This is not directly related, but your comment somehow reminded me of an incredible PBS Great Performances version of The Comedy of Errors featuring the original Flying Karamazov Brothers. (The plot features two pairs of long-separated twins.)
I had thought that this was lost in the mists of ephemerality, but whaddaya know — all two-plus hours of it are now viewable on YouTube.
I might be ignoring pretty much everything else for the next couple of days.
That is incredible. The Flying Karamozof Brothers still perform at the oregon country fair, though one of them died and has been replaced, by a highly mismanaged cloning operation.
Well yeah, but Billie knows herself well enough to know that she is a liar. This probably isn’t going to work but she’s going to give it a try. That may be the best that Billie is capable of.
Making a non-promise you intend to break is kind of the opposite of trying, tho. Ruth is trying so hard to work on herself and Billie’s even half-assing her attempted papering over of the massive problems she’s bringing to the relationship.
Given what she said earlier to Walky and Lucy I think she does intend to give up drinking (or at least try to), but she also thinks that fighting with Ruth is a fundamental part of their relationship so she’s going to be an ass about it before she actually tells Ruth that she intends to stop drinking.
Part of me wanted to keep typing and make that sentence run on as long as possible.
I’m hoping she’s just being a snarky pedant about the word “drinking”. Although, not a good time to joke, I hope she’s pulling a walky with her being flippant about Serious Things because Feels(tm). All this trying to say she still needs to drink SOMETHING even if not booze, so purgery trap!
As far as I know, there’s no legal definition laid out for the ratio of rum to cake. Single twinkie floating in a vat of rum you could drown an elephant in? Rum cake.
They need to get one of the law students like Sarah or Raidah to type out something with lots of ipso factos and habeus corpuses.
Exactly. But Billie has no intention of stopping drinking, and until now never really wanted to try. Ruth has to stop.
If they’re to keep getting along, they’ll need to find a dynamic where Billie isn’t tempting Ruth to relapse and ruin her health. And where Ruth isn’t pressuring Billie to grow up before she’s ready to.
Seems unlikely, maybe possible, but starting out with Billie non-promising to quit isn’t that dynamic.
Billiiiiiiie, please stop being a butt and give your girlfriend a moment of sincerity :c I’m choosing to believe that really was her last hurrah and now she’s on the straight and narrow, just, admit it to your girl
Billie needs alcohol more than she needs this relationship. And it’s not that she doesn’t want this relationship; she does, desperately. But she only wants the relationship. She needs the alcohol. Unless and until she finds a way to not need the alcohol, it’s probably healthier for both of them — certainly it would be healthier for Ruth — for them to break up.
Billie can drag Ruth down, but right now, Ruth can’t pull Billie up.
You make an excellent point. Plus, Ruth is in a delicate place right now with her recovery (both mental health and with her drinking). I really hope that she is able to continue that path to success and that Billie doesn’t derail her.
I’m not quite sure where Billie is hoping to go with this. She’s going to drink if she’s not going to commit to it. Was she hoping Ruth wouldn’t find out if she did?
Or maybe it’s the ‘if I say the right things, after a while she’ll stop making this into an issue’.
Billie’s an “in-the-moment” kinda girl. As long as this solves her CURRENT situation she’ll say anything. I mean whatever happens down the road, that’s FUTURE Billie’s problem
Sometimes making a promise or a commitment and then failing is not a good idea because then you feel badly about yourself. It can be healthier to say, “I’m going to try,” rather than “I’m going to do it,” because then you won’t hate yourself as much if it doesn’t work out. Acknowledging the possibility of failure from the beginning keeps expectations realistic.
But she won’t even commit to trying to stop drinking. She basically said “I’ll just tell you I stopped” and “I could stop” here. Even when she was talking to Lucy earlier, she gave a non-committal answer. (“This is probably my last time.”)
Ruth wants to hear “I promise I’ll try to stop drinking” from Billie.
I’m even fairly certain Ruth would not believe the “I won’t touch a single drop ever again” promise/lie, because she knows all too well that’s not how quitting drinking works, mostly.
“I’m quitting drinking. I’m gonna give it my all and if I fail, I’ll just keep trying. Also I’m going to therapy because I fucking finally realized I’m not going to be able to do it on my on and there’s no fucking shame in needing outside help”. Dunno about Ruth, but that’s what _I_ want to hear.
That’s just it, this is very important to Ruth but Billie is being flippant and won’t give her a straight answer. Ruth needs to hear “I can’t promise I’ll stop completely, but I will promise to try my hardest and stop pressuring you into drinking again.” What she’s getting is “meh whatever I could stop drinking I guess.”
Even with a noncommittal answer, I still feel like Lucy is on the case. Billie may or may not keep dodging Ruth’s questions, but she can’t get away from her roommate, who will definitely see her hammered again at some point.
So… now when we have moved on from the “my girlfriend is suicidaly depressed” storyline we can move on to the “my girlfriend is an alcoholic” storyline. Great fun, great fun…
…um, can we cut to Dina and Becky just for few strips. Please?
She basically assumes God exists without having really thought about it or wanting to think about it, and thinks it’s weird not to. That’s hardly especially religious, just brought up that way.
Yeah, I mean, we haven’t even seen Billie go to church yet. So that puts Joyce, Becky, Sierra, Jacob and Mary above her, not even including the C-listers like Agatha and Raidah.
So right now she’s on the same level as Danny – they both have vague ideas of going, they just don’t really see a reason to.
Oh, come on Billie. Last time you two said you’d sober up you didn’t even try. Ruth was suffering through nausea and withdrawal symptoms while taking on Amber’s dad and all you did was lie about being 3 months sober.
Billie was lying to people who aren’t Ruth that she was three months sober (so, that she’d been sober since her car accident) because IU is a dry campus.
Billie lied to RUTH that she’d been three days sober the first time they tried to quit.
On one hand, I can get that it can be hard to cold turkey something. The least she could say is “I’ll start cutting back” Y’know a show of good faith. I can’t just stop eating WHOLE chocolate cakes all at once y’know. I gotta go down to half cakes, Quarter cakes and then cupcakes.
Yeah cutting back doesn’t work for me. For a simple reason: once you’ve had a single, reasonable glass, you have alcohol in your brain, and the desinhibition/lower willpower makes you really, really believe that a second glass wouldn’t be all that bad. Etc.
I think this is why she doesn’t want to say it to Ruth. Breaking a promise would be so much worse than relapsing on a secret quest. Billie’s whole relationship with Ruth is based on not wanting to hurt anybody. Finally that might extend to Ruth, so she’s being more seclusive so she doesn’t ruin her relationship. Ironically, this distance is ruining it anyway. Like Walky, she needs to jump off the garbage barge and take control.
I don’t think she’s lying. I think she believes, it, genuinely, every time she says it. That’s the problem.
Johnny Cash wrote “I Walk the Line” in 1956, when he was 24. You can’t listen to that recording and not believe that he meant every word of it. And yet, his next ten years were filled with drug and alcohol abuse and infidelity.
His eventual marriage to June Carter may have solved the infidelity issue, but he went into rehab again and again, the last time when he was 60.
That is a common alcoholic problem, but I don’t think it’s Billie’s. Not yet anyway.
At least it’s not a pattern yet because there was only once she said it and it’s not clear to me whether she believed it then or was lying from the start. I think the latter, because we saw no real sign of her struggling with it. Then I think she just saw it as a way to get Ruth to stop, since Ruth’s drinking had scared her, not that she had any need to herself.
I don’t doubt there are people that benefit from it, but those first two are the bigger issues for me – trying to make recovery hinge on getting forgiveness just sets a lot people up for failure and a lot more heartache than necessary imo (not to mention it’s an astronomical dick move to the people who are supposed to do the forgiving – like ‘hey, this person’s recovery hinges on getting forgiveness so they can move on to the next step of the program, if you don’t do it you could sabotage their whole recovery from alcoholism and then how will you feel? Oh, but no pressure’).
IIRC, Willis once answered a comment about these two in AA with ‘Billie might be okay with it, Ruth would probably not like it’.
Also, Ruth already tried to get forgiveness from those she’s wronged — or, at least, apologized to those she bullied. It didn’t go well. I can just imagine how Rachel would react.
I admit to bias given its affects (beneficial) on my family. Forgiveness can’t be coerced and doesn’t get to be given unearned unless you have saints you’ve wrong but it was a necessary part for some of my family members being accepted back into society.
That may be true for some branches but there’s very much AA programs where you’re not done the program until you actually get forgiveness. People have talked about the pressure it put them under, both those trying to recover and those who’re (ostensibly) doing the forgiving.
I read that a lot of it has to do with if people choose to do it or not. Court-mandated AA meetings reduces effectiveness rates because, obviously, those people are not choosing to engage with that program. This is not at ALL to say, “Those people should get their attitude together.” I would rather see courts provide people with a variety of treatment options, NOT just AA. Here’s a bunch of research on the topic though. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effectiveness_of_Alcoholics_Anonymous
That’s fair, but even their own guide states that only 75% of those who “really tried” become sober. Putting aside the fact that “really tried” are huge red-flaggy weasel words (who decides who did and did not “really try”?) they’re still admitting to a minimum of a 25% failure rate.
AA is not supported by any peer reviewed studies, afaik. I’m glad your family is sober now, but that doesn’t mean that AA is the only way to stop drinking.
I’m very glad for people who succeed in quitting any way but quitting on their own has always failed for my family. It also resulted in a couple of fatal relapses so, yeah, my opinion is literally morbid.
A quick google search confirms there are AA programs for atheists. (Which Billie isn’t, but it sounds like it’d be a better fit for her.) Though I can’t speak as to their content or effectiveness, because I’ve never gone to any of these programs.
