Tuesday, February 26, 2013

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.

No comments:

Post a Comment