Balance

I don’t mind my own self-loathing.. I don’t need help from you! - Stone Sour

Oxford House life is getting to be reasonably cool. Some of my room mates are younger, and that plus my rambunctiousness makes for some pretty hilarious situations. Zack, in particular, is a little gangster. He does this voice that fucking KILLS me, and laughs like a four year old girl. 18 year old dudes that laugh like 4 year old girls, ftw. I think we are going to invest in a house Tazer so that we can keep him in line.

I start Outpatient tonight, which I’ve been pretty excited for since I got here because of the ridiculous amount of sloth and inactivity I’ve been party to lately. This morning, for example, I woke up at 6:30—which was a half an hour too late for the meeting I wanted to attend, ‘Chance for Change,’ but about three hours too early to be fully rested—so I’ve been listening to Stone Sour’s ‘House of Gold and Bones pt. 1’ on repeat and playing Borderlands 2 ever since.

I was on my e-mail yesterday, and saw that Christene had requested to add me as a friend on Facebook. Intrigued, pulse racing, I went on my Facebook and saw no such friend request—in fact, I imagine she had done it so that she could select “block user” from the list on my page. My codependency inflamed, I was more than a little crestfallen about it. But the day went on and, in spite of myself, I found myself having fun and thinking about other things. My subconscious, however, seemed to have other plans, because last night I had a dream about her, not unlike the one I had the night that I received her ‘letter of dismissal’ while in treatment. I hadn’t been upset about it, that day—not for more than a moment, anyway—but on some inward level I must have been bitter as hell. She did, after all, send me off with her blessing… and what Christene and I shared was real, at least, more real than anything I have ever experienced with a girl. And when I tried telling someone recently about how I had lost my girlfriend, they told me that I didn’t lose her, but had given her away. That smarts.

Anyway, I don’t remember exactly what this dream had been like, except that she was angry with me, and I was trying desparately to get ahold of her to no avail. She was on her way somewhere new, with someone new. Isn’t she, though? I imagine probably the former is true, at least, and attempting to shut out the person you’ve been dangerously in love with for a few years while you’re getting over them is probably the smartest thing that anyone in her position could do. I don’t resent her decision, and I don’t resent myself feeling a little bit of pain over it. Pain can be just as much a spice of life as any other feeling, and I was getting just a bit too complacent in my routine anyway.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that balance has become extremely important in my life. My old direction wasn’t working for anyone—least of all myself, but it sure as hell wasn’t working for Christene either. I think that it took a love as strong and a need as urgent as what I felt for her to pull me away from the world of lies and self-gratification I had spent years and years building. I hurt her and everyone else around me, and would have gone down with her in my arms if the message hadn’t come through in the end. Every time I need a dose of humility to put things back into perspective for me, I think of the last month of my addiction. I think of how good suicide looked, and how she would have come with me if I had asked her to. Do I really believe that? Probably. Maybe. Thankfully, the world will never know.

I need to be humble every day, in my dealings with the world and with myself. False pride and selfishness are self destruction for me; I’ve proven that in the past. Christene was a (devastatingly) beautiful thing in my life, and I gave her away, if a little more reluctantly than everything else I have burned. No, that is a lie—and honesty is the key to my peace of mind these days—so I will amend it: I was fully willing to give her up. I did it with reckless abandon, collateral damage in my pursuit of whatever high I could wrap my hands around, be it another woman or a hit of heroin or days spent out of contact with the world (including her) and the freedom to do as I please that came with that. I have given up other beautiful things the very same way: my children, my family, friendships. Toward the end, there was nothing sacred to me.

I want sacred things today. To new beginnings.

The melodies of madness

Didn’t you know, when you hurt me so cruelly, that I was your love—I was your friend? You couldn’t stand that I was so free, and now you will never see me again - Levon Helm, “Golden Bird”

Life is fucking crazy, folks. Music helps me make sense out of it all. Since I was a child and heard my first Green Day album (that would be Dookie, btw), music has played a key role in my emotional and mental development. I remember the standard for good music being set once more when I was beginning to come into my teen years and somehow got ahold of Ride the Lightning, Master of Puppets and the Black album by Metallica. Now that I’ve filled my head with a thousand good bands, I listen to Fade to Black and it seems a little outdated and underproduced, but I’ll never forget the feeling of exhiliration I felt when I first listened to the first minute or so of layered acoustics and then the EXPLOSION of melodic lightning on Battery, the intro track to Master of Puppets. I used to sit and replay that song a hundred times, feeling that high that only a beautifully done piece of music can produce.