There are other options, often with better results as measured by peer reviewed studies, but they’re extremely hard to find in the USA due to the predominance of AA.
Icalasari: Addiction is a complicated issue. AA works for many, but it’s not a panacea. Ruth would be entirely justified — and self-preserving — if she told Billie that she (Ruth) would end the relationship if Billie didn’t stop drinking. Beyond that, it’s Billie’s choice whether or not to stop drinking, and if so, how to do it.
I should add: in the US, the options for alcohol abuse treatment are often non-existent apart from AA. If we were smarter we’d have more options, but the US is pretty stupid about the treatment of mental health issues of all kinds, including addiction.
Or at the very least, seriously try to stop. Pretty much every program recognizes there will be relapses along the way.
Part of what we might be seeing here is that she’s afraid of committing to it because she’s afraid if she does any slip will be seen as betrayal.
Mind you, admitting that you will probably fail but keep trying is arguably a better habit than believing you can stop completely with no consequences. Yoda’s advice is great for everything but addiction.
Of course, I am now imagining Billie refusing to admit she’s seen Star Wars after making the quote.
… I have a DnD character who’s deathly afraid of Koalas. I see now that part of what he’s afraid of is catching Koalamydia. Thank you for opening my eyes.
You don’t even need that. Like everything from the Land Down Under, including the ground, koalas are perfectly capable of messing up your day. They’re highly irritable and testy bastards and come equipped with claws that both work on eucalyptus bark (so just imagine what they’ll do to YOU) and are positively LOADED with harmful bacteria.
Their one saving grace is that their diet is so low-energy they spend most of the day sleeping, so they only mess you up if you literally go up to them and poke them or something, which is where natural selection comes into play.
This advice is good in specific situations and horrible to have as a rule.
What I think it means is don’t go into this situation believing you will proberly fail. When you have the skills but lack the confidence this might be a decent pep talk.
When you are trying to build up the skills or are doing a thing where failing 99% of the time is inevitable this is horrible advice. Trying and failing to do stuff is usually part of the path to success. And when you go into something with the mindset of “Don’t try Do” and fail anyways it can turn something from well I didn’t succeed but I got way closer than I thought I would to maybe next time I’ll get even closer to I can’t believe I failed this is the end of the world.
The old EU had a thing where it was part of Jedi training and the meaning it gave was ‘don’t only put in the effort to say ‘well, I tried’ – actually do your best to do the thing. Sometimes you’ll fail, but it’s better than ‘welp, I tried, didn’t work, I give up’.
I always read it as specific to that kind of mystical Force effort. That came when he was getting Luke to lift the X-Wing out of the swamp, right? Luke thinks he can’t do it because it’s too big and therefore he can’t do it.
When Yoda does, Luke says he doesn’t believe it and Yoda tells him that’s why he fails.
In that context, belief you can do it matters. Trying implies lack of confidence and when it’s all a matter of belief and will, lack of confidence is fatal.
In more realistic situations, not so much.
That too. Even in more realistic situations, believing something is doable can be hugely helpful. Even if you acknowledge failure is possible – or even probable – if you go into it thinking you can’t possibly succeed, it’s going to be much harder to muster up the will or effort to get it done.
But yeah, in that code book, it’s basically saying ‘Don’t half ass stuff so you can claim it’s impossible. ‘Well, I tried’ is not good enough when you’re only putting in enough effort to say ‘Oh well, I tried’. Actually do your best to do the thing’.
Which isn’t necessarily mutually exclusive with the idea you have to believe something is possible now that I think on it.
Thanks for putting words to some of my feelings about that. The way it was phrased in the movie always bothered me, a lot, in ways I couldn’t figure out how to explain. I think another part of it was that that attitude lets people claim that if I failed, it must be because I’m choosing to fail, even when I really am trying as hard as I can (or as hard as I know how). It’s really damaging to be already at the point of tears and then have someone who’s supposed to be helping you get angry because you’re “not even trying”. There is nothing actionable about “just do it” or “just try harder” when you honestly don’t know how.
Learning how to put frustration gently aside and get my brain back into creative problem-solving mode has been far more useful. And for the things that just require blind stubbornness, well, that’s much easier for me to access from the perspective of “ok, I just have to try and fail and try again”.
Even with deadlifts, which is the most blatant real example of “if you believe you can’t then you can’t” I’ve experienced, the approach that worked for me was to stop caring whether it was possible. That, and imagining that I was pushing the floor down instead of pulling the barbell up, which is blatantly impossible but helps anyways 🙂
It is at least a start to a conversation. Did Ruth ever say Billie cannot drink (granted, she shouldn’t, she is an alcoholic and not legally supposed to be doing it, anyway), or just to stop tempting her?
I was one of those posters and I still believe it was the latter. Billie’s the one that brought up the “I’m not drinking too” idea right now in this strip, except in a very non-committal way and Ruth is just following that thread.
I’m pretty sure “don’t drink around me” is a ridiculously reasonable request from an alcoholic, provided said alcoholic isn’t doing it in bars or similar.
No, Ruth’s being the opposite of pedantic — she’s trying to bring the conversation back on track. Pedantry tries to derail a converstation by focusing on minor errors at the expense of the point being made.
Yes, I’m pedantic about pedantry. I have no respect for pedants.
So Billie: Say you’ll stop drinking. Get whatever help helps. And work on stopping drinking.
Just break up. This is not a healthy relationship for either, and the growth they need cannot come to fruition while they’re together. Billie doesn’t care enough about maintaining Ruth’s mental health to change her own habits, and Ruth is at too fragile of a point in her life to try and help Billie undergo her own necessary evolution and maturation through self-examination. 18-19 is a time of great personal discovery as is, and for the two of them to try and play therapist or babysitter for the other one, especially given how their relationship started is just a bad idea.
Well, that might be what drives Billie to the bottom and makes her get some help, but I don’t really want to have to watch that.
And Ruth may be too fragile to be a proper help for Billie now, but the break up would also be a huge blow to her stability.
Weird story from my family: I come from a family of alcoholics and eventually the entirety of the family got clean (or died–this is not a fun family history). However, one of the earlier ones was a religious fundamentalist that got clean for Jesus and attempted to get the entire family clean by his example. To this day, every member of the family ostracizes him and refuses to speak his name. He’s become an unperson. Genuine hate there despite everyone (living) being alive.
Why? Because his attitude was that his sobriety made him better than the family he’d abused before (or at least that was how it was perceived).
Billie: What if I told you I’m not drinking anymore?
Ruth: So, you’ve actually stopped drinking?
Billie: I can do that.
Ruth: But are you actually going to stop drinking?
I don’t see how Ruth is doing what your relative did or how is this “the wrong way to go about it”. She’s just questioning what Billie is not-promising to figure out if she’s, you know, actually going to stop drinking like Billie says she is. Since Billie has lied about that before, I think it’s fair for Ruth to doubt her commitment.
Yeah, Ruth is nowhere near claiming that she’s better than Billie. She hasn’t been saying “Match my standards,” she’s been saying “I have to be sober or I’ll die.” Staying sober to stay alive is not being morally superior.
As someone who has also come from a family of alcoholics, getting your loved ones to at least attempt to not drag you back into relapse, and asking them not to lie about being on the wagon, is not the same thing as “I have Jesus so I’m better than you”.
More just that people getting defensive is usually their first response and if you want them to change, it’s something you have to handle very carefully and even then it’s a crapshot.
My cousin was right–just didn’t do well in how he handled it.
It would be nice if they do make it, but Billie has some seriously huge amount of soul searching and growth to do. I mean, I get that they both do, but Ruth at least is going in the right direction at the moment.
Not emotionally scarring a child, has been a really helpful tool in quitting addiction in my family. My mom coming back crying after a presentation of tar in the lungs in third grade got her parents to stop smoking. Myself freaking out at my paternal grandmother after her time in the hospital got her to stop smoking. Myself and another cousin staying in my grandfather’s life if he got sober reduced his drinking combined with some other consequences of drinking that showed the toll it can take on others. It’s easy to think it just hurts yourself but the epiphany that it’s causing harm to loved ones is a hell of a bootstrap to recovery for some.
I just heard on a Barney video cigarettes could cause fires and I was TERRIFIED of fire as a kid. I’d blow out candles as soon as my mom lit them because I did not want fire in the house. So when my parents asked what I wanted for my 4th birthday, I said I wanted them to quit smoking. My mom was okay with it (she’d never been a big smoker in the first place) but she and my dad were both annoyed with me at the moment of my suggestion. 😛 (Funny annoyed, not actually annoyed).
18 years later and neither have smoked since to my knowledge (though my dad jokes about occasionally having a cigar at work). My (limited) research says after 15 years your body gets back to where it would be if you’d never smoked so …yay?
When I was about that age my mom (who at the time was pregnant with my younger brother) got me dressed up all cute and had me go ask my dad to stop smoking. They’d both quit when she got pregnant with me and while I was a baby, but Dad started up again.
To be fair, it did work. My brother’s 24 now, and except for sneaking off to the garage for a little weed on holidays, my parents haven’t smoked his whole life.
Billie wants her transition out of alcohol to be effortless and pressure free. It’s important to her that she can simply decide to do something and get it done without the grind and desperation, as if she was always a whole and healthy person without any issues threatening her ability to comfortably coast.
It’d certainly be infuriating mindset to put up with when the person in question clearly has a real problem. But it’s an entirely natural and common one. Underestimating the grind and denial are peas in the pod that judgers and perpetrators often falsely conflate. Hell, it’s so natural that on a gut level I want Billie to succeed. But life isn’t so kind.
Ultimately yes. Walky’s denial was more easily identified because his problems existed in an environment closer to (though not quite) a vacuum. Billie’s problems are occurring in the context of an already incredibly messy relationship between mutually unhealthy people.
