I agree with Kameno Neko. Good therapy is hard, and Billie is likely to think it’s hopeless. She’ll go, to prove herself to Ruth — but Ruth isn’t likely to reward Billie how she wants, so how long can Billie keep it up, in the face of her strong narrative that she’s hopelessly toxic?
Plus, although Billie is awesome in a crisis, she sometimes flounders when everything is sorta-ok-(but-not-really). Not that I could possibly relate.
It depends whether she can bring herself to tell her therapist that she’s there so that she can deserve Ruth. (I mean, these two do deserve each other. But not that way.)
Part of the problem is that Ruth is no longer allowing herself to be Billie’s problem, which on the one hand is great, but on the other hand deprives Billie of what let her show the best of herself, in her codependent way.
As an alcoholic with 30 years of sobriety after several false starts, I can say with some degree of certainty that getting sober for someone else rarely works (I’ve seen it work once). If you tie your sobriety to someone else, you’re saying I can be sober as long as X loves me. Great, so if X fails you—as humans are wont to do—what do you do? Most addicts go back to their drug of choice. I get the impression Willis understands all of this.
“No matter how many lies you tell, you will always be the thing you were before. You can’t wallpaper over it with a Sorry and a smile. It will always be there.”
See, this is why Tall Rachel is so full of shit. Ruth was and is getting better. Billie is not, has been given every chance to but fights it every step of the way.
Ruth is walking it while Billie is still nothing but talk. Obligatory “Fuck you, Tall Rachel.”
Still just grossed out by how toxic a narrative “you can’t improve” is. What is even your goal in telling someone that? What are your goals, period, if you believe that’s true??
I definitely have a deafeatist streak and even I’m like “whoa Rachel it’s not that damn bad.”
Some of us just don’t have the requisite life experience to adequately educate and repress out inner edgy teen. It’s a very sad place to live your life. Tall Rachel will either learn, or just be literally miserable forever.
In that context? Telling the abusive bully that you’re not accepting the pretense of change at face value.
One suspects from that scene that Rachel’s dealt with abusers before, particularly the kind who keep apologizing and promising to change and yet carry on abusing.
It strikes me as Rachel having had an abuser who followed the ‘classic’ cycle – honeymoon, build up, big incident, apology, honeymoon, etc. She might not have, but that’s what it seems like.
I doubt she’s hit “rock bottom,” and I feel as if she’s one who would have to in order to really commit to sobriety, AA, and all of that. Of course, I’m not allowed to “take her inventory”… only she can do that…
That’s a myth. Rock bottom doesn’t have to be so dramatic, it can just be whenever you decide you have to get better.
Also AA is really popular, but it isn’t the only — or even the most proven — method of recovery.
I actually prefer the term in my mother tongue. “den Tiefpunkt erreichen”. It roughly translates into reaching the lowest point. The point where going down even deeper is not acceptable.
I’ve read the story of a woman who was married to an alcoholic and when she seeked help, she got hands onto a flyer with early warn signs for alcoholism. She found herself in those signs and stopped immediately. Following her husbands path was too horrific. And I’ve read the story of a man who woke up in a hospital and was told that he was dead for a short time. He wanted to live and quit.
Rock bottom doesn’t mean the worst possible place. It means going further down is no longer an option.
I’m trying to remember where I heard this — it was a podcast, like that helps — but a person in recovery said, “Bottom is where you decide to stop digging.”
The thing is, emotionally it seemed like she hit rock bottom when she encountered Alice. And that just led her straight into her drunken lesbian suicide pact.
I think it depends on whether or not the two people who are down are in the same hole or not. So in this case it would be kicking sideways, but if you’re kicking someone who’s down for reasons unrelated to why you are down you’re just kicking someone who’s down.
Full disclosure: I recently pulled this on my not-recent ex-fiance (when he said he couldn’t pay the money he owes my family).
He was like, “my life sucks in major ways, like alcoholism and severe mental illness”, I was all, that super sucks where’s the money tho.
…He didn’t react well.
