Friday, June 2, 2017

Day Three Thousand Four Hundred and Forty Five . . . Disk Almost Full.

My computer is pretty slow.

It's at the point now where it's kind of an embarrassment and I can't let anyone else use it. And if Jodi and I are on it together--researching wedding stuff or making getaway plans or just general web surfing--I inadvertently end up getting self-conscious because I know her computer is so much faster than mine. And I know that there are only so many fifteen second waits for a page to load before she wonders aloud, "what do you have on that thing?"

Well, everything. Almost.

I've invested hundreds of dollars over the years on backups to help divert the flow of HD videos of gigs I played, posters I made, pictures I've taken, recipes I've stored and zip files that I've unzipped and never zipped back up. But in short order the accumulation seems to just creep back up little by little until I get that pop-up that tells me . . . "disk almost full."

And when that happens, of course, I always head to my go to: I empty the trash.

But lots of times there's nothing in there . . .  because I hate throwing things away.

So I'll go to my disk utility and run a program that will take 30 minutes to execute and render my laptop useless while it searches to find all the little fragments of stuff that I don't need and won't ever know about.

That'll free up a few gigabytes which will last about a week, maybe less.


But this is the computer in my lap we are talking about. It's something I bought and rely on but it's something that I don't need to keep me alive, and it's something I didn't have as a kid. I was born and raised in the 1970s and for a long while we barely had flashing lights on any of our toys let alone a touch screen.

But I never really thought about the computer we are all born with until yesterday.

I was at Young at Heart Chorus rehearsal and we were going through a set of about fifteen songs. The folks in the group are 74 and older and many are way older than that. And these men and women are tasked with remembering the lyrics to a seemingly endless list of songs from the 1960s through today. And most of them do it without having to resort to looking at the lyrics sheet. It's truly amazing because these are songs that more often than not were popular to a different generation--the Boomers or the Gen Xers, not the Greatest Generation.

I have a hard enough time remembering the words to my own songs, and some of these guys are twice as old as me and they have no problem remembering the (sometimes esoteric) lyrics to Radiohead, MGMT or The The.

And that got me wondering about the little computers we all have inside our heads. I simply couldn't get over the idea of how much storage our hard drives must have.

Now, of course, everyone is different. There are plenty of people (some we may even know) who have a hard time remembering something we just told them. Or others who's attention span is so narrow that new ideas have to take a number and may never be absorbed to the point where they can be utilized.

But every single thing we do and every little piece of information we see and hear gets stored away in that grey matter. It's all in there whether we remember it or not because that's what it's job is--well, one of it's many jobs, anyway.

There was a very long period in my life where I drank myself into a near coma each and every night. I would pick up a clear plastic pint of Smirnoff and maybe a six pack of beer at the local package store. I'd drink it all while I watched TV. In time it progressed to just a bottle of Smirnoff--the .750L in the glass bottle because I wanted to lose some weight and the beer had to go. I'd drink most of that bottle in one evening. When I opened the freezer in the morning I would always have that last 2oz or so left in there. I will never really know if I left it in there because I was passed out, or if I wanted to save it in case I really needed it in the morning, or if I just couldn't handle the idea of it being over--the bottle being empty and therefore of no use anymore. Like I said, I hate throwing things away.

I really owe my brain a debt of gratitude. It took so much unbelievable abuse from me--at my own hands--and kept going and going and just chugging along logging the days, hours, minutes and seconds in my life. Compiling all the things I did, all the things I had to do, all the things I hoped I'd do, all the people I cared about, all the people I envied, and on top of it all, all the words I wrote to the songs I composed as well as those of my bandmates. And when it was time to put that all in play at a show it would more often than not come through for me.

Now, of course, my brain is not immune from prosecution. And it fear it must also bear much of the burden of getting me so fucked up to begin with. Because let's face it, that's where this all comes from, right? Our heart is supposed to have this magical power to make us feel certain ways about people and movements and drive us to great lengths to make our dreams come true. But we all know there would be none of this, that or the other without the brain. And if I have a family history of something, sure it's encoded in my genes, but my brain is the headmaster, so to speak. I may have been born with a proclivity towards overeating but my brain is what allows me to see the numbers on the scale, my image in the mirror and the amount of food on my plate.

If there was a way to stop the madness in the world I would have to guess its genesis could be traced back to the rubbery lobes inside our skull. And isn't that quite a paradox?

So let's see, where are we now? My brain is amazing because it ceaselessly works to keep me alive, moving forward, remembering myriad data and processing everything new that my eyes, ears, nose and mouth take in.