In the end, both Walky and Billie not only do not want to face their very real problems, but they simply don’t recognize their issues for what they are. And I am reluctant to judge either of them harshly for it because the factors leading to the problem are very easily mistaken for ones people tend to (and prefer to) assume are entirely always under their control. Billie doesn’t think of herself as being problematically addicted to alcohol. Indeed, in some cultures she wouldn’t be (e.g. Germany). Furthermore, she really wants her relationship with Ruth to work out and is looking for any excuse to reinforce this belief because romance is like that. Similarly, Walky has always been good at calculus and is grabbing onto anything that will reinforce what he has known all his life.
Billie has admirable qualities. Being independently moral isn’t one of them. If people keep trying to judge her through that lens, she’s going to come up short.
Yet I find Billie’s well-meaning efforts and self-delusion/lying to herself infinitely more forgivable than someone like Malaya who has all the opportunity and brains she needs to be a better person yet chooses to be a judgmental reactionary.
To be clear, Billie has promised once to quit drinking and failed to do so. That, plus her blind attempts to get Ruth to drink as well, are a horrible breach of trust that would make Ruth entirely justified in breaking things off with Billie.
I’m just saying that Billie being the worst is something I vehemently disagree with. I would take a thousand Billies over a thousand Malayas any day, let alone Marys.
You have that reversed. Billie has been a bull in a China shop with Ruth. Beyond that has she physically hurt anyone or intentionally hurt them emotionally? She wants to live what she sees as her glory years and idealized times, having a false vision of how perfect things were just like Walky did.
Malaya goes out of her way to treat people like shit. She tears down learning environments. She is hostile to anyone with a different world view to her own. The fact that her political stances are generally better than average does not excuse this. If every character in Dumbing of Age were an organization, Malaya would be PETA.
Oh, piss off Billie. I am actively rooting for Ruth to break up with Billie at this point. I get Billie’s addicted, and that cutting off full-stop is hard and awful. But I have long lost patience for her faux cute act when sne’s trying to placate Ruth, and other people. This relationship was enough of a train wreck when it started, but now Ruth is trying to get better, succeeding pretty well, and has refreshing self-awareness—consistent, not just last panel moments of clarity—and Billie trying to “innocently” slip back into their destructive habits so that she doesn’t have to change has officially worn out its welcome. Enough. End it, or make a real change.
Or both, actually. I’d be down to see Billie get better, even if she and Ruth split up. I don’t hate Billie, but…ugh, I do not like her, and my opinion of her is only getting worse the more she jeopardizes Ruth’s well-being.
Well, she’s behaving pretty destructively right now but I’ll grant her some mitigating cricumstances:
-she’s 18 or so
-she’s been called out on her behaviour only a couple of hours ago
-she’s fumbling but trying to do something.
So for now I’d say it’s not good enough, but if she cuts it out and gets serious by next morning I’ll be ok with her. I mean, I’m twice her age and I usually need to sleep on it between when I start noticing a problem in my behaviour and when I actually start making any visible change.
Not the first wake-up call that was directed at her, but I think the forst one to get through to her?
Because it came from someone who matters. Psychiatrists don’t count, cause what do they know about anything? And something that is there for her to see but not pointed out to her wouldn’t cut through the denial. Well, I guess.
I still think her behaviour’s awful. And knowing Willis’s choices so far he probably won’t let her just have an epiphany and turn it around before it’s too late. There will probably be much weeping and gnashing of teeth.
What she said to Lucy earlier indicates she’s at least given some thought to stopping and there’s been no clear sign either of that or of reversing it in this scene. I’m waiting on that being reconciled.
It could just be that she’s an alcoholic and was lying to Lucy, but then I’d expect the same to Ruth. And honestly, I wouldn’t expect her to bother lying to Lucy if there wasn’t intent to stop behind it.
Im sympathetic to Ruth but speaking from experience you cant really force someone you love to quit a substance. You can tell them how much it effects you, but the decision has to be theirs.
Agreed but you can at least ask them to be honest with you.
Oddly enough, Billie is being honest, without intending to be so. By her evasions (which Ruth is picking up on immediately), Ruth is realising just where this is going.
I want to give Billie the benefit of the doubt. Maybe she really will go cold turkey. It’s a lot easier to stay sober when you feel like you have a reason to. Maybe the snark is her still burning off the alcohol in her system?
I got the impression that panel 7 is Billie saying that she’s not stopping drinking but was hoping that she’d persuade Ruth to accept this by way of promising that she’s ‘working on it’. We’re about to find out just what is most important in Ruth and Billie’s lives and something tells me that Billie is not going to like the outcome.
First, Ruth isn’t actually an alcoholic. Don’t get me wrong, it’s best for her to act as if she is, and avoid the stuff. But, she was simply self-medicating, but was not, and is not, physically addicted. Yet.
Billie, on the other hand, is full blown, 100% an alcoholic. We don’t see her drinking all the time, or see her visibly drunk. But, she is, and she is. She’s learned to hide it for years. She claims she can quit any time, but really knows she can’t. She gets upset just thinking about not drinking.
This will be the big question. Can Ruth get Billie to actually stop drinking? Will Billie dry out?
Ruth is (was?) definitely an alcoholic. She’s referred to herself before as having been “a teenage alcoholic” – she’s currently 20 years old – she’s talked about how she eventually turned to alcoholism after the deaths of her parents, and there have been at least two on-panel incidences in the comic of her passing out drunk, off the top of my head. Including one where she nearly died as a result.
The word “alcoholic” has two valid usages; you two are using different ones.
1) Someone with physical changes in their brain that make them need to drink alcohol, especially if they start drinking.
2) Someone who has a pattern of drinking alcohol in ways that significantly hurt them.
jeffepp was saying that Ruth doesn’t have the physical brain changes that would make it extremely hard for her to quit using alcohol. Billie does. So Ruth can stop using alcohol more easily than Billie can.
Ruth may believe she’s an alcoholic, especially if she’s using the second sense of the word. But I suspect jeffepp may be right nevertheless.
Maybe. Not sure about the physical changes: Ruth showed serious withdrawal symptoms every time she’s quit. For days afterwards.
I think the basic idea is right though: Ruth’s main problem is depression, which she was medicating with alcohol.
Billie’s main problem is the booze itself. She hasn’t even been willing to try to quit.
Um, yes she is. She was definitely physically addicted, we saw her have withdrawal symptoms – we saw her get nausea from withdrawal. Self-medicating can lead to alcoholism because you become dependant on it.
Ruth has at least three symptoms which is all that is necessary to be diagnosed as an alcoholic:
*Withdrawal symptoms when stopping drinking
*Evidence of alcohol tolerance
*Continuing to drink despite clear evidence of harmful consequences
Further, for a time she was also doing this one:
*Pursuing the consumption of alcohol to the exclusion of alternative pleasures
An inability to stop or control drinking is a possible symptom. But it is not a strict requirement.
I do feel like “I am going to try and stop drinking and see a therapist/go to a group to stop drinking” is a more realistic promise, rather than promising to stop cold turkey.
Sometimes, I get this urge to follow Ruth’s early example and just spend most of the day blasted off my ass, and then pass out wherever I happen to collapse first. I never act on it, but it’s still appealing, some nights.
If you go back in this arc, we see Billie earlier trying to pout her way out of the conversation with Ruth. Billie’s been trying to deflect and avoid from the start because I really think that she doesn’t want to deal with Ruth changing or having to change herself.
Reason I bring it up is because a lot comments are talking about how at least Billie is not willing to make promises she cannot keep OR how its unfair to expect her to quit cold turkey, BUT that is not the problem.
The problem is Billie’s avoidance of the issue AND her attempts to placate Ruth with nonpromises.
This exactly. Making a nonpromise isn’t better than honestly saying ‘I don’t feel I am able to quit or promise you that I will’. A nonpromise is just setting them up to be disappointed but also not allowed to be *too* disappointed as they never promised you see. If it isn’t a promise then you set your expectations up, not this person who is uncommitted and unable to even promise that they will try.
Billie if you can’t commit to quitting than commit to trying.
If you can’t commit to trying than ask yourself what you can commit to.
1. Can you promise not to drink in front of Ruth or be a pill about not being able to drink in front of her. This would address her stated concern pretty well.
2. Can you promise to not make you decisions of places to hang out with Ruth based on where has the best alcohol. And not pressure her to drink. At least your trying.
3. Can you promise to not pressure Ruth to drink with you when you do drink in front of her and try to make sure that drinking is not the only activity where ever you two hang out.
If you can’t commit to 3 your going to get dumped soon. Ruth can’t date someone who is actively sabotadging her attempts to not die.
Billie needs to take Ruth’s struggle seriously. ALCOHOL IS NOT A HEALTHY COPING MECHANISM. And even if you’ve decided you can’t live without alcohol and won’t quit–don’t take Ruth down with you! It’s (quite literally) the least thing you could do to stop actively encouraging Ruth to drink, which completely disrespects her decision to get sober! If you can’t sincerely promise to step up your game and stop undermining Ruth’s sobriety–or, ideally, actively try to help Ruth stay sober–your relationship is over and for good fucking reason.
I feel like Ruth is a strip or two away from reaching this same conclusion and good for her. “Billie for my own health I gotta get some distance from you, ie break up, sorry.” “You’re overreacting, I swear I’m not part of the problem.” “That’s part of the problem.”
Yea and what she needs to do is find a bar she is willing to try for.
I do think if Billie does not try to quit than the relationship will have an expiration date, but that’s a problem for future Billie and could take years.
But if Billie does not at least promise to do number 3, which is low bar being okay to hang out with for anyone who does not want to drink the expiration date is now.
Yep! Also, journalism majors often have to read a lot about the law just to keep up with the news, and ‘perjury trap’ has been in the news A) Recently and B) In a few famous journalism cases.
