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.

Sometimes it feels like I'm stuck in this slow motion buzzkiller

What do I do now? Wake up in the morning, boxers and bare legs, blanket fell off in the night. Shaking. Reach down and grab the sonofabitch, Tulalip Orca whale grinning "good morning," pull it tight around me and shuffle to the back door, open it just enough to get half of my body outside.. light up a cigarette, think about how bad this feels, gooseflesh tight and burning. Butt the cigarette against the outside of the glass slider, turn around and walk to the bathroom, piss opiate nails, soul bleeding. Walk back to the living room and sit back down, ponder..

Happy birthday, little girl.

Love is not enough

Man, this fucking bitch..

done took off..

Fucking with some college graduate, punk ass..

Abercrombie wearing mother fucker..

Left me broken hearted, in the Chevy.

It's all good though.. you know why?

I got ME, bitch.

So, I've come out of my funk a little--probably due to my recently having been reminded that there is, indeed, sex after Christene, and it's not bad at all--and you maybe deserve a less cryptic run-down of recent events. Here it is in a nutshell:

I came home to WA bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, on a big pink cloud of sobriety and ready to take life by the horns. Christene and I parted on loving, tender terms, and even now my heart melts a little thinking of the tears that she cried into my chest, begging me not to leave, telling me that I could still stay and that she would pay my mother back for the Greyhound tickets. My entire bus ride home was spent deep in the throes of home-sickness--not for Washington, but for my love's ice-blue eyes, the beautiful swell of the hips I loved to run my fingertips over, the thighs I loved to kiss..

When I got home, we spoke of me possibly going to smoke heroin, because it had been so long. I decided that unless my homie made it very easy for me, I would not go; I felt too good about sobriety, and more than anything I wanted to keep my promises (and also, at this point, wedding vows--which Christene had also written for me, not just me for her) to Christene, which was always easier when I was sober. Well, as fate would have it, it was very easy; there was a ride and everything.

I got high. I talked to Christene throughout, and for a couple of days it was okay. I went to a friend's house, my homie Matt, who didn't have a phone or a computer. I didn't have a ride back to my mother's house, but I could have gotten there if I had tried a little harder.. I just didn't really want to go there at the time. Three days passed, and I returned to my mother's house to kick drugs for a minute.

I wrote Christene a text. I had missed talking to her very much, and wanted very badly to do so. I remember now that one of the things she first said was "Oh baby, I wish you had called me.. :(" which didn't really make sense at the time.

We had written wedding vows to each other, as I mentioned before. I don't have hers sitting in front of me, but one of them was basically:

"I will always be nothing but true, everyone will know that I am yours and only yours. Your wife."

Remember that, as we continue.

If you're reading this, maybe you have read the entry(s) that I wrote about Christene before. If you did, you know how I feel about her, and how I have felt about her. I wrote the entry about how she was "something to lose," the only thing I had to lose, on the night that I came back to my mother's. I stayed there a few days, but left again to live the way that I have always lived.. like a rolling stone. I hustled up some money to pay my warrants, but partied on much of it, and before long I was broke and Christene was on her way back from South Carolina.

I was ecstatic. I couldn't wait to see her. My sunshine was coming back, and the world would be in order again soon. On the day of her return, I didn't have a chance to check my Facebook until her sister was already in the bus station parking lot, waiting for her. I got a ride, and when Christene was with her sister, I called. "Hey baby," I said, grinning despite myself. "I missed you so much! You're back!"

She was less than thrilled to talk to me, since I wasn't there to get her when she had gotten off the bus. She asked me to get some heroin and bring it to her at her sister's house. It took me about two hours to hook it up, and I went to Snohomish to see Christene, my heart racing as I pulled into the parking lot of her sister's apartments. I held her tight when I got out of the car, though the air was tense and she was not as happy as I would have liked. We went inside, and we smoked the drugs I had brought. I told her that I was getting sick off of the heroin now, and she was disappointed.

We made love. As we lay in bed afterward, the fog of much-needed sleep creeping into my thoughts, she confessed something to me.

"Baby.. I have to tell you something, okay? When you didn't call me for those three days, and I was in South Carolina.. I slept with someone."

Never mind the wedding vows. Never mind that I had been true to her. Ouch.

I stayed at her sister's for two days, and that fact gnawed at me. Where there had been conviction and steel before, my love burning bright and declared to the world on my blog entries and my Facebook, in my life and among my friends, it felt cheap and hollow. My vows, which I had poured my heart into and taken pride in, carried with me everywhere that I went, were meaningless.. because she had broken hers. It had taken maybe a week after I had left South Carolina. Forever had become eight days. I was angry. She told me that if I were to continue smoking drugs, we would not be able to be together. I was bitter, and I told her to fuck off. I was not returning to my mother's. She backpedaled a little, and said that we could still be together, but that I had to work on my problem.

I promised her that I would look into inpatient treatment, and I did. We made plans for a couple of days later, that Friday. I made an extra twenty dollars, and offered to take her to the movies. She said that she would get ready at her sister's baby's dad's house, and I killed a couple of hours and called her.

She didn't answer. I called a couple of more times; no answer. I texted her sister's phone, called it again. Her sister answered.

"Christene doesn't really want to talk right now," she said. "She.. doesn't know how to tell you that she doesn't want to be dragged back into your world right now," she told me. My heart sank, and a cold chill ran up my spine. "What do you mean?" I asked her, but I already knew. Stupid. Tears sprang to my eyes, and I hung up on Amber. I didn't know what to do. My friends all looked at me. "FUCK," I said loudly, and stared at the phone. "Fuck," I said again, and the tears fell down my cheeks.