You know what’s a good way to not fuel your alcoholism? Paying back your debts. Then you don’t have money for more booze, and the people you owe stop asking about it. Win-win.
I think that Billie means it or, at least, she means it right now, because the alternative appears to be Ruth relapsing. Whether she can continue to mean it after weeks, months and even years of being dry is a question yet to be answered.
She didn’t literally take her, but the only reason she went was Billie turning her fake ID over to Jason and demanding he do something about it. Ruth was content to drink it up and ignore the reaction.
That said, grand gestures, as Joyce put it with Sarah, are good, but you still need to do the other work. So, I get that Ruth probably doesn’t trust Billie to keep her word worth a lick right now. Ruth didn’t keep on the wagon really any better than Billie did, so she probably has plenty reason to be dubious about it. Guess we’ll see how it goes.
Because Billie was effectively holding their relationship hostage for alcohol. She pushed Ruth to this, she only gets as much credit as she fixes what she’s broken.
Except she wasn’t. She was trying to end their relationship because Ruth’s no longer safe from her poison. That’s all kinds of messed up, but it’s off in a different direction.
Before their earlier talk, I think it really was unconscious – she was just carrying on with their habits as normal, not really considering how damaging her focus on drinking was to Ruth.
Billie wasn’t trying to sabotage her recovery, she didn’t understand drinking was a problem. Ruth made her opinion clear and Billie broke up with her. Making Billie the villain here is reaching.
I like this strip a lot, “Neat” is just so satisfying when it’s cutting through all of the melodrama and I really hope this catalyzes things getting better for ruth at the very least
It’s a thing that kind o always bother me in those kind of stories. Isn’t Ruth projecting her dependency to alcohol to Billy, though? I will admit Billy tended to hit the sauce a bit too much, due to recent events, but it never looked like she couldn’t handle it. Not everyone who is sad and drink has alcohol issues. Often, their issue is what make them sad, not that they have a dependency to alcohol.
If one person has alcohol issues, then all of their drinking buddies have that too is a trope that always rub me the wrong way, when moderation is actually the key for most people.
At the very least, she comes across as an alcoholic. That she’s largely functional (it doesn’t seem to be hindering her classwork, or her current relationships with people other than Ruth) doesn’t really diminish that – she still drinks too much, and it’s going to cause her health issues down the line.
That said, I do think her crippling self-esteem issues is her bigger issue, personally. She isn’t sabotaging relationships with people important to her because she’s too drunk to understand what she’s doing – she’s doing it to deliberately push people away because she thinks she’ll ruin their lives if she doesn’t.
Yeah, her alcoholism is very much a part of her identity. (She probably figures that it’s the party-girl attitude, including drinking, that makes her popular in the first place.) Billie doesn’t care about what happens to her as a result (due to her self-esteem issues), but she does care about bringing other people down with her.
Though the drinking/party-girl attitude hasn’t shown itself in her popularity in the new dorm.
And for a party-girl, she’s done remarkably little partying. The vast majority of her drinking that we’ve seen was either with Ruth or alone. The one disastrous party being the only exception we’ve even seen referred to I think. (Drinking at Joyce’s party was supposed to be stealthy, so doesn’t really count as “party girl”.)
We haven’t seen Billie’s grades, but keep in mind that just the other day (wait, today?) Billie decided skipping her (morning!) class for the bar was a good idea.
Unlike Ruth, Billie has never stopped drinking. Never even tried. She’s a pretty functional drunk, but she’s definitely alcoholic. More so than Ruth, I suspect.
Agreed–but now, maybe she is trying. She’s never been open to attending therapy sessions before. And hopefully, even if she doesn’t think it’ll change her, she will go to therapy, and it will help somewhat.
I’ve a feeling that Ruth wishes that she could congratulate herself on a job well done but I am convinced that she didn’t plan this and, indeed, had stopped even wishing for Billie to do this so that she wasn’t hurt by that not happening. This is all a decision Billie has made because, perhaps for the first time, she’s seen that her presence in someone’s life can have both negative and positive outcomes.
Will she really though? :/ I want to believe Billie’s declaration, but she’s made promises like this before and reneged on them. I guess we’ll wait and see.