I got that. US journalism is a fan of the Exact Words process to make real news into op eds. Or to make opinions/reactions into real news. The also like vague words. The story is all in the being (mis)lead (either doing it/ or feeling like others are and you’re the righteous in all of that). The point was the details are in the writing – which works for both!
I once had a roommate who was an alcoholic. He was way worse than Billie, if only because he was a violent drunk and frequently broke things. I started the process of moving in with my partner after the night when his girlfriend fell down the stairs and broke her leg (I was suspicious too, but they both denied he did it), he punched three holes in the wall, and threatened to kill me.
The next morning he didn’t remember any of it, but was definitely going to for sure quit drinking.
Three days later, he was drinking again because, well, he’d quit and been fine, so he clearly wasn’t an alcoholic, so he didn’t have any problems with alcohol, so it’s great!
We don’t talk anymore, but he and the girlfriend (who also drank way more than I was comfortable with) got married last year. From what I hear from mutual friends, they both still drink, and they have a rule that if he doesn’t remember it in the morning, it didn’t happen. So that’s healthy.
My guess is the “I object” part of the ceremony was left out, or they cycle through friends at such a rate that no one who knew both of them well were in attendance…? I’m going to go be sad now.
I’m glad you got out of there.
I hope the girlfriend gets out of there herself because yikes.
And yea his drinkings a problem because he hurts people when he drinks, and the fact that he thinks otherwise means he’s either an addict or does not care about who he hurts, or most likely both.
I used to absolutely adore this couple, but Ruth needs to dump Billie. She has too many of her own things to worry about without the ever-present possibility of Billie dragging her backwards.
Im proud of Billy for taking this step and being willing to come back to Ruth instead of completely avoiding the issue. I really want them to work. I know Billy doesnt want to cause Ruth to Relapse and I don’t want ruth to abandon or cut Billy off because of her issues. You can do it guys
I think she realizes that Billy is still in avoidance mode, but is proud that she physically came back instead of her walking off on an entire relationship. Alice didn’t (not that it was owed). Walky avoids the feels. Parents use money not to talk to her. Her social group hasn’t been a great model for talking it out that we’ve seen. Yeah, she only came back after a (shitty) recoup period and still isn’t heading toward a solution in person, but so many people take the easy way out by texting a termination of relationship as a means of closure. No matter what happens, she showed up for it! Good solid (babiest of babies’) step!
This. This this exactly Billie is showing real aerious caring even if she ia doing it poorly. Given her hiatory and her family i did not expect her to even make token attempts. And I didn’t think she cared enough about Ruth to try. I fully expected her to go on a bender and not speak yo Ruth again at all. I just dont think shes realized how severe her own problem is. I dont think she treating it flippantly because ahe doesnt take Ruth’s recovery seriously Hes just slow to change and doesnt think she also needs to be recovering so she is bruahing this off bevauae Ruth is challenging that she also has a problem
And I can’t imagine that was easy for it might not be what she needs to do but it wasnt entirely wrong babiest of baby steps and that is prettt significant for a character whose whole thing is her unwillingness to change or admit that she cares about people and who active bullies and dislikes caring people
Ruth: The stakes are high. If you insist on interacting with me in the same old way, I could really literally actually die. As in, dead. Corpse.
Billie: Well, you’re a poopyhead. Oh, wait, you’re not, because I still want to be around you. Can we just pretend that I didn’t just tell you that getting drunk is more important than you not dying? Let’s pretend that that isn’t even an issue. Here, have a flippant remark. Catch the remark! Catch it! Let’s play River in Egypt!
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“Stupid weasel words not weaselling!”
Wait, is the perjury trap where the facts got divorced and the evidence is trying to bring them back together
I had the same thought. I’d read that AU fanfiction tbh.
Starring Lindsay Lohan and Lindsay Lohan.
If you’re an old fart, it stars Hayley Mills and Hayley Mills.
On the basis of no evidence whatsoever I always assumed that Disney stole the plot from some forgotten play of Shakespeare’s.
That’s perhaps because separated twins figure heavily in Shakespeare’s A Comedy of Errors.
This is not directly related, but your comment somehow reminded me of an incredible PBS Great Performances version of The Comedy of Errors featuring the original Flying Karamazov Brothers. (The plot features two pairs of long-separated twins.)
I had thought that this was lost in the mists of ephemerality, but whaddaya know — all two-plus hours of it are now viewable on YouTube.
I might be ignoring pretty much everything else for the next couple of days.
That is incredible. The Flying Karamozof Brothers still perform at the oregon country fair, though one of them died and has been replaced, by a highly mismanaged cloning operation.
Not for Parent Trap that I know if, but She’s the Man is based on the Twelfth Night and I think both are worth seeing
It’s okay though, since Shakespeare stole all his plots from older sources.
It’s actually stolen from a German children’s book: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lottie_and_Lisa
Thank you. Apparently the book is available from Amazon and has been adopted into a couple of dozen movies.
An old fart, or Joyce, who refers to Lohan in unpleasant terms when describing her version.
Billie, saying it sounds like a perjury trap just makes you sound like a liar.
Well yeah, but Billie knows herself well enough to know that she is a liar. This probably isn’t going to work but she’s going to give it a try. That may be the best that Billie is capable of.
Making a non-promise you intend to break is kind of the opposite of trying, tho. Ruth is trying so hard to work on herself and Billie’s even half-assing her attempted papering over of the massive problems she’s bringing to the relationship.
Given what she said earlier to Walky and Lucy I think she does intend to give up drinking (or at least try to), but she also thinks that fighting with Ruth is a fundamental part of their relationship so she’s going to be an ass about it before she actually tells Ruth that she intends to stop drinking.
Part of me wanted to keep typing and make that sentence run on as long as possible.
I’m hoping she’s just being a snarky pedant about the word “drinking”. Although, not a good time to joke, I hope she’s pulling a walky with her being flippant about Serious Things because Feels(tm). All this trying to say she still needs to drink SOMETHING even if not booze, so purgery trap!
I mean you have to specify alcohol. She can still drink water.
Also, you can eat jello shots.
…This is gonna be like an 800 page contract, isn’t it?
Can you get drunk on Rum cakes?
As far as I know, there’s no legal definition laid out for the ratio of rum to cake. Single twinkie floating in a vat of rum you could drown an elephant in? Rum cake.
They need to get one of the law students like Sarah or Raidah to type out something with lots of ipso factos and habeus corpuses.
Billie keeps going the way she’s going, they’ll habeus a corpus all right. Maybe several.
Does Randall Munroe still do What If? This sounds right up his alley.
Apparently less frequently, the latest is from May 2018.
However this one is related!
“I can stop drinking.”
Not “I’m stopping drinking.”
“I haven’t had a single drop of alcohol since the last time I said it was probably my last time, a couple of hours ago, when I was plastered.”
Quitting alcohol is easy, I’ve done it a hundred times.
I personally have touched alcohol since I last drank it.
… have *not*.
Stupid lack of an edit button.
Exactly. But Billie has no intention of stopping drinking, and until now never really wanted to try. Ruth has to stop.
If they’re to keep getting along, they’ll need to find a dynamic where Billie isn’t tempting Ruth to relapse and ruin her health. And where Ruth isn’t pressuring Billie to grow up before she’s ready to.
Seems unlikely, maybe possible, but starting out with Billie non-promising to quit isn’t that dynamic.
Billiiiiiiie, please stop being a butt and give your girlfriend a moment of sincerity :c I’m choosing to believe that really was her last hurrah and now she’s on the straight and narrow, just, admit it to your girl
Billie needs alcohol more than she needs this relationship. And it’s not that she doesn’t want this relationship; she does, desperately. But she only wants the relationship. She needs the alcohol. Unless and until she finds a way to not need the alcohol, it’s probably healthier for both of them — certainly it would be healthier for Ruth — for them to break up.
Billie can drag Ruth down, but right now, Ruth can’t pull Billie up.
That may be true, but it’s not even that simple because I don’t think she’s admitted that to herself.
You make an excellent point. Plus, Ruth is in a delicate place right now with her recovery (both mental health and with her drinking). I really hope that she is able to continue that path to success and that Billie doesn’t derail her.
Should just change your name to Naruto if you gonna keep believing in someone with all evidence pointing against you
Or Parappa.
this is the best line i’ve read all day
Come on, Billie! You can repair this relationship if you just try!!
So you’re aware of the problem, then.
Even Billie is aware of the problem.
I’m not quite sure where Billie is hoping to go with this. She’s going to drink if she’s not going to commit to it. Was she hoping Ruth wouldn’t find out if she did?
Or maybe it’s the ‘if I say the right things, after a while she’ll stop making this into an issue’.
Billie’s an “in-the-moment” kinda girl. As long as this solves her CURRENT situation she’ll say anything. I mean whatever happens down the road, that’s FUTURE Billie’s problem
Sometimes making a promise or a commitment and then failing is not a good idea because then you feel badly about yourself. It can be healthier to say, “I’m going to try,” rather than “I’m going to do it,” because then you won’t hate yourself as much if it doesn’t work out. Acknowledging the possibility of failure from the beginning keeps expectations realistic.
But she won’t even commit to trying to stop drinking. She basically said “I’ll just tell you I stopped” and “I could stop” here. Even when she was talking to Lucy earlier, she gave a non-committal answer. (“This is probably my last time.”)
Ruth wants to hear “I promise I’ll try to stop drinking” from Billie.
I’m even fairly certain Ruth would not believe the “I won’t touch a single drop ever again” promise/lie, because she knows all too well that’s not how quitting drinking works, mostly.
“I’m quitting drinking. I’m gonna give it my all and if I fail, I’ll just keep trying. Also I’m going to therapy because I fucking finally realized I’m not going to be able to do it on my on and there’s no fucking shame in needing outside help”. Dunno about Ruth, but that’s what _I_ want to hear.