I told her that I would get clean, that I would call her when I could be a positive influence in her life. She said that she would wait. I stopped smoking heroin that night.

She didn't wait. I wrote her messages on Facebook, telling her that I had begun the process of getting clean and that I didn't want to lose her. She didn't write back.

I took the hint, and realized that she was trying to leave me for good. I told her that I understood, though I didn't. Don't. I spent each day of my dope sickness hating myself and my life, wishing more than anything that I could just hold her and have her support, her laugh, her kisses. I remembered the days in South Carolina, those perfect, slow days. I remembered her calling me Turkey Moose. I remembered her having to move to the other bunk sometimes because I had restless legs, and me waking up halfway through the night and bringing her back to bed with me. I remembered the movies, Golden Corral on my birthday, telling her how much I loved her. I thought of all we had come through, and the odds we had beaten to stay together. Even now, I love her so much that it is difficult to think of closing this chapter of my life. But I have to. I know that she is a co-dependent girl, and I know that she is not alone right now, probably wasn't the day after I left her sister's. I know that that is what she has to do in order to forget me. It hurts, and I am beginning to do the same now. I told her that she should go and find happiness, that that would make me happy. It will. I just have to get through this slump so that I can find my own.. and I have begun to do that. I had the most amazing sex last night, and I didn't think that anyone but Christene would ever make me feel the way that I felt during that tryst again.

She said I know you gave me everything, but love is not enough, love is not enough, love is not enough.

So good luck, Christene. And good luck to myself, too. Merry Christmas, everyone.

Wish in one hand..

Have you ever felt like dying? Have you ever felt like you could die happy? Sometimes I'm not sure what the difference is. I test and test and test my limits, and in this case even proclaim that I have found the answer; that I've changed, by God, and it's time to reap the harvest of happiness that I have sown. I declare my discovery with one side of my mouth while I second-guess and trash talk it out of the other. Who but yours truly could be so completely ass backwards and confused? Who but me could get so fiercely behind something so hollow and useless? You can't imagine what it feels like to constantly butcher everything that you love on a regular basis. It's.. elating. Thrilling. Miserable. I think that I must be addicted to the bitter sweetness of love's demise, because I can't stand to watch it in life. I have proven this time after time.

Or at least, that's what I used to think. I once was a liar, an embellisher; I once painted pictures of myself for others that had little or nothing to do with the real me, wearing a vast array of pseudo-attractive masks and legends that often had only the most insubstantial of roots tucked into reality, putting their strange and beautiful forms between the eye of the beholder and my true face so that I didn't have to recognize the ugliest pieces of myself. As long as these unsightly flaws and defects were hidden from everyone else, I felt that I could sweep them under the rug, as it were; I even became so good at spinning these fictional versions of myself that I could often sneak the truth past myself and fall victim to my own glamour, thus perpetuating the fantasy ever more efficiently, deceiving all and any who cared enough to look.

Self consciousness has ruled my life for as long as I can remember. The desire to be something that I am not is nothing new to me. I have found, in my newfound policy of brutally honest self-reflection, that there are many contradictions inside of me, many desires and lamentations and passions that by their very existence deny one another. I want to love and protect, but also be free and weightless; I want a home so badly that I overlook the one that I have found until I have made my way to the "other side," and the grass is not as green as it had looked from afar. My heart is not satisfied with all that it loves and desires when it is within my grasp; it glories in hindsight, always yearning to bleed for sweet memories or distant dreams that were tangible but have found a new and less erratic horizon to call home, leaving my whims and unpredictability to thrash and make their demands to an audience of none.

Lonely.

Purged.

Unchallenged.

Just the way I (hate need spurn) like it..

If this latest attempt at self-destruction has truly left me bereft of the one thing I love in this world, I will have succeeded once more in reducing myself to zero, thus perpetuating my beloved cycle for the umpteenth time and securing my place in Hell once and for all. The truth is, I don't know how much more of this I can stand. Every time I throw in the towel and decide that I need to put my nose back to the grindstone, I look around me to find that opportunity has already moved on to find some young and enterprising soul that will close their eyes and fall into its arms unquestioningly rather than peppering it with useless doubts and fears before taking that grudging leap of faith.

I thought I knew who I was; for years I thought that I could not do without the things that set me apart the most in the world, the streets that made me hard and the drugs that made me bizarre. I thought I could not bear to lead a life bereft of the senselessness and chaos that had defined me for so long, and now I am faced with a future that has nothing else to offer--not even the greatest truth that I have found and fought so hard to hang on to, my one true love--and am disgusted by its implications. I do not want the bitter sweet tale in my arsenal, because its darkly beautiful tones of loss and sacrifice do not interest me as much as they may have interested the liar that once lived inside of me. I am no longer the actor that I was; I am not the suave, fast-talking corruptor that I was, nor am I the care-free womanizing player that I once liked to think. I do not take pride in the things that I once did, and pretty new faces no longer hold any sway over me. I want to be remembered as a bumbling, good-hearted protector with eyes for only one girl in the world; I want to find her next to me in the dark every time I wake up in the middle of the night, and I want every tear she cries to meet its end against my lips. I don't want to be a hustler.. I want to be a turkey moose. I don't really know what to do with myself at this juncture, and I can't think of anything to do but pray for an answer.. for once in my life I guess I will have to take the leap of faith, trust in the universe to put things in their rightful places, whether that coincides with my desires or not.