And it is also to blame for me nearly killing myself possibly hundreds of times during an almost 20 year span of drug and alcohol abuse.

Well, I don't know, looking at it from where I am now I'd have to say that I'm okay with all of that.

But there are too many people in my world that haven't been or weren't so lucky.

I just saw a birthday notification the other day on Facebook for a friend who drank himself to death last year. He had reached out to me to talk about getting sober. We hung out a bit and he had a good attitude but we lost touch and I didn't keep on him and now he's gone. Friends of his told me there was "nothing anyone could have done" to change his path. I guess I have to live with that but I wish I had tried harder.

There are at least five people I know who over the past ten years I've been sober have not been able to get the help they needed and who died because of their addictions.

There are many that are still with us that I know could use some help.

I see friends of mine who didn't get the wakeup call like I did and are still going about their daily routine like they're 25. I tend to want to keep to myself. I don't go to AA because I feel that talking about my past problems only can do so much good. I like to live by example--an example to me, really--keep moving forward and seeing how just doing the next right thing (a trusty AA adage) is really all that one needs to do. But a new goal of mine is to reach out to the people I know who could use some help in the hopes that there may be a way to introduce the idea of a different way to be. I know this can be exceedingly difficult because as we get older our identities become so entangled with what we know and what we've done that to give that up is more than just giving up a way to relax, as it were. It's more like getting a limb removed. We wonder how we could survive with only one leg or one arm--how would we do the basic things in life that we need to do to survive. But I see examples every day of people from all walks of life overcoming adversity--sometimes mental, physical or both--picking up the broken pieces, finding a way to connect them back together and learning to live again.

But just because others do it and just because I did it doesn't mean anyone else can or will.

Our brain is our brain and our brain is the final word on the subject. And me seeing something one way and feeling like it's the way life makes the most sense doesn't mean anyone else will get it. It's all just data coming in and one would hope that there is enough space on the disk inside our head that the information is accessible.

I'm constantly having visions from the earliest parts of my childhood and beyond. It seems to be happening more and more these days, but I know it's been a constant since my last drink on December 27, 2007. The memories are all there--the swing set at Columbus Park, the snake show at Southeastern Mass University when I was five, that first fateful attempt at a kiss at 13, my first guitar, my first gig, my mother's hugs, her big pink hands that used to smooth my hair back and hold my head straight when I was trying to wriggle away because I was too cool for school, her kiss on my forehead, my first apartment away from home, my first hangover, my worst hangover, my cross-country tours, my European tours, my mother's joy at how far her boy had come, the late night talks on the phone with my her and holding the receiver away from the rocks glass so she couldn't hear the ice clink, her audible tears, her visible tears, the hospital visits, the hopeful doctors, the resigned doctors, the last Christmas, the last New Year's, the long, labored last kiss on my bearded, bloated cheek, the unbeknownst last visit to the nursing home, the news at the nurses station, the shrieking, my aunt's furiously grasping hand, the sun over the ocean, the keys in the door, the empty house, the cats knowing all, the year of accelerated self-destruction and the day it all stopped.


It stopped because I was arrested. I've told you all about that. That was almost 3,500 days ago.

But this story could have had a much different ending. In fact, it could have ended nine years ago after my aunt left this world to be with her sister.

But it didn't.

And I guess I have to thank whatever part of the computer in my head it was that decided that no matter how much data was crammed in there and no matter how much of it was seemingly trash that needed to be purged, that it was going to keep things in order and keep this whole system moving forward.

I never thought I had the will to stay sober. I never thought I'd ever really do it for very long even if I tried (and I tried many times). But I somehow managed to convince whatever part of my brain that the things in front of me and the possibilities down the line are greater than that which I'd grown accustomed to. It wasn't easy and it didn't happen overnight. But it happened and I am living, breathing proof that it is possible.

So today I dedicate this post to anyone who is struggling with their addictions. There is help available to you and it's as easy as visiting a website like AA or NA and seeing how you can find a way out. I'm happy to talk with anyone who would like to write me. You can write to freddyfreedom@gmail.com and I'll be sure to get back to you.

And if my words here on this page or anywhere in this blog have made even a little bit of difference in anyone's life I urge you to keep on going.

The disk up there in your head will never fill to the point where new ideas are not allowed. You may need to empty the trash or fix some of the fragments that aren't connected to see it through.

I had my pop-up almost ten years ago. It was a warning that I heeded and is why I sit here today.

Let the world open itself to you and bring joy and magic inside.

Believe me, there's room.