That’s just it, this is very important to Ruth but Billie is being flippant and won’t give her a straight answer. Ruth needs to hear “I can’t promise I’ll stop completely, but I will promise to try my hardest and stop pressuring you into drinking again.” What she’s getting is “meh whatever I could stop drinking I guess.”
Even with a noncommittal answer, I still feel like Lucy is on the case. Billie may or may not keep dodging Ruth’s questions, but she can’t get away from her roommate, who will definitely see her hammered again at some point.
So… now when we have moved on from the “my girlfriend is suicidaly depressed” storyline we can move on to the “my girlfriend is an alcoholic” storyline. Great fun, great fun…
…um, can we cut to Dina and Becky just for few strips. Please?
Personally, I’m kind of curious what Ethan is up to.
My guess? Transformers.
Maybe they’re going through some drama too. Becky finally admitted she likes Dolphins more than Dinosaurs and is sleeping on the metaphorical couch.
NO!!!
They could reach a compromise if she liked ichthyosaurs then
They aren’t dinosaurs but they’re pretty much the reptile version of dolphins
And even the reptile version of toothed whales. Fudgers could get REALLY big.
https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2018/04/prehistoric-sea-monster-largest-size-blue-whale-fossils-science/
Apparently, they birthed live young, so yeah.
Not to be confused with the actual couch at Leslie’s that Becky is sleeping on.
That’s an important distinction.
I’d rather wait to see if Ruth demands AA, tells Billie to get out, or some other option first
Somehow, I can’t imagine Ruth being the “Give yourself up to a higher power” sort of gal.
Ironically, Billie might be able to find solace in that as she’s one of the more religious cast members.
She basically assumes God exists without having really thought about it or wanting to think about it, and thinks it’s weird not to. That’s hardly especially religious, just brought up that way.
Yeah, I mean, we haven’t even seen Billie go to church yet. So that puts Joyce, Becky, Sierra, Jacob and Mary above her, not even including the C-listers like Agatha and Raidah.
So right now she’s on the same level as Danny – they both have vague ideas of going, they just don’t really see a reason to.
Yes, but she CAN go to church (could go?). Anytime!
It’d be considered especially religious where I live, but yeah as far as DOA maybe not
Unless you count “Sir.”
I really enjoy watching Becky learn more about the sciences!
Oh, come on Billie. Last time you two said you’d sober up you didn’t even try. Ruth was suffering through nausea and withdrawal symptoms while taking on Amber’s dad and all you did was lie about being 3 months sober.
Fairly certain there’s hasn’t been 3 months of comic time yet
Billie was lying to people who aren’t Ruth that she was three months sober (so, that she’d been sober since her car accident) because IU is a dry campus.
Billie lied to RUTH that she’d been three days sober the first time they tried to quit.
On one hand, I can get that it can be hard to cold turkey something. The least she could say is “I’ll start cutting back” Y’know a show of good faith. I can’t just stop eating WHOLE chocolate cakes all at once y’know. I gotta go down to half cakes, Quarter cakes and then cupcakes.
And you’ll pry the cupcakes from my cold, dead hands!
That, of course, is because I died due to my blood eventually having the consistency of syrup.
They tried cutting back and it ended up with both of them drinking a half bottle.
Yeah cutting back doesn’t work for me. For a simple reason: once you’ve had a single, reasonable glass, you have alcohol in your brain, and the desinhibition/lower willpower makes you really, really believe that a second glass wouldn’t be all that bad. Etc.
RUTH tried cutting back. Billie never did.
I totally believe Billie when she says she’s not going to drink anymore. It’s not like she’d lie about that or anything.
You really think someone’d do that? Just break into their girlfriend’s dorm and tell lies?
I think this is why she doesn’t want to say it to Ruth. Breaking a promise would be so much worse than relapsing on a secret quest. Billie’s whole relationship with Ruth is based on not wanting to hurt anybody. Finally that might extend to Ruth, so she’s being more seclusive so she doesn’t ruin her relationship. Ironically, this distance is ruining it anyway. Like Walky, she needs to jump off the garbage barge and take control.
I don’t think she’s lying. I think she believes, it, genuinely, every time she says it. That’s the problem.
Johnny Cash wrote “I Walk the Line” in 1956, when he was 24. You can’t listen to that recording and not believe that he meant every word of it. And yet, his next ten years were filled with drug and alcohol abuse and infidelity.
His eventual marriage to June Carter may have solved the infidelity issue, but he went into rehab again and again, the last time when he was 60.
Addiction is not about logic. It’s about need.
That is a common alcoholic problem, but I don’t think it’s Billie’s. Not yet anyway.
At least it’s not a pattern yet because there was only once she said it and it’s not clear to me whether she believed it then or was lying from the start. I think the latter, because we saw no real sign of her struggling with it. Then I think she just saw it as a way to get Ruth to stop, since Ruth’s drinking had scared her, not that she had any need to herself.
I don’t hate Billie because she can’t stop drinking, I’m starting to hate Billie for how obnoxious she’s being about avoiding the big issue
She’s addicted. Ruth needs to make this the condition:
Go to Alcoholics Anonymous or they are breaking up
I think Ruth’s 180 needs a little time to ease into this but it is inevitable that she will.
Does it have to be AA? There have to be programs that don’t
A) Put a ton of pressure and emphasis on forgiveness
B) Put a ton of emphasis on higher powers (as some branches of AA do)
and
C) Have a history of being reaaaaaalllly obnoxious about being a Protestant organization.
Eh, AA is a very large organization so there’s always going to be problems but it works well for some people.
I don’t know Ruth’s religious beliefs or any but obviously secular is better for her if she’s not into that.
Billie might prefer it.
I don’t doubt there are people that benefit from it, but those first two are the bigger issues for me – trying to make recovery hinge on getting forgiveness just sets a lot people up for failure and a lot more heartache than necessary imo (not to mention it’s an astronomical dick move to the people who are supposed to do the forgiving – like ‘hey, this person’s recovery hinges on getting forgiveness so they can move on to the next step of the program, if you don’t do it you could sabotage their whole recovery from alcoholism and then how will you feel? Oh, but no pressure’).
IIRC, Willis once answered a comment about these two in AA with ‘Billie might be okay with it, Ruth would probably not like it’.
Also, Ruth already tried to get forgiveness from those she’s wronged — or, at least, apologized to those she bullied. It didn’t go well. I can just imagine how Rachel would react.
I admit to bias given its affects (beneficial) on my family. Forgiveness can’t be coerced and doesn’t get to be given unearned unless you have saints you’ve wrong but it was a necessary part for some of my family members being accepted back into society.
Because they did some spectacularly shitty stuff.
It doesn’t hinge on forgiveness. It hinges on apology, and then giving people what they need even if that means you are out of their lives.
That may be true for some branches but there’s very much AA programs where you’re not done the program until you actually get forgiveness. People have talked about the pressure it put them under, both those trying to recover and those who’re (ostensibly) doing the forgiving.
AA works for about 5% of its members. Quitting on your own works for about 7%. I don’t have a link, but I read that somewhere, so it must be true.
I read that a lot of it has to do with if people choose to do it or not. Court-mandated AA meetings reduces effectiveness rates because, obviously, those people are not choosing to engage with that program. This is not at ALL to say, “Those people should get their attitude together.” I would rather see courts provide people with a variety of treatment options, NOT just AA. Here’s a bunch of research on the topic though. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effectiveness_of_Alcoholics_Anonymous
That’s fair, but even their own guide states that only 75% of those who “really tried” become sober. Putting aside the fact that “really tried” are huge red-flaggy weasel words (who decides who did and did not “really try”?) they’re still admitting to a minimum of a 25% failure rate.
AA saved my family’s life and trying to quit on your own is basically suicide, IMHO, but to each their own.
That’s an oddly morbid take. I know many people who either quit on their own or through therapy. Not AA.
AA is not supported by any peer reviewed studies, afaik. I’m glad your family is sober now, but that doesn’t mean that AA is the only way to stop drinking.
I’m very glad for people who succeed in quitting any way but quitting on their own has always failed for my family. It also resulted in a couple of fatal relapses so, yeah, my opinion is literally morbid.
A quick google search confirms there are AA programs for atheists. (Which Billie isn’t, but it sounds like it’d be a better fit for her.) Though I can’t speak as to their content or effectiveness, because I’ve never gone to any of these programs.
The secular ones I heard about still insisted on some sort of higher power – just not an obviously religious one.
It’s possible there are ones who omit that but AA has a few things that bug me.
Wait, what? Like what, gravity?
I believe the one I heard about used the group as the thing ‘bigger than individual members’.
D) require you to try and recruit new members
How about “Go to the therapy you were supposed to go to and talk to them about the drinking”?
It would at least be a start.
There are other options, often with better results as measured by peer reviewed studies, but they’re extremely hard to find in the USA due to the predominance of AA.
theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/04/the-irrationality-of-alcoholics-anonymous/386255/
Icalasari: Addiction is a complicated issue. AA works for many, but it’s not a panacea. Ruth would be entirely justified — and self-preserving — if she told Billie that she (Ruth) would end the relationship if Billie didn’t stop drinking. Beyond that, it’s Billie’s choice whether or not to stop drinking, and if so, how to do it.
I should add: in the US, the options for alcohol abuse treatment are often non-existent apart from AA. If we were smarter we’d have more options, but the US is pretty stupid about the treatment of mental health issues of all kinds, including addiction.
Or at the very least, seriously try to stop. Pretty much every program recognizes there will be relapses along the way.
Part of what we might be seeing here is that she’s afraid of committing to it because she’s afraid if she does any slip will be seen as betrayal.