Thinking back now, I owe a lot to music—relief, resentment, love and hate, it made me feel when there was nothing in my soul to speak of, and made the sweetest moments of my existence that much sweeter. And if you have never been on a stage before, let me tell you that there is nothing more amazing than the high of moving a crowd with your music. Playing my spastic slap-bass in Death Rattle was one of the happiest times I can remember in my life. Giving it up to nurture my meth addiction was an admittedly stupid decision, but it brought me to where I am today, discovering some of the secrets that were previously hidden from me in the world. I often wonder where I would be today if I had put forth more effort in my musical career. I guess it’s never too late.

I remember the naysayers and easy listeners of my youth, and how they said that I would “outgrow” my love of heavy metal. I have expanded my horizons since the long-haired days of my young elitism, but even now, having conversations with my higher power and shaven-headed, I have never lost my like for the brutality and beautiful energy of that genre. Music, for me, is not a statement you make on the outside—you don’t achieve popularity or win over a potential boss or do well in school with music. Maybe with the help of music, but I don’t believe it to be a tool of fashion. Music, for me, is something more like spirituality—it happens most on the inside, and is deeply personal. To this day, Cemetery Gates by Pantera or Everlong by the Foo Fighters can pull a tear from my eye under the right circumstances. Some music is so beautiful that it is impossible for me to manage a clear thought while in its presence. I am eternally grateful for its role in my life. It is the soundtrack to my existence.

Who's there?

Sick with it. Things have changed a great deal since we last spoke, folks. The first thing is that, of course, I went to inpatient rehab at Sundown M Ranch, more or less on a whim. I came back from South Carolina and picked up right where I had left off of my career as a criminal; try as I might to resist the downward pull of my pathological gravity, it got the best of me. Have you ever hated yourself? I began to learn what that is like. I have spent my life convinced that I am the shit, and never really felt like I didn’t want to occupy my own skin at any point. Co-dependency, an ugly side effect of self hatred, is painful and mind-bending. What begins as love is twisted by self-loathing and insecurity, and a relationship between two people that may have once appeared to be something nurturing and functional (haha! My delusion may be strong yet) slowly begins to resemble the togetherness of, say, a man and his heroin. Now that I think of it, throughout my life I have used all things as a band-aid of sorts to avoid feeling my true feelings. Boredom, loneliness, what ever… drugs and people are a convenient escape for me. One of the things that treatment did for me the most was to teach me a little bit about what it’s like to care for another person. That subject is something mostly foreign to me, and I have come to realize that occupying my own head is probably a bad idea; so, in group, I borrowed other peoples’ heads instead. I wore their problems each day, twice a day, and helped them to navigate them. In this way, I helped make my own problems a little smaller and a little more realistic. With each moment I spent empathizing with a pain that was mercifully similar to—but alien enough to keep me working—my own, I learned a little more about the tools I needed to feel better about myself. Honesty was key, as well; the smallest lies would perch atop my mind and fester until I let them go, and my heart became lighter with each dishonesty that I made peace with. I found God, or at least, a “higher power.” I guess that the rush of joy and exhilaration that gave me is considered dangerous to newly rehabilitating addicts, because it is so easy to fall off of that high (so like others I have experienced in my life) and begin old behaviors anew when the disappointment of its passing arrives. It turns out that we don’t spend every day maniacally happy, at least not as real people. Problems happen, and when they do we have to work through them and feel the things that come along with them… Fellowship has been key for me, and I am learning that I need others in my situation to occupy my airspace in order to maintain a level head and stay away from substances. Everything that has conspired to bring me to this point, living in a brand new place (Yakima, WA) in a position that demands responsibility (Oxford house, looking for a job and mending my broken relationships), has been so profound and moving that I was frightened to even leave Sundown and explore the world that was waiting for me outside for fear of losing touch with those motivators. The person that I am becoming is so wonderfully different from the person that I was, and am, that I was afraid the universe would tell me it was just kidding.. can you dig it? ;P With the help of new friends and a (difficult at times) positive state of mind, I am learning to adapt. I am still in the infancy of my reform, but every day that passes brings me closer to this new thing that I am aspiring to be. More later.

New digs

Did some time in inpatient, living in Yakima now. I'll be writing again soon.