafe with him. He’s confident, and he’s always been the smartest person I know. It took time to realize I was safe with him. That feeling grew and let me take risks. Taking risks with Jay made me start living.

Time shifts again: I fall asleep and want to travel more. I want to go back to that narrow, scary Scottish road that seemed to twist forever. But I woke up in Hawaii instead. That’s okay. I love waking up there, especially in Kauai. It wasn’t our honeymoon, but the time we stayed near the North Shore. We drove a red rental car to a roadside spot with a red arrow, parked, and hiked through mud and trees to a beach. We swam and watched fish in the warm sea. Every time, the warmth amazed me—I never knew an ocean could be so warm. Not Half Moon Bay, not Trinidad, not Cannon Beach. Those were the only oceans I knew before Jay. "Be careful. Watch out for jellyfish."

Another place, another morning: I woke up in my art gallery. I loved that place. Jay came by to set something up on my computer. I had been browsing the DWR catalog, hoping to buy Jay something cool to sit in—something beautiful, comfortable, and good for his back. I looked up the Eames Lounge Chair and Ottoman. I knew he'd love it, but he would never buy it for himself.
Moments later, I’m somewhere else. I was sipping a cranberry martini Jay made as I started waking up. In this room. Dallas.

I slammed myself into the hospital bed. Jay is holding my hand. I am pushing Flynn out of my body, with no pain relief. Jay keeps telling me I can do it. You can do it. So I do. That was January 7, 2005. I never wanted to believe all the things I knew were true about me, things I thought were only for other people. I’m a piece of shit. And I’m insane. It’s right there in my medical records. Today, I’ve wished many times I could rewrite my story. It’s unfair that I inherited a disease. It didn’t show up until I’d already thrown everything away. I even lost myself. Now, I see a life—my life—that hasn’t stopped just because I’m no longer in it. Every day, I wake up all over the world. I think about how to stop the constant waking up. So far, nothing has worked. The other day, I woke up in Ireland. We’d just hit a cow. Then I went to sleep in Dallas, by myself, knowing the biggest memory loss I have is that I’m hardly a memory for anyone anymore. I hope that soon I wake up in that little white villa in Andalusia. We drive to the convent on that five-foot wide, winding road. We ate those delicious chocolate treats the nuns made. Jay bought a flower from a nun and gave it to me. I hope I wake up here again soon. Spain. Warm. Health. Sangria.

Finally, I long for another place. I want to wake up in my Humboldt forest. I want to escape my small box with a bathroom. I want to crawl through fallen branches, under what used to be ferny canopies. I want to be drunk on liquor never brewed.

A silhouette of a face with intricate floral patterns, facing a hand holding a small flying figure. Text reads: “I taste a liquor never brewed – Emily Dickinson.”.

I taste a liquor never brewed (214)
Emily Dickinson
1830 –1886

I taste a liquor never brewed – 
From Tankards scooped in Pearl – 
Not all the Frankfort Berries
Yield such an Alcohol!

Inebriate of air – am I – 
And Debauchee of Dew – 
Reeling – thro' endless summer days – 
From inns of molten Blue – 

When "Landlords" turn the drunken Bee
Out of the Foxglove's door – 
When Butterflies – renounce their "drams" – 
I shall but drink the more!

Till Seraphs swing their snowy Hats – 
And Saints – to windows run – 
To see the little Tippler
Leaning against the – Sun!

My Life With Death: Suicide & Survival

I was never great at problem-solving.

What do you do when you've lived your life and survived? Do you get a pistol and kill yourself? Do you shoot yourself in the head? If so, how do you do it? Point at your temple? Or do you shove the gun to the back of your throat, pointed up to get a good shot, to do the deed, seal the deal? 

Your arms are not long enough to hold a shotgun. Also, you don't own a shotgun.

There are many variables in something you've seen perfectly executed thousands of times, in films. In movies, most of the time, when people get killed, they get killed with a bullet. Pills are for the wealthy. And people with health insurance.

You have bleach, a box of razor blades you bought twenty years ago, at Flax, and a very sharp chef's knife. But the knife was a birthday gift, so it seems disrespectful to use it to slit your wrists. Plus, wrist slitting seems like a serious challenge, and you've never been good with details.

It's a method of problem-solving. It's a process of a set of rules. It's Wikipedia. They trick you. They teach you how to multiply numbers. They tell you that x=0. But they never call it a language or reveal that zero means nothing. Except for a vertical line.

What you want to do is: put the gun in your mouth and pull the trigger. Die in the bathtub, or maybe a field of gravel. Surrounded by blood: trickling, splattering, dripping. Sticky hair, messy. But not too messy—the whole point is to die with as little mess as possible, hence the bathtub. But a field doesn't require the heartache of cleanup. Death is nature. Natural. Earthy. Tangible.