No, YOU’re a perjury trap. YOUR ENTIRE FAMILY is a perjury trap !
Mind you, admitting that you will probably fail but keep trying is arguably a better habit than believing you can stop completely with no consequences. Yoda’s advice is great for everything but addiction.
Of course, I am now imagining Billie refusing to admit she’s seen Star Wars after making the quote.
Hey someone already said this! I don’t agree with Yoda anyway.
Yoda’s a fucking buffoon, and everything he says is bullshit. Fuck Yoda.
No, don’t fuck Yoda. Dude looks like a green koala, and those things are riddled with syphillis.
But yeah, Yoda’s full of shit.
… koalas are riddled with syphilis? Is this an actual fact? How? WHY?
Quick google search gives a lot of links about chlamydia, so poster might have confused that.
Ooops, yes, that’s what I meant. Got the STDs mixed up.
I’m so glad that me dissing Yoda has led to this knowledge about koalamydia.
… I have a DnD character who’s deathly afraid of Koalas. I see now that part of what he’s afraid of is catching Koalamydia. Thank you for opening my eyes.
You don’t even need that. Like everything from the Land Down Under, including the ground, koalas are perfectly capable of messing up your day. They’re highly irritable and testy bastards and come equipped with claws that both work on eucalyptus bark (so just imagine what they’ll do to YOU) and are positively LOADED with harmful bacteria.
Their one saving grace is that their diet is so low-energy they spend most of the day sleeping, so they only mess you up if you literally go up to them and poke them or something, which is where natural selection comes into play.
This advice is good in specific situations and horrible to have as a rule.
What I think it means is don’t go into this situation believing you will proberly fail. When you have the skills but lack the confidence this might be a decent pep talk.
When you are trying to build up the skills or are doing a thing where failing 99% of the time is inevitable this is horrible advice. Trying and failing to do stuff is usually part of the path to success. And when you go into something with the mindset of “Don’t try Do” and fail anyways it can turn something from well I didn’t succeed but I got way closer than I thought I would to maybe next time I’ll get even closer to I can’t believe I failed this is the end of the world.
The old EU had a thing where it was part of Jedi training and the meaning it gave was ‘don’t only put in the effort to say ‘well, I tried’ – actually do your best to do the thing. Sometimes you’ll fail, but it’s better than ‘welp, I tried, didn’t work, I give up’.
I’m fairly certain that was given as word of god authorial intent behind the phrase’s use in the film during a ’90s interview.
I dunno about that, I just remember it came out in one of the books – it MIGHT have been one of the books about the Jedi code.
I always read it as specific to that kind of mystical Force effort. That came when he was getting Luke to lift the X-Wing out of the swamp, right? Luke thinks he can’t do it because it’s too big and therefore he can’t do it.
When Yoda does, Luke says he doesn’t believe it and Yoda tells him that’s why he fails.
In that context, belief you can do it matters. Trying implies lack of confidence and when it’s all a matter of belief and will, lack of confidence is fatal.
In more realistic situations, not so much.
That too. Even in more realistic situations, believing something is doable can be hugely helpful. Even if you acknowledge failure is possible – or even probable – if you go into it thinking you can’t possibly succeed, it’s going to be much harder to muster up the will or effort to get it done.
But yeah, in that code book, it’s basically saying ‘Don’t half ass stuff so you can claim it’s impossible. ‘Well, I tried’ is not good enough when you’re only putting in enough effort to say ‘Oh well, I tried’. Actually do your best to do the thing’.
Which isn’t necessarily mutually exclusive with the idea you have to believe something is possible now that I think on it.
Thanks for putting words to some of my feelings about that. The way it was phrased in the movie always bothered me, a lot, in ways I couldn’t figure out how to explain. I think another part of it was that that attitude lets people claim that if I failed, it must be because I’m choosing to fail, even when I really am trying as hard as I can (or as hard as I know how). It’s really damaging to be already at the point of tears and then have someone who’s supposed to be helping you get angry because you’re “not even trying”. There is nothing actionable about “just do it” or “just try harder” when you honestly don’t know how.
Learning how to put frustration gently aside and get my brain back into creative problem-solving mode has been far more useful. And for the things that just require blind stubbornness, well, that’s much easier for me to access from the perspective of “ok, I just have to try and fail and try again”.
Even with deadlifts, which is the most blatant real example of “if you believe you can’t then you can’t” I’ve experienced, the approach that worked for me was to stop caring whether it was possible. That, and imagining that I was pushing the floor down instead of pulling the barbell up, which is blatantly impossible but helps anyways 🙂
Yoda’s advice is terrible for everything.
Ruth’s being pedantic, but with good reason.
It is at least a start to a conversation. Did Ruth ever say Billie cannot drink (granted, she shouldn’t, she is an alcoholic and not legally supposed to be doing it, anyway), or just to stop tempting her?
A lot of posters assumed that it was the latter but it seems both Billie and Ruth understood it to be the former.
It’s not just “don’t tell me to drink” but “don’t drink around me” and “you need help too.”
I was one of those posters and I still believe it was the latter. Billie’s the one that brought up the “I’m not drinking too” idea right now in this strip, except in a very non-committal way and Ruth is just following that thread.
I’m pretty sure “don’t drink around me” is a ridiculously reasonable request from an alcoholic, provided said alcoholic isn’t doing it in bars or similar.
I am with those who believe Ruth wanted Billie to stop drinking period because they had agreed to try.
No, Ruth’s being the opposite of pedantic — she’s trying to bring the conversation back on track. Pedantry tries to derail a converstation by focusing on minor errors at the expense of the point being made.
Yes, I’m pedantic about pedantry. I have no respect for pedants.
So Billie: Say you’ll stop drinking. Get whatever help helps. And work on stopping drinking.
You’re only being pedantic if the other person isn’t trying to rules-lawyer their way through the conversation.
“I’m stopping drinking … for the rest of tonight.”
Come to think of it, even that statement was hypothetical. “What if I told you that…”
Just break up. This is not a healthy relationship for either, and the growth they need cannot come to fruition while they’re together. Billie doesn’t care enough about maintaining Ruth’s mental health to change her own habits, and Ruth is at too fragile of a point in her life to try and help Billie undergo her own necessary evolution and maturation through self-examination. 18-19 is a time of great personal discovery as is, and for the two of them to try and play therapist or babysitter for the other one, especially given how their relationship started is just a bad idea.
Agreed.
Not just because I want Ruth to date the school paper editor either!
Or Sierra!
Or any other of the queer ladies on campus! 🙂
I’m still wondering if some kind of bizarre Carla/Ruth thing is going to end up happening.
Well, that might be what drives Billie to the bottom and makes her get some help, but I don’t really want to have to watch that.
And Ruth may be too fragile to be a proper help for Billie now, but the break up would also be a huge blow to her stability.
Weird story from my family: I come from a family of alcoholics and eventually the entirety of the family got clean (or died–this is not a fun family history). However, one of the earlier ones was a religious fundamentalist that got clean for Jesus and attempted to get the entire family clean by his example. To this day, every member of the family ostracizes him and refuses to speak his name. He’s become an unperson. Genuine hate there despite everyone (living) being alive.
Why? Because his attitude was that his sobriety made him better than the family he’d abused before (or at least that was how it was perceived).
So Ruth is going about this the wrong way.
everyone (living) being sober. Typo there.
Billie: What if I told you I’m not drinking anymore?
Ruth: So, you’ve actually stopped drinking?
Billie: I can do that.
Ruth: But are you actually going to stop drinking?
I don’t see how Ruth is doing what your relative did or how is this “the wrong way to go about it”. She’s just questioning what Billie is not-promising to figure out if she’s, you know, actually going to stop drinking like Billie says she is. Since Billie has lied about that before, I think it’s fair for Ruth to doubt her commitment.
Yeah, Ruth is nowhere near claiming that she’s better than Billie. She hasn’t been saying “Match my standards,” she’s been saying “I have to be sober or I’ll die.” Staying sober to stay alive is not being morally superior.
As someone who has also come from a family of alcoholics, getting your loved ones to at least attempt to not drag you back into relapse, and asking them not to lie about being on the wagon, is not the same thing as “I have Jesus so I’m better than you”.
I think this is spot-on.
More just that people getting defensive is usually their first response and if you want them to change, it’s something you have to handle very carefully and even then it’s a crapshot.
My cousin was right–just didn’t do well in how he handled it.
Her evasive pervarications Bil-lie her true alcoholism.
…..
*flees for dear punning life*
That’s impressive – a pun that only works when read, not when spoken. I don’t think I’ve seen that before. Very nice!
She just doesn’t want to admit the t-ruth
Ruth is in the bad position of being nothing like she was two weeks ago and finding out that has an impact on her relationships.
Billie’s alcoholism is not Ruth’s fault.
No, the problem is their relationship was based on alcoholism and self-destruction.
Ruth assumed Billie wanted to get better–and missed she never did.
Yep seems like most of the posters want to pretend they have some pure innocent relationship, but it was never likely to work out in the first place.
I don’t think many think it’s “pure innocent”, but that doesn’t mean we can’t root for them to make it.
It would be nice if they do make it, but Billie has some seriously huge amount of soul searching and growth to do. I mean, I get that they both do, but Ruth at least is going in the right direction at the moment.
Gonna be honest, my only experience with addictive substances is when I got my parents to quit smoking for my fourth birthday.
That and very occasional sips of caffeinated and/or alcoholic drinks.
Not emotionally scarring a child, has been a really helpful tool in quitting addiction in my family. My mom coming back crying after a presentation of tar in the lungs in third grade got her parents to stop smoking. Myself freaking out at my paternal grandmother after her time in the hospital got her to stop smoking. Myself and another cousin staying in my grandfather’s life if he got sober reduced his drinking combined with some other consequences of drinking that showed the toll it can take on others. It’s easy to think it just hurts yourself but the epiphany that it’s causing harm to loved ones is a hell of a bootstrap to recovery for some.