I believe Billie means it, I believe her to be honest in this moment.
I’m skeptical about her ability to follow through, and I think when she realizes she’s not following through she will reach for excuses rather than try to correct that.
That said, this scenario does present Willis with the opportunity to showcase “Billie Mk2″ who is trying to be all ‘frolicking in the meadows” with Ruth and, frankly, coming across as a comedic self-parody to everyone.
Has she though? I guess that time early on at the start of their relationship. I can’t think of any other time she seriously talked about quitting – and never about the therapy.
billie is basically good, even though she’s often toxic and doing dumb shit. will she be able to do the thing she’s just promised to the same person she broke a promise to stop drinking with already? find out next time, on DoA Z!
‘Neat’ is what Walky told Ruth when she was telling him how she was trying to get better. Seemingly she remembers the devastating power of that put down. Nice piece of writing here.
Sometimes you have to hit your lowest and lose something/someone you love before you realize “damn, I need help.” I unfortunately know that feeling too well (though not with sobriety. Mine was becoming absorbed with negativity and depression while not acknowledging that it was taking over me).
Billie, don’t just do this for Ruth. Do this for you. You need to get sober for yourself. Then Ruth will come back if/when she’s ready. But you need to show you can do this for yourself first.
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“cool story bro”
Is it just me, or is Billie looking a lot thinner in recent strips?
Not just you.
Glad to know I’m not going crazy.
Or at least, not going crazy about this.
Or at the very least, if I am going crazy then I’m not the only one.
Wow it’s almost like people can get burned out on Billie Bullshit.
billshit
Full name: Jennifulla Billingshit.
Talk is Cheap but maybe, MAYBE Billie will go through with it this time.
I think there’s intention this time. And this is the first time that’s been there.
It won’t be easy and she probably won’t succeed at first, but trying is a big step. And going to therapy is as well.
Round And Round
What goes around comes around…
I’ll tell you why–DIG
A Ratt reference in the wild!? I’ve gone to an alternate dimension.
I can feel the self-hatred coming off these two in waves!
Now taking bets on whether or not Billie follows through on that.
She follows through but can’t maintain it for long.
I give her more than two weeks, but less than 3.
If your Billie Resolve lasts more than three weeks, consult a doctor.
Our weeks or her weeks?
In comic time or real time?
I agree with Kameno Neko. Good therapy is hard, and Billie is likely to think it’s hopeless. She’ll go, to prove herself to Ruth — but Ruth isn’t likely to reward Billie how she wants, so how long can Billie keep it up, in the face of her strong narrative that she’s hopelessly toxic?
Plus, although Billie is awesome in a crisis, she sometimes flounders when everything is sorta-ok-(but-not-really). Not that I could possibly relate.
It depends whether she can bring herself to tell her therapist that she’s there so that she can deserve Ruth. (I mean, these two do deserve each other. But not that way.)
Part of the problem is that Ruth is no longer allowing herself to be Billie’s problem, which on the one hand is great, but on the other hand deprives Billie of what let her show the best of herself, in her codependent way.
As an alcoholic with 30 years of sobriety after several false starts, I can say with some degree of certainty that getting sober for someone else rarely works (I’ve seen it work once). If you tie your sobriety to someone else, you’re saying I can be sober as long as X loves me. Great, so if X fails you—as humans are wont to do—what do you do? Most addicts go back to their drug of choice. I get the impression Willis understands all of this.
Very likely true. At this point however, I’ll take any excuse to get Billie to try to stop. And into therapy.
Maybe she’ll find reasons of her own to stop. Maybe she’ll be able to sort some of her issues out in therapy.
Would that include if Ruth tried to change because Howard will need someone to help him escape Sir in two years and she can’t do that if she’s dead?
Totally would be a good reason to live. You really only need one good reason to live. It buys you time, which can be used to create more reasons.
Relapses are acceptable as long as effort is being made.
I think she will, if only because Ruth doesn’t wholly believe it. Billie runs on nothing if not raw spite.
