Fuck bitches, get money?

It will take you in, and it'll spit you out.. behold the flesh and the power it holds! - Death, 'Flesh and the Power it Holds'

So in my personal story, girls have a lot to do with my use. I'm sure I've said at least some of this before, but it has become relevant in my life again so forgive me if I repeat myself a little--I don't often look at my past entries, just belt them out as inspiration dictates. Sex was never anything that I held sacred in my days of drugging; it wasn't even really a matter of pride, or a contest as with some people of my gender, but more like a weapon and a survival mechanism. I was so thoroughly involved in matters of sex and superficiality that when my opportunity to demonstrate the quality of my heart came around, I didn't even know where to begin to show real affection.

I have always had something of a hole in my heart, ever since I can remember; I spent every day chasing the ultimate escape route, the easiest way to achieve satisfaction with the present. I knew that the affection of girls was given easily to me, but it was a cheap affection in my eyes because of the multitude of sources and the ease with which I obtained it. Girls that believed they had found some kind of a hidden treasure in me were soon left in a position of emotional and financial bankruptcy. I was a predator, using things that should have been positive and life-affirming for the worst imaginable purposes.

Today, I am finding that I have to work on myself and put my romantic impulses on the back burner. I am someone who is in pain and still healing, both in matters of my heart and my addiction. The more time I spend with my sight turned inward, the more I find that I like myself enough to make that investment and let things happen naturally without my interference--because let's face it, my will has proven to be a weapon of mass destruction. Glad I don't have to live like that anymore. :)

Boundaries.

I got that off-black Cadillac midnight drive, got that gas pedal leaned back taking my time.. I'm blowin' that roof off, letting in sky - I shine, the city never looked so bright! - Macklemore, 'White Walls'

Today, I want to lift up everyone around me - but only if they want to be on my level. There is no better feeling than inspiring somebody that needs to be inspired. I have been to the deepest, darkest depths of life, seen the color of the algae growing at the bottom of the gutter, and I know what it feels like to be hopeless. If I can deliver light into that place for someone else, my own life can only benefit from it.

To me, that doesn't mean putting my own happiness or my own program at risk. I refuse to go down alongside of somebody, and that means that sometimes you have to know when to let go of someone whose arm you have been holding to keep them aloft. I've found that a lot of the time, it doesn't make a difference to them one way or the other--but what I did while I held them may have an impact in their future decisions. Maybe yesterday's kindness, though it doesn't carry through today, will help paint a starker contrast when they find their self at the bottom again.

Everything happens for a reason, and it is what it is.. it is what it should be. :)

Pity this.

I know I'm angry, but what am I supposed to do? - Stone Sour, 'A Rumor of Skin'

Don't pin your sad state on someone else. Check it the fuck out: we are grown ass people, so act like it and OWN YOUR SHIT. Nothing is sadder to me today than a junkie that puts a needle in their arm and accuses everyone around them of putting it there, as though we are Jedi masters with one thing in mind: keeping you down.

And here's another thing that needs a little recognition: ENABLERS, stop pre-ordering tickets to peoples' pity parties, and serve your local victim some truth and accountability instead of worrying your head about what you might have done differently to keep this from happening. We make our own decisions in life, and you're not going to do someone a favor by providing them a hook to hang their bullshit on.

GROW THE FUCK UP, self-pitiers. You don't have to live like that. Make something for yourself that you can feel better about. :) Grab life by the horns, mother fucker.

Miss you..

If you'll be my star

I'll be your sky

You can hide underneath me and come out at night

When I turn jet black

And you show off your light

I live to let you shine

I live to let you shine

But you can skyrocket away from me

And never come back if you find another galaxy

Far from here with more room to fly

Just leave me your stardust to remember you by

If you'll be my boat

I'll be your sea

A depth of pure blue just to probe curiosity

Ebbing and flowing

And pushed by a breeze

I live to make you free

I live to make you free

But you can set sail to the west if you want to

And pass the horizon, 'til I can't even see you

Far from here

Where the beaches are wide

Just leave me your wake to remember you by

If you'll be my star

I'll be your sky

You can hide underneath me and come out at night

When I turn jet black

And you show off your light

I live to let you shine

I live to let you shine

But you can skyrocket away from me

And never come back if you find another galaxy

Far from here with more room to fly

Just leave me your stardust to remember you by

Stardust to remember you by

- Gregory and the Hawk, 'Boats and Birds'

Clean & Free

Yeah in this forest I'm a lonely tree.. my limbs are covered in tattoos and my roots, they run deep!

