but you know, being able to enjoy one drink is helpful socially. I’m a little fragile emotionally thanks to this infernal PTSD so I usually don’t drink at all. But tonight I went to a show that had a two-drink minimum, enjoyed both of my drinks, and didn’t get the least bit hammered or depressed.

In fact while I was there I met up with an old friend by chance – I call her the “White Russian” because that’s her drink of choice and that kind of humor always gets her laughing, but she is actually a human being – and it was so utterly delicious to see her again, my mood actually improved significantly for the first time in weeks. I spent some of the best days of my life around her…she’s much too young for me in terms of dating but she’s a wonderful soul and completely adorable – the kind of person I would’ve loved to have as a daughter if I’d ever had kids. We worked in the same school a few years back and had some wonderful conversations, and saw some really nice things happen where we were working together too. We worked with low-income, at-risk students a lot so every time somebody graduated it was like a miracle.

Anyway, the fact that she still enjoys sharing a table with an old coot like me even though we’ve both gone on to bigger and better things vocationally and she doesn’t have to hang around me at all unless she wants to was a very sweet surprise…and the fact that it happened because I didn’t shy away from an event I wanted to see just because it was at a bar tells me that maybe I can carefully indulge to a limited degree once in a while without hurting myself.