I really hope Billie does follow through, though I’m worried that she won’t be able to keep it up.
Words need to be backed up by action Billie, telling the truth to your dormmates about your girlfriend(if she still is) would be a good start.
“No matter how many lies you tell, you will always be the thing you were before. You can’t wallpaper over it with a Sorry and a smile. It will always be there.”
“Redemption is a story. Redemption is not real.“
See, this is why Tall Rachel is so full of shit. Ruth was and is getting better. Billie is not, has been given every chance to but fights it every step of the way.
Ruth is walking it while Billie is still nothing but talk. Obligatory “Fuck you, Tall Rachel.”
Still just grossed out by how toxic a narrative “you can’t improve” is. What is even your goal in telling someone that? What are your goals, period, if you believe that’s true??
I definitely have a deafeatist streak and even I’m like “whoa Rachel it’s not that damn bad.”
Some of us just don’t have the requisite life experience to adequately educate and repress out inner edgy teen. It’s a very sad place to live your life. Tall Rachel will either learn, or just be literally miserable forever.
In that context? Telling the abusive bully that you’re not accepting the pretense of change at face value.
One suspects from that scene that Rachel’s dealt with abusers before, particularly the kind who keep apologizing and promising to change and yet carry on abusing.
It strikes me as Rachel having had an abuser who followed the ‘classic’ cycle – honeymoon, build up, big incident, apology, honeymoon, etc. She might not have, but that’s what it seems like.
I doubt she’s hit “rock bottom,” and I feel as if she’s one who would have to in order to really commit to sobriety, AA, and all of that. Of course, I’m not allowed to “take her inventory”… only she can do that…
That’s a myth. Rock bottom doesn’t have to be so dramatic, it can just be whenever you decide you have to get better.
Also AA is really popular, but it isn’t the only — or even the most proven — method of recovery.
I actually prefer the term in my mother tongue. “den Tiefpunkt erreichen”. It roughly translates into reaching the lowest point. The point where going down even deeper is not acceptable.
I’ve read the story of a woman who was married to an alcoholic and when she seeked help, she got hands onto a flyer with early warn signs for alcoholism. She found herself in those signs and stopped immediately. Following her husbands path was too horrific. And I’ve read the story of a man who woke up in a hospital and was told that he was dead for a short time. He wanted to live and quit.
Rock bottom doesn’t mean the worst possible place. It means going further down is no longer an option.
I’m trying to remember where I heard this — it was a podcast, like that helps — but a person in recovery said, “Bottom is where you decide to stop digging.”
There’s no rule on how deep a hole has to be.
The thing is, emotionally it seemed like she hit rock bottom when she encountered Alice. And that just led her straight into her drunken lesbian suicide pact.
Ooof. No other words, just…oof.
Damn, I love these pissy little dandelions.
Is it still kicking someone while they’re down if you’re also down? Or is that just kicking sideways?
I think at that point you’d just be flailing around on the floor.
Spinning around in little circles like Curly.
I think it depends on whether or not the two people who are down are in the same hole or not. So in this case it would be kicking sideways, but if you’re kicking someone who’s down for reasons unrelated to why you are down you’re just kicking someone who’s down.
cool beans
*click*
Full disclosure: I recently pulled this on my not-recent ex-fiance (when he said he couldn’t pay the money he owes my family).
He was like, “my life sucks in major ways, like alcoholism and severe mental illness”, I was all, that super sucks where’s the money tho.
…He didn’t react well.
You know what’s a good way to not fuel your alcoholism? Paying back your debts. Then you don’t have money for more booze, and the people you owe stop asking about it. Win-win.
He probably doesn’t buy booze. But still, the point of being exes is that we don’t have to take on each other’s burdens anymore.
“And if you’ll believe THAT…”
Okay, I was wrong. This did not go as well as it could be expected to go.
Keep getting a popu saying I win a gift card, can’t stay long enoigh to read comments
If you’re on mobile, make your browser request the desktop site. The page looks the same, but you won’t get served phony app store pop-ups.
You can also report the bad ads to Hiveworks. They’re generally pretty good about skimming them out once they know about them.