I just heard on a Barney video cigarettes could cause fires and I was TERRIFIED of fire as a kid. I’d blow out candles as soon as my mom lit them because I did not want fire in the house. So when my parents asked what I wanted for my 4th birthday, I said I wanted them to quit smoking. My mom was okay with it (she’d never been a big smoker in the first place) but she and my dad were both annoyed with me at the moment of my suggestion. 😛 (Funny annoyed, not actually annoyed).
18 years later and neither have smoked since to my knowledge (though my dad jokes about occasionally having a cigar at work). My (limited) research says after 15 years your body gets back to where it would be if you’d never smoked so …yay?
When I was about 10 or 11 I used to hide my parents’ cigarettes so they’d freak out at how often they had to buy more and would stop.
They just assumed my older sister who was in full bratty teenager mode was stealing them to smoke with her high school friends.
This is beyond hilarious to me for some reason.
When I was about that age my mom (who at the time was pregnant with my younger brother) got me dressed up all cute and had me go ask my dad to stop smoking. They’d both quit when she got pregnant with me and while I was a baby, but Dad started up again.
To be fair, it did work. My brother’s 24 now, and except for sneaking off to the garage for a little weed on holidays, my parents haven’t smoked his whole life.
Billie wants her transition out of alcohol to be effortless and pressure free. It’s important to her that she can simply decide to do something and get it done without the grind and desperation, as if she was always a whole and healthy person without any issues threatening her ability to comfortably coast.
It’d certainly be infuriating mindset to put up with when the person in question clearly has a real problem. But it’s an entirely natural and common one. Underestimating the grind and denial are peas in the pod that judgers and perpetrators often falsely conflate. Hell, it’s so natural that on a gut level I want Billie to succeed. But life isn’t so kind.
hmm. kinda like how walky was desperately avoiding the grind of learning calculus?
Ultimately yes. Walky’s denial was more easily identified because his problems existed in an environment closer to (though not quite) a vacuum. Billie’s problems are occurring in the context of an already incredibly messy relationship between mutually unhealthy people.
In the end, both Walky and Billie not only do not want to face their very real problems, but they simply don’t recognize their issues for what they are. And I am reluctant to judge either of them harshly for it because the factors leading to the problem are very easily mistaken for ones people tend to (and prefer to) assume are entirely always under their control. Billie doesn’t think of herself as being problematically addicted to alcohol. Indeed, in some cultures she wouldn’t be (e.g. Germany). Furthermore, she really wants her relationship with Ruth to work out and is looking for any excuse to reinforce this belief because romance is like that. Similarly, Walky has always been good at calculus and is grabbing onto anything that will reinforce what he has known all his life.
Billie has admirable qualities. Being independently moral isn’t one of them. If people keep trying to judge her through that lens, she’s going to come up short.
Yet I find Billie’s well-meaning efforts and self-delusion/lying to herself infinitely more forgivable than someone like Malaya who has all the opportunity and brains she needs to be a better person yet chooses to be a judgmental reactionary.
To be clear, Billie has promised once to quit drinking and failed to do so. That, plus her blind attempts to get Ruth to drink as well, are a horrible breach of trust that would make Ruth entirely justified in breaking things off with Billie.
I’m just saying that Billie being the worst is something I vehemently disagree with. I would take a thousand Billies over a thousand Malayas any day, let alone Marys.
The last few days have dropped Billie below anyone except out-and-out villains.
Malaya is horribly abrasive, but she for the most part keeps to herself. Billie has been going out of the way to treat everyone around her like shit.
Fuck Billie.
wait what? billie’s going out of her way to do *what*?
actually don’t answer that, it’ll just start another pissy-baby fight 😛
You have that reversed. Billie has been a bull in a China shop with Ruth. Beyond that has she physically hurt anyone or intentionally hurt them emotionally? She wants to live what she sees as her glory years and idealized times, having a false vision of how perfect things were just like Walky did.
Malaya goes out of her way to treat people like shit. She tears down learning environments. She is hostile to anyone with a different world view to her own. The fact that her political stances are generally better than average does not excuse this. If every character in Dumbing of Age were an organization, Malaya would be PETA.
Oh, piss off Billie. I am actively rooting for Ruth to break up with Billie at this point. I get Billie’s addicted, and that cutting off full-stop is hard and awful. But I have long lost patience for her faux cute act when sne’s trying to placate Ruth, and other people. This relationship was enough of a train wreck when it started, but now Ruth is trying to get better, succeeding pretty well, and has refreshing self-awareness—consistent, not just last panel moments of clarity—and Billie trying to “innocently” slip back into their destructive habits so that she doesn’t have to change has officially worn out its welcome. Enough. End it, or make a real change.
Or both, actually. I’d be down to see Billie get better, even if she and Ruth split up. I don’t hate Billie, but…ugh, I do not like her, and my opinion of her is only getting worse the more she jeopardizes Ruth’s well-being.
Billie is one of my favorite characters, and she’d have me congratulating Ruth for dumping her right now.
Well, she’s behaving pretty destructively right now but I’ll grant her some mitigating cricumstances:
-she’s 18 or so
-she’s been called out on her behaviour only a couple of hours ago
-she’s fumbling but trying to do something.
So for now I’d say it’s not good enough, but if she cuts it out and gets serious by next morning I’ll be ok with her. I mean, I’m twice her age and I usually need to sleep on it between when I start noticing a problem in my behaviour and when I actually start making any visible change.
Billie has been skipping therapy and her earlier refusal to quit drinking nearly lost Ruth. In no universe is this Billie’s first wake-up call.
Not the first wake-up call that was directed at her, but I think the forst one to get through to her?
Because it came from someone who matters. Psychiatrists don’t count, cause what do they know about anything? And something that is there for her to see but not pointed out to her wouldn’t cut through the denial. Well, I guess.
I still think her behaviour’s awful. And knowing Willis’s choices so far he probably won’t let her just have an epiphany and turn it around before it’s too late. There will probably be much weeping and gnashing of teeth.
I’m hanging in there through this conversation.
What she said to Lucy earlier indicates she’s at least given some thought to stopping and there’s been no clear sign either of that or of reversing it in this scene. I’m waiting on that being reconciled.
It could just be that she’s an alcoholic and was lying to Lucy, but then I’d expect the same to Ruth. And honestly, I wouldn’t expect her to bother lying to Lucy if there wasn’t intent to stop behind it.
I think Her roomate ia going to the support Billie needs to quit drinking
Billie, please stop being the worst.
Im sympathetic to Ruth but speaking from experience you cant really force someone you love to quit a substance. You can tell them how much it effects you, but the decision has to be theirs.
Sure, but you can also break up with them to protect yourself from harm.
Agreed but you can at least ask them to be honest with you.
Oddly enough, Billie is being honest, without intending to be so. By her evasions (which Ruth is picking up on immediately), Ruth is realising just where this is going.
billiE NO
I notice that the alt text isn’t given under oath.
I want to give Billie the benefit of the doubt. Maybe she really will go cold turkey. It’s a lot easier to stay sober when you feel like you have a reason to. Maybe the snark is her still burning off the alcohol in her system?
“I can stop any time”
-Every addict ever
Quitting is easy, I do it all the time.
You know, that was intended to be a glib paraphrase of that Mark Twain quote I’m too lazy to look up, but I do actually give up on things very easily.
Anyway I guess this is where Ruth makes Billie choose between their relationship and plausible deniability.
It’s only a step away from choosing Hurt Ruth or Don’t Hurt Ruth. Drink Alcohol or Suggest Alcohol = Hurt Ruth
Or in Billie’s case, Ruth finding out I’ve been drinking = Hurt Ruth.
Drinking and Ruth not fing out = Happy Billie + Not Hurt Ruth.
Still not good but that’s her logic over the past couple of weeks, i think.
I got the impression that panel 7 is Billie saying that she’s not stopping drinking but was hoping that she’d persuade Ruth to accept this by way of promising that she’s ‘working on it’. We’re about to find out just what is most important in Ruth and Billie’s lives and something tells me that Billie is not going to like the outcome.
OK, I’ve been meaning to say this for a while.
First, Ruth isn’t actually an alcoholic. Don’t get me wrong, it’s best for her to act as if she is, and avoid the stuff. But, she was simply self-medicating, but was not, and is not, physically addicted. Yet.
Billie, on the other hand, is full blown, 100% an alcoholic. We don’t see her drinking all the time, or see her visibly drunk. But, she is, and she is. She’s learned to hide it for years. She claims she can quit any time, but really knows she can’t. She gets upset just thinking about not drinking.
This will be the big question. Can Ruth get Billie to actually stop drinking? Will Billie dry out?
Ruth is (was?) definitely an alcoholic. She’s referred to herself before as having been “a teenage alcoholic” – she’s currently 20 years old – she’s talked about how she eventually turned to alcoholism after the deaths of her parents, and there have been at least two on-panel incidences in the comic of her passing out drunk, off the top of my head. Including one where she nearly died as a result.
The word “alcoholic” has two valid usages; you two are using different ones.
1) Someone with physical changes in their brain that make them need to drink alcohol, especially if they start drinking.
2) Someone who has a pattern of drinking alcohol in ways that significantly hurt them.
jeffepp was saying that Ruth doesn’t have the physical brain changes that would make it extremely hard for her to quit using alcohol. Billie does. So Ruth can stop using alcohol more easily than Billie can.
Ruth may believe she’s an alcoholic, especially if she’s using the second sense of the word. But I suspect jeffepp may be right nevertheless.
Maybe. Not sure about the physical changes: Ruth showed serious withdrawal symptoms every time she’s quit. For days afterwards.