My Worlds Of Words

Each morning, I wake and find myself still present. I am in a living room, lying on a sofa, observing my hands. They continue to function, holding a fork and bringing mashed potatoes to my mouth.

A cyclone churns within my mind, with memories and knowledge fragmented by the relentless force of unrealized possibilities.

My phone says it’s Saturday. I realize I’m at Jake and Gina’s place. I wonder if we slept together.

Maintaining a semblance of normalcy becomes increasingly difficult. They interact with me based on their understanding of my behavior, although I do not recall these interactions.

At this moment, my heart beats forcefully, reminiscent of trains on tracks. I cannot recall my address. I share my living space with two other people, one is my son. Each morning, I think of him. His age fluctuates in my memory, sometimes eight, sometimes eleven. I am approximately thirty-six years old.

Upon waking, the house felt unfamiliar and uncomfortable. Each morning, confusion persists. My mind is turbulent, resembling a hurricane that hurls debris against the structure of my skull. This debris consists of my fragmented memories.

I devote significant time to introspection. I realize that I have not left my residence in several days. Others encourage me to go outside, and I am inclined to comply. When they request that I engage in activities, it appears to provide them with reassurance.

External sounds, such as screeching tires, ambulance sirens, and barking dogs, evoke fear in me. These noises consistently cause distress, though the reason remains unclear.

I remember getting my clit pierced. I remember lying on a sterile cot, spreading my legs. The male piercer pushed the needle through my flesh. It hurt more than childbirth.

Words resemble crevices in mountains. I traverse the deteriorating, unclean fissures formed by the scrutiny of others. My heart resists contemplation, analysis, and recollection.

I cling to my words. My worlds of words. I get lost in the history of a lifetime.

The Brain — is wider than the Sky

My 6th Grade Brain Assignment

Every day, exponentially expanding, are my thoughts. I then forget them. I have a room and all I see are things I've collected over the past two years. Yarn and knitting needles and more colored pencils and more yarn and. . . and the rest is mine, my things. My things fit into a box. My small purse and my three backpacks. My two photos of myself and my son. My flute. My ancient tv, on which I watch Friends and Sex and the City. My old bathrobe. 

My photos are in my old house, where my son still lives. We were sitting on the sofa, the sofa I chose with my husband. As far as I know, my ex husband, my son, and the new wife still sit on my furniture. 

My things represent my life because they are my life. My life is in this room. My blackout curtains block out the back of a giant satellite dish. It overlooks the pool five stories below. And across the way there is another giant building with the exact same apartments housed within. Each has a minuscule balcony that nobody uses unless someone is smoking. Sometimes I smell cigarette smoke from the twenty-somethings who live next door. On Saturday nights they play rap. I have never met them.

What's familiar to me are my knitting needles and my yarn. I know people I see on my decrepit television. I know when the tv finally dies I won't have that. I try to focus on what I do have. Still, less and less do I have any wish to bother.  But, I'm still a writer. I still have that.

I want to finish the hat I'm knitting for my son. I want to finish something. I wanted to finish my life, but I haven't and I won't. When I die I hope there's something good to do. Something to finish. 

I have memories, and I want to talk about them and, more than anything, I want to see them. I want to go on a drive through Hope Valley. I want to buy a sandwich at the Genoa Store. Then, I want to drive to the Playa and get in a truck. I want to drive into the desert and find hot springs. I want to smile and drive that weird road that seemed to go nowhere. It had nothing particularly memorable about it, except that it was old. There was a town with a Smith's, a gas station, and an old church. I want to see those things. I want to see a sunset from my own porch. I want to make toast in my own kitchen with my own dishes. I want to drink water from a glass I remember finding at a thrift store. Instead, I'm just sitting in this room. The dark curtains hide an outside that means nothing. I'm looking at Facebook and seeing familiar faces. I'm confused because I have no reason to make new memories. I have no way to do so. I have no relevance and nothing I see is relevant to me. I'm a million miles away from anything familiar and I'm driftless in my sky.

The Brain — is wider than the Sky
Emily Dickinson, c. 1862

The Brain — is wider than the Sky —
For — put them side by side —
The one the other will contain
With ease — and You — beside —

The Brain is deeper than the sea —
For — hold them — Blue to Blue —
The one the other will absorb —
As Sponges — Buckets — do —

The Brain is just the weight of God —
For — Heft them — Pound for Pound —
And they will differ — if they do —
As Syllable from Sound —

A person with short, pink-tinted hair and glasses is wearing headphones and a hospital gown while sitting in a hospital bed. Medical equipment is visible in the background.