OOOOOOOOOHHHHHHH! Fucking destroyed! Now THAT is what I call a callback!!!
That would be awesome
if it was a few weeks ago and you actually meant it
I think that Billie means it or, at least, she means it right now, because the alternative appears to be Ruth relapsing. Whether she can continue to mean it after weeks, months and even years of being dry is a question yet to be answered.
Neat.
I’m on Team Billie. The time to give shit to her about this, Ruth, is not after she drove you to the hospital.
She didn’t. Sydney did.
She didn’t literally take her, but the only reason she went was Billie turning her fake ID over to Jason and demanding he do something about it. Ruth was content to drink it up and ignore the reaction.
That said, grand gestures, as Joyce put it with Sarah, are good, but you still need to do the other work. So, I get that Ruth probably doesn’t trust Billie to keep her word worth a lick right now. Ruth didn’t keep on the wagon really any better than Billie did, so she probably has plenty reason to be dubious about it. Guess we’ll see how it goes.
Because Billie was effectively holding their relationship hostage for alcohol. She pushed Ruth to this, she only gets as much credit as she fixes what she’s broken.
Except she wasn’t. She was trying to end their relationship because Ruth’s no longer safe from her poison. That’s all kinds of messed up, but it’s off in a different direction.
Before their earlier talk, I think it really was unconscious – she was just carrying on with their habits as normal, not really considering how damaging her focus on drinking was to Ruth.
Billie made every attempt barring the last hour or so of her time with Ruth over the last few days trying to sabotage her recovery.
Billie wasn’t trying to sabotage her recovery, she didn’t understand drinking was a problem. Ruth made her opinion clear and Billie broke up with her. Making Billie the villain here is reaching.
Broke up with her because she’s poison and Ruth’s getting better and she wanted to protect Ruth.
I like this strip a lot, “Neat” is just so satisfying when it’s cutting through all of the melodrama and I really hope this catalyzes things getting better for ruth at the very least
I think you may be reading something into that neat that isn’t really there. I really hope you’re right, but I’m skeptical.
It’s a thing that kind o always bother me in those kind of stories. Isn’t Ruth projecting her dependency to alcohol to Billy, though? I will admit Billy tended to hit the sauce a bit too much, due to recent events, but it never looked like she couldn’t handle it. Not everyone who is sad and drink has alcohol issues. Often, their issue is what make them sad, not that they have a dependency to alcohol.
If one person has alcohol issues, then all of their drinking buddies have that too is a trope that always rub me the wrong way, when moderation is actually the key for most people.
She did drive her car into a tree while drunk just a few months ago, though. That’s sort of the definition of not handling it — not being able to tell when you’ve had enough. Plus there’s the fact that getting drunk seems to be her solution for most things. Not to mention this: http://www.dumbingofage.com/2010/comic/book-1/03-men-are-from-beck-women-are-from-clark/focus/
Okay, you might be right.
At the very least, she comes across as an alcoholic. That she’s largely functional (it doesn’t seem to be hindering her classwork, or her current relationships with people other than Ruth) doesn’t really diminish that – she still drinks too much, and it’s going to cause her health issues down the line.
That said, I do think her crippling self-esteem issues is her bigger issue, personally. She isn’t sabotaging relationships with people important to her because she’s too drunk to understand what she’s doing – she’s doing it to deliberately push people away because she thinks she’ll ruin their lives if she doesn’t.
Yeah, her alcoholism is very much a part of her identity. (She probably figures that it’s the party-girl attitude, including drinking, that makes her popular in the first place.) Billie doesn’t care about what happens to her as a result (due to her self-esteem issues), but she does care about bringing other people down with her.
Though the drinking/party-girl attitude hasn’t shown itself in her popularity in the new dorm.
And for a party-girl, she’s done remarkably little partying. The vast majority of her drinking that we’ve seen was either with Ruth or alone. The one disastrous party being the only exception we’ve even seen referred to I think. (Drinking at Joyce’s party was supposed to be stealthy, so doesn’t really count as “party girl”.)