I think the basic idea is right though: Ruth’s main problem is depression, which she was medicating with alcohol.
Billie’s main problem is the booze itself. She hasn’t even been willing to try to quit.
But, she was simply self-medicating, but was not, and is not, physically addicted. Yet.
We don’t know that.
Ruth was indeed physically addicted. She may not have been mentally addicted, but she had withdrawal symptoms for days.
Um, yes she is. She was definitely physically addicted, we saw her have withdrawal symptoms – we saw her get nausea from withdrawal. Self-medicating can lead to alcoholism because you become dependant on it.
Ruth has at least three symptoms which is all that is necessary to be diagnosed as an alcoholic:
*Withdrawal symptoms when stopping drinking
*Evidence of alcohol tolerance
*Continuing to drink despite clear evidence of harmful consequences
Further, for a time she was also doing this one:
*Pursuing the consumption of alcohol to the exclusion of alternative pleasures
An inability to stop or control drinking is a possible symptom. But it is not a strict requirement.
I do feel like “I am going to try and stop drinking and see a therapist/go to a group to stop drinking” is a more realistic promise, rather than promising to stop cold turkey.
Really starting to warm to Ruth, didn’t think that would happen anytime soon
I might even become a Leafs fan!
Let’s not be too hasty here.
Sometimes, I get this urge to follow Ruth’s early example and just spend most of the day blasted off my ass, and then pass out wherever I happen to collapse first. I never act on it, but it’s still appealing, some nights.
I think the big problem here IS NOT Billie will not promise to stop drinking.
It is Billie trying to weasel her way out of the conversation.
Like, if Billie just straight up said she will not give up alcohol, Ruth would be upset, but at least they would be addressing the issue.
If you go back in this arc, we see Billie earlier trying to pout her way out of the conversation with Ruth. Billie’s been trying to deflect and avoid from the start because I really think that she doesn’t want to deal with Ruth changing or having to change herself.
Exactly.
Reason I bring it up is because a lot comments are talking about how at least Billie is not willing to make promises she cannot keep OR how its unfair to expect her to quit cold turkey, BUT that is not the problem.
The problem is Billie’s avoidance of the issue AND her attempts to placate Ruth with nonpromises.
This exactly. Making a nonpromise isn’t better than honestly saying ‘I don’t feel I am able to quit or promise you that I will’. A nonpromise is just setting them up to be disappointed but also not allowed to be *too* disappointed as they never promised you see. If it isn’t a promise then you set your expectations up, not this person who is uncommitted and unable to even promise that they will try.
Good Ruth, call her out. About time that someone asked Billie the real questions.
Billie, go to rehab.
Ruth, Billie’s the daughter of a politician.
She’s learned this stuff.
Good on you through for seeing through it, though.
I thought Mr. Billingsworth was just rich, not a politician? AFAIK, Roz is the only regular member of the cast who “has politics in [her] blood.”
Billie if you can’t commit to quitting than commit to trying.
If you can’t commit to trying than ask yourself what you can commit to.
1. Can you promise not to drink in front of Ruth or be a pill about not being able to drink in front of her. This would address her stated concern pretty well.
2. Can you promise to not make you decisions of places to hang out with Ruth based on where has the best alcohol. And not pressure her to drink. At least your trying.
3. Can you promise to not pressure Ruth to drink with you when you do drink in front of her and try to make sure that drinking is not the only activity where ever you two hang out.
If you can’t commit to 3 your going to get dumped soon. Ruth can’t date someone who is actively sabotadging her attempts to not die.
A-fucking-men!
Billie needs to take Ruth’s struggle seriously. ALCOHOL IS NOT A HEALTHY COPING MECHANISM. And even if you’ve decided you can’t live without alcohol and won’t quit–don’t take Ruth down with you! It’s (quite literally) the least thing you could do to stop actively encouraging Ruth to drink, which completely disrespects her decision to get sober! If you can’t sincerely promise to step up your game and stop undermining Ruth’s sobriety–or, ideally, actively try to help Ruth stay sober–your relationship is over and for good fucking reason.
I feel like Ruth is a strip or two away from reaching this same conclusion and good for her. “Billie for my own health I gotta get some distance from you, ie break up, sorry.” “You’re overreacting, I swear I’m not part of the problem.” “That’s part of the problem.”
But the thing is, Billie’s probably not even going to try and is trying not to admit that.
Yea and what she needs to do is find a bar she is willing to try for.
I do think if Billie does not try to quit than the relationship will have an expiration date, but that’s a problem for future Billie and could take years.
But if Billie does not at least promise to do number 3, which is low bar being okay to hang out with for anyone who does not want to drink the expiration date is now.
I thought Billie was a journalism student, not pre-law.
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2017/comic/book-7/03-the-thing-i-was-before/funk/
Billie likes words and how to use them. It works. I’m missing one of her other ones where she breaks down meanings but it’s her thang.
Yep! Also, journalism majors often have to read a lot about the law just to keep up with the news, and ‘perjury trap’ has been in the news A) Recently and B) In a few famous journalism cases.
I thought Ferret was referring to Billie’s attempts to use Exact Words to avoid talking about the actual issue.
I got that. US journalism is a fan of the Exact Words process to make real news into op eds. Or to make opinions/reactions into real news. The also like vague words. The story is all in the being (mis)lead (either doing it/ or feeling like others are and you’re the righteous in all of that). The point was the details are in the writing – which works for both!
Curse you TYPING making my same name a different person. Harumph. Not the biggest Billie fan but better then Sydney…
Remember, Billie, when you tll Ruth you’re not going to drink any more, she wants to hear that you don’t also mean you’re not going to drink any less.
Anybody else feel like Ruth is not the best person to try and start an intervention for Billie?
I mean, it wasn’t too long ago that she was not above abusing her position of power to try and strike fear into her. That, and threats of violence.
Love these two; but they got some issues that are gonna need dealing with.
I once had a roommate who was an alcoholic. He was way worse than Billie, if only because he was a violent drunk and frequently broke things. I started the process of moving in with my partner after the night when his girlfriend fell down the stairs and broke her leg (I was suspicious too, but they both denied he did it), he punched three holes in the wall, and threatened to kill me.
The next morning he didn’t remember any of it, but was definitely going to for sure quit drinking.
Three days later, he was drinking again because, well, he’d quit and been fine, so he clearly wasn’t an alcoholic, so he didn’t have any problems with alcohol, so it’s great!
We don’t talk anymore, but he and the girlfriend (who also drank way more than I was comfortable with) got married last year. From what I hear from mutual friends, they both still drink, and they have a rule that if he doesn’t remember it in the morning, it didn’t happen. So that’s healthy.
Jeeeeesusssss Chrrrriiiiiist
What are the Vegas odds on her death? I say it’s on the second year.
I’m praying for a divorce before it comes to that.
Ah, the long odds on the happy ending. That’s a bold strategy BBCC, let’s see if it pays off for you (and, mostly, her).
I’m thinking more ‘avoid the worst case scenario’ than ‘happy ending’.
My guess is the “I object” part of the ceremony was left out, or they cycle through friends at such a rate that no one who knew both of them well were in attendance…? I’m going to go be sad now.
In all likelihood, they don’t have friends, they have enablers.
Well, HE has enablers – clearly none of those people like HER.
I’m glad you got out of there.
I hope the girlfriend gets out of there herself because yikes.
And yea his drinkings a problem because he hurts people when he drinks, and the fact that he thinks otherwise means he’s either an addict or does not care about who he hurts, or most likely both.
I used to absolutely adore this couple, but Ruth needs to dump Billie. She has too many of her own things to worry about without the ever-present possibility of Billie dragging her backwards.
Im proud of Billy for taking this step and being willing to come back to Ruth instead of completely avoiding the issue. I really want them to work. I know Billy doesnt want to cause Ruth to Relapse and I don’t want ruth to abandon or cut Billy off because of her issues. You can do it guys
You’re not reading the same comic that Willis posted.
I think she realizes that Billy is still in avoidance mode, but is proud that she physically came back instead of her walking off on an entire relationship. Alice didn’t (not that it was owed). Walky avoids the feels. Parents use money not to talk to her. Her social group hasn’t been a great model for talking it out that we’ve seen. Yeah, she only came back after a (shitty) recoup period and still isn’t heading toward a solution in person, but so many people take the easy way out by texting a termination of relationship as a means of closure. No matter what happens, she showed up for it! Good solid (babiest of babies’) step!
This. This this exactly Billie is showing real aerious caring even if she ia doing it poorly. Given her hiatory and her family i did not expect her to even make token attempts. And I didn’t think she cared enough about Ruth to try. I fully expected her to go on a bender and not speak yo Ruth again at all. I just dont think shes realized how severe her own problem is. I dont think she treating it flippantly because ahe doesnt take Ruth’s recovery seriously Hes just slow to change and doesnt think she also needs to be recovering so she is bruahing this off bevauae Ruth is challenging that she also has a problem
And I can’t imagine that was easy for it might not be what she needs to do but it wasnt entirely wrong babiest of baby steps and that is prettt significant for a character whose whole thing is her unwillingness to change or admit that she cares about people and who active bullies and dislikes caring people
I….don’t think that’s what she’s doing.
Ruth: The stakes are high. If you insist on interacting with me in the same old way, I could really literally actually die. As in, dead. Corpse.
Billie: Well, you’re a poopyhead. Oh, wait, you’re not, because I still want to be around you. Can we just pretend that I didn’t just tell you that getting drunk is more important than you not dying? Let’s pretend that that isn’t even an issue. Here, have a flippant remark. Catch the remark! Catch it! Let’s play River in Egypt!
I can relate to Billie here, but damn. She’s not in the right. Props to Ruth for not succumbing.