Monday, November 9, 2009

Day six hundred and seventy four ... Closer still.

I'm not all better, but I'm getting close.

My shrink asks me how my urges have been--have I been feeling like going back to drinking?

She's too funny.

No lady, I don't think so. I appreciate the concern, don't get me wrong. It's a legitimate one, as drinking was something I did more than almost everything else combined (a fair evaluation, albeit a bit boastful).

But I'm on my way to being able to cut free of those chains, those excruciatingly heavy and jagged chains. The allegorical fishhooks that pulled at my arms when I tried to lock the door and stay in for the night, or show up for band practice or a gig with only a bottle of water in my hand--the holes they left are all but mere freckles. God, I used to not even be able to scream it was so painfully predictable. The information they dragged out of me became more of a question than an answer in the end. "Hey, who's going to be the most wasted guy in the world tonight? ... Me! Me! Me! Ooh, ooh, ooh! I want to be that guy! Give me a chance! I'll show you how it's done!"

And so it would be.

And I suppose that it's important for me to write these words out loud in order to remind myself of how things were for much longer than they weren't. I suppose it's therapeutic, and perhaps may even act as a barrier against the evils that lie in what seems like every point one could focus a pair of eyes on, outside of the confines and comfort of home or a hospital.

But I'm not buying into the lifetime of servitude. No fucking way.

You see, it's quite easy for me to predict my future to a certain degree. I predicted a few things that would happen when this all began almost two years ago. Yes, I did say two years. Hard to believe it myself. But anyway, amidst the chaos that was the winter of 2007 I had an idea that if I cleaned up my act and started living right I would be able to lose weight. I predicted that my hypertension (high blood pressure) would level off, and I'd be able to get off my medication. I predicted that my anxiety level would lessen, hastened in part by the clearing of my mental state, which in turn would allow me to take care of my personal, professional, and business affairs that had become so neglected.

I could, however, have never predicted meeting Jodi. That was a stroke of brilliance that could have only been handed down from the heavens. And each time I look up into the sky there is a part of me that says "thank you".

But all of the aforementioned items on my list of main concerns did, in fact, turn out as predicted.

And that gives me some ammo. This is still a fight, mind you. Human nature is wont for destruction if given enough weapons. We're all dying from the day we're born, so why not screw with the mechanism? Seems like fun when you can't feel the damage.

I'm taking things in stride these days. I'm enjoying what my life is like now and not sitting around bemoaning how it used to be on a daily, hourly basis. I did that for a while. It got me on my feet and into a place where I could see down into it from above. I got an emotional and spiritual step stool to perch upon in order to see what I had been in the middle of.

It wasn't pretty.

I think it's somewhat funny now that I can see it all for what it is. I can't help but notice, when I'm out at a bar and having a good time, some people who may not know where I am in my adaption seeming a bit nervous around me. It's usually one of two reasons: either they think that I relapsed and am back on the sauce, or they think I'm nervous to be there around them. I could have never predicted that. I always thought it was going to be me who was the uncomfortable one. "Oh, how can I still go out and not drink? People are going to be offering me booze and I'm going to have to come up with excuses and it's going to be weird and I'm going to feel like I don't fit in anymore without my buzz on."

I never planned on it being as easy as just going out and not drinking. I never planned on it ultimately being up to me. I never realized--the whole time I was doing it--that not only did I had the start/stop button in my hands, but it actually was my hands, and it was connected to that big squash on top of my roundish body that I like--on good days--to call my brain.

Like I said, I'm not all better, but I'm getting close.


As far as the stuff my shrink asks me--about whether or not I get urges to go out and get loaded--this is how I see it:

At the stage I'm at in my life if I were to go out and buy a bottle of vodka and bring it back to my house and drink it, it would be like stealing a sandwich from a grocery store when I was hungry: it would make me feel full for a while. Then, in a few hours, I would become hungry once more, and I'd have the guilt of stealing something from the store. I couldn't ever just do it and feel good about it.

And I can't just do it once, because unless it kills me it'll just make me hunger.

And just like the leading brand of self-help is rife with analogies and aphorisms, so seems to be the words I write myself that keep me sane: it only works until it doesn't.



I don't write as much as I used to. I don't think I really need to. It's way more of an outlet for me to document the