We haven’t seen Billie’s grades, but keep in mind that just the other day (wait, today?) Billie decided skipping her (morning!) class for the bar was a good idea.
Unlike Ruth, Billie has never stopped drinking. Never even tried. She’s a pretty functional drunk, but she’s definitely alcoholic. More so than Ruth, I suspect.
Agreed–but now, maybe she is trying. She’s never been open to attending therapy sessions before. And hopefully, even if she doesn’t think it’ll change her, she will go to therapy, and it will help somewhat.
I hope so.
Aww, Ruth. ‘Rightfully’. You love her so much.
DoA Book 9: Have Fun Going Back And Being Worshipped Or Whatever
(Sigh)
“‘I don’t believe you.‘
– Ron Burgundy”
– Ruth Lessick
Neat
I wonder if Ruth can’t believe what she’s hearing or if, right now, she’s too messed up to fully process it?
I’ve a feeling that Ruth wishes that she could congratulate herself on a job well done but I am convinced that she didn’t plan this and, indeed, had stopped even wishing for Billie to do this so that she wasn’t hurt by that not happening. This is all a decision Billie has made because, perhaps for the first time, she’s seen that her presence in someone’s life can have both negative and positive outcomes.
Will she really though? :/ I want to believe Billie’s declaration, but she’s made promises like this before and reneged on them. I guess we’ll wait and see.
I believe Billie means it, I believe her to be honest in this moment.
I’m skeptical about her ability to follow through, and I think when she realizes she’s not following through she will reach for excuses rather than try to correct that.
That said, this scenario does present Willis with the opportunity to showcase “Billie Mk2″ who is trying to be all ‘frolicking in the meadows” with Ruth and, frankly, coming across as a comedic self-parody to everyone.
Has she though? I guess that time early on at the start of their relationship. I can’t think of any other time she seriously talked about quitting – and never about the therapy.
This seems more serious.
She also said something about “this is the last time” when she got wasted after her fight with ruth
“May be”, IIRC
And it was more of a side comment than a promise to anyone, much less to Ruth.
billie is basically good, even though she’s often toxic and doing dumb shit. will she be able to do the thing she’s just promised to the same person she broke a promise to stop drinking with already? find out next time, on DoA Z!
“now actually do it before I trust any of that”
I really want to believe Ruth and her “For Real”. But… BUT…
.
Among the current cast members there is already enough drama to fill a stadium.
But on the topic of substance abuse and recovery … What would you think about Dana (Sarah’s original roommate) resurfacing in a future strip?
Either fully recovered or still an effin’ mess?
Narrator: Unfortunately, Billie could never attend those therapy sessions, because all the slots were taken by 30-50 feral hogs.
Sonic approves
YAY
Billie’s finally taking an active step toward sobriety!
‘Neat’ is what Walky told Ruth when she was telling him how she was trying to get better. Seemingly she remembers the devastating power of that put down. Nice piece of writing here.
“Neat”… as in, “Sounds good, but it won’t impact me if I’m not in your life anymore.” oof.
When was this? I just looked through all the Ruth tags (would love to be able to search multiple tags at once, but whatever) but I didn’t see it…
Edit the search url to read ‘ruth+walky/’
Thank you!
Sometimes you have to hit your lowest and lose something/someone you love before you realize “damn, I need help.” I unfortunately know that feeling too well (though not with sobriety. Mine was becoming absorbed with negativity and depression while not acknowledging that it was taking over me).
Billie, don’t just do this for Ruth. Do this for you. You need to get sober for yourself. Then Ruth will come back if/when she’s ready. But you need to show you can do this for yourself first.
Maybe she can figure that out after some time talking to the therapist. I’m not sure she needs to do so first.
did ruth just pull the young version of a grandmas “that’s nice dear.” damn…
If Billie tries to sober up for Ruth it won’t last. She has to do it for herself.
So obviously no point in trying yet. Break up. Keep drinking. Don’t bother with the therapist.
Even if it doesn’t last, getting her to show up for therapy is a win. Let’s hope therapy helps her find ‘better’ reasons that work long term.