So this weekend was fucking amazing.

I went to Clean & Free, a sober convention in Ocean Shores, and the situation just kind of got dropped in my lap. A friend of mine--well, I'm not so sure if he's my friend anymore, but I'll get to that--was having trouble finding an appropriately slutty recovery female to go with him, so naturally he settled for taking me instead (LAWL). We drove down to Ocean Shores and met up with an old friend of mine and her friend, and ended up abducting her friend to go and shoot Justin's .40 cal and make a trip to the casino. First of all, let me tell you that the casino is NOT a good idea for me just yet. I am far too much of a flailer to go and start pushing buttons on slot machines at random casinos.. so we left the casino, and this girl decided to stay there with her friend, who she met up with as we were walking out the door.

So Justin and I went back to the hotel room and I tried to sleep off the very trigger-ish feelings that I had developed whilst pushing buttons, and I spoke with my friend (Lexy) on the phone during that time, attempting to get Justin her friend (Haley)'s number. Lexy asked where we had left Haley, because we had abducted her so abruptly and been abandoned by her just the same. I informed her that her friend was at the casino still, and we got off of the phone.

Not long after, Lexy texted Justin's phone thinking it was mine, and said "So, the reason I can't give your friend Haley's number.. is because she wants YO' NUMBAH."

Justin looked at me with the saddest eyes and I was like "what, dude?" And he showed me. Oblivious to the ways of the world, I said (like a dumb ass), "I don't have a number.. I have a Facebook though, tell her I'll add her!"

:p

A few minutes later Lexy texted back "Awkwaaaaard.." and I don't know if that was because she had sent all of that to Justin's phone and thought it was mine, or if it was because her absolutely beautiful friend was trying to mack on me and I was too stupid to get it.

I finally figured it out, in any case, and told her that if her friend wanted my 'number' she could get it herself.

I didn't know this at the time, but Justin at that very same moment became a certain species of Superhater, and as I did my best to not hurt his feelings throughout the next day and a half, he would bombard my gorgeous friends (or "gorgeii," for plural) with Superhater text messages of the bullshit variety, threatening to relapse because his feelings were hurt and finally left me at the convention with them after checking out of the hotel unannounced and blocking me on Facebook. SUPER HATER.

It was totally worth it, though.

Anyway, Clean & Free was fucking amazing, and a lot of the speakers at the events there seemed to speak directly to me--again, my life is fraught with proof of a God that is completely aware of my plight and problems and loves to 'check' me through People Places & Things because it's hilarious for Him to see the look on my face.

There was an Irish convict named Sean that spoke at the Quinault (casino, post-triggerish button pushing trip, which I did much better at because I dodged the slot machines and went straight to the speaker meeting)that talked about putting on the mask of a "killer" because he had been to the Feds and robbed people for years, but that the reality was that that defense kept him sick in the long run, and that he didn't get recovery until he dropped the act and let people get close. He was an amazing speaker, and besides Haley--who could have done WAY better than me at that convention and after, and I had to think fast and be charming in the paint before she came to her senses--it was the highlight of my trip.

Let me tell you that I probably had little to nothing to do with any of the good things that happened to me this week end. Need proof? Look at my ENTIRE life before I went to treatment. The last good thing that my self-will had anything to do with was probably some Macaroni art in the third grade.

I'm definitely a fan of Clean & Free now, and I would recommend it to any recovering addicts in the world, I don't care if you have to fly from Japan to attend. :x

Later, maign!

H.A.L.T.

Mind strong, body strong, try to find equilibrium.. head straight, screwed-on, we screwed up for too long. - Bush, 'The Sound of Winter'

I guess it was bound to happen--I've fallen off my pink cloud somewhat, and life is a little less electric these days. Not that there's really anything wrong with that. Life is still exponentially better than it was in my use.

I've been writing a CRAZY amount in my memoir, and it's a story that I almost feel I can't rest until I get out. But I have to. The thing is, I've gone to meetings far too little since I began writing, which also means that I haven't been getting out of the house for shit. My roommates are awesome, but they're still my roommates, and they're sort of a given.

Thank God for IOP, because if it weren't for Outpatient I would be like furniture in this mother fucking house. ;)

Memoir of a street kid. :x

So I've started working on a memoir, and may be posting on here a little less.

My bad, but it's amazing therapy and is turning out to be some pretty decent writing..

Thanks, y'all

The beautiful people! (a few of my amends begun)

If I had a shotgun, you know what I'd do? I'd point that shit straight at the sky and shoot heaven on down for you.. - Sublime

Sleeping in the trash.. taking girls for all the things I need like booze, drugs and ass! - Alice in Chains

I am a drug addict, but that's not all I use.. I have a terrible habit of using people. The past few days, I've been noticing that something is wrong in my new-found positive mindset; I have been decently spiritual since leaving Sundown, and basically unstoppable in my recovery, but the last few days appear to have lost that sheen of breathlessness and excitement that has become the trademark of my time at my Oxford house. The only really notable change that has taken place is that I've started to respond to some of the attention I've been getting from girls that I'm genuinely uninterested in.. not that I've gotten laid or anything; I haven't done that since the Dark Ages of like a month and a half ago (;P), with my ex. My drug habit had a lot to do with girls, and the way that I treated them was rarely nice; not to their faces, most of the time (except in rare circumstances where a female went rogue-psycho and started to do weird shit in my life), but in the end it was almost always evident that they hadn't meant shit to me.

I've always chased any sort of feel-good I could get my hands on, especially when it meant that I wasn't going to feel so good when it came out of the wash. Like most addicts, I think, you would probably get the faaaaaintest impression of pathological masochism from my life if you watched it like a movie. Inpatient taught me that when a drug user gets clean, the quickest road to relapse is leaving old behaviors unchanged. It wasn't always having sex that gave me the high I was looking for from a girl--though believe me, I have had no qualms about it when it came to that--it was the emotional roller coaster that I could take them on, as well. When someone's quality of life shoots up and down and up again and they can't seem to stop their self from sticking around anyway, that does a lot to stroke the ego for me. After all, what greater display of love is there than to accept suffering for someone else's sake? (love.. or obsession, or addiction, take your pick)

So I guess you could say there's a little bit of sociopath in my behavior. Drugs numb you to a lot of things; for maybe 85% of the damage I have done to the women that have been in and out of my life, I have been numb as hell. I'm not sure there is enough paper in the world to contain what will someday be my eighth step in AA, and I'm not sure that I could come up with half of the very real amends that I need to make to them. I just didn't care enough at the time. I'm sure there are plenty of girls out there that would love to get their hands around my throat if they could get away with it, especially if there was a time machine that could take them back to that moment when they hated me most.

Ever since I was a kid and I lost a little weight, started playing heavy metal music and got into public school--back when girls first started to "notice" me--I have had countless romantic encounters with girls that thought I was in it to win it. Uh, maybe that's a little crude. They thought that I wanted to be with them, okay? The truth about THAT was that I probably had a girlfriend already. Ninety-eight percent of the time, anyway.. there was that lucky two percent, when whatever female I was putting through the ringer got sick of me and left the torture seat open for some other poor chick to sit in. When crystal meth entered the equation, you can imagine how things became exponentially worse.

I can't really even begin to tally up the apologies that I owe, but here's a few that I have the means to execute this moment and perhaps get them seen on here:

Molly

We have known each other since for EVER, and I'm sorry for the douche bag crankster gangster that I became. I hope one day you'll dislike me less again, because you are truly the shit. Your companionship and your friendship were amazing, and I miss you.

Sabrina

Yes, I did take your money that morning. You were trying to get clean and sober, and I came to your house high as hell to spend the night and then robbed you the next day. I'm sorry for being a lame sonofabitch.

Heidi

Wow dude, where do I even begin? You were so fucking down for me, there was nothing you wouldn't do for my sake. Every time I went to jail when I was with you, you were right there selling everything that I had bought you so that you wouldn't have to sell mine, coming through with my bail and doing everything that I asked. There was ALWAYS money on the phone. The list goes on and on, and I am so sorry for the things that I did to you, which is a list that goes on WAY longer.. believe that. You are a truly good person.

Desirae

I can't help but think that I had something to do with you going back out when you were trying to stay clean. Our personalities meshed dangerously well, and the friendship/relationship that ensued was atomic. You were perhaps the only other person on the face of this Earth that loved self-destruction as much as me, and we very well could have gone up in flames together if we had pushed it much farther. I'm sorry for not being a better friend, and being a bad influence. You are a gangster, and I am glad to see you alive and happy.

Kasondra/Kandi

Ever since that show in Granite Falls eight years or so ago, we have always been close--until recently. You were always there when I needed you, and I rarely did half as much to get your back. We would go months without talking sometimes, and every time I came back around it was like we had never spent a day apart. We always had kind of the same attitude toward life, though you definitely represented the lighter half of that similarity; you are one of the most electric people I have ever known, and I'm sorry that we've grown apart. Keep doing your thing, Sloth.. maybe we'll talk again soon.

Jordan

You're the mother of my child, and one strong girl. You were my first love, and I did everything in my power to hurt you. There is no discernable beginning or end to the things that I could apologize to you for; our history is too long and too fucked up for me to even begin to say anything but I am sorry, and you are the best mother that I could have asked for our child to have. You never cease to amaze me, even now when you despise me so much. Thank you.

Jade

Dude, if there were more people like you in the world, we would either all be completely fucked or there would be a whole lot less wrong with this planet. The way it is, there is only one of you, and you are absolutely beautiful in every single way that there is to be beautiful. You are the kind of person that believes in things, and you were my best friend before you figured out that it was a waste of time. I miss you so much. I'm sorry.

Vicky

Ha ha dude, you look so mad at me in this picture.. Sometimes I'm not even sure how I managed to land a girl that was as crazy as me and just as amazing as she was completely nuts. Every day with you was an adventure, and I fucked things up between us--bad. I put you through hell, and you were a complete and total soldier. You turned out to be much better off without me, and recently told me that you didn't want to speak to me anymore.. I'm glad that you changed your mind. Like I said, I don't like to think about what a life completely without your presence would be like. Your son is beautiful, and I am happy for you and your new life. Things will only get better from here, girl.

Hannah

You are one of the most solid girls I know, and any time I needed you you've always been there. You suffer from a complete and total case of bangin' swag fever, and probably need either medical attention or just a medal for that. ;) You and I are getting sober simultaneously, and I am so proud of you it's ridiculous. I have mad love for you girl, and during the brief time that we did have a thing, I treated you so much worse than you deserved. I'm sorry for the asshole that I've been to you, and I'm glad that you're still in my life.

Wendy

We have known each other since middle school, and I spent years chasing you before you ever gave me the time of day. When you did, I promptly began to fuck you off like I do the rest of the world, and that was sick of me. You are amazing, and I congratulate you on becoming stronger than my idiocy. You're going to do big things, chica.. keep doing your thing.

Toribob

We have an entire wall dedicated to us at your parents' house, and it's full of equal parts love and hate on your part, which is most definitely appropriate. We have had some of the best conversations in the world, and to this day I can trust you with whatever is on my mind, no matter what it is. You are a thing of beauty and sorrow, and I am praying for you. You are one of a kind.

Stefanie

We have never had a romantic relationship, but you have been incredible to me throughout the time that we have known each other, which is probably longer than anyone else I am currently speaking to. Even recently, though it was a GOD AWFULLY long drive, you sent your boyfriend up to pick me up when I got myself into a stupid situation at the local trap house. You are a beautiful person, and I'm sorry for not being as good a friend for you as you have been for me.

Lexy

I saw a picture on your Facebook page that said "we are all a little weird and life's a little weird, and when we find someone who's weirdness is compatible with ours, we join them up and fall into a mutual weirdness and call it love." You are a beautiful, insane, confused person, and I consider you one of my closest friends. Throughout our knowledge of one another's existence you have been more and less than that--more when you weren't sick of my shit, less when I treated you horribly and you knew that you were better than that. You are the definition of amazing, and I am so sorry for everything that I have put you through. Looking forward to Clean and Free by the Sea next weekend.. :) It is going to be fucking epic. Much love, goahgeous.

Kristen

If people want to know what it's like to have to say goodbye to someone you want to spend every minute of every day with, they can borrow my life for a minute. I just might love you until the day I die, and if I ever see you again I don't know what I will say. My fondest memories in life are with you; my favorite things about anyone in the world are yours. The hardest lessons I have had to learn in my life were because of the way I treated you. Words can't express the apology that I need to give you, and actions could never erase the damage done. You are the best thing on the face of this Earth. You'll probably never read this, but I am so sorry. I pray for your happiness every day, and I hope that wherever you end up is better than the places I took you. Love is about appreciation, not possession. I'll never, ever forget you, Jellyfish.

On that note I'm out of here for now, folks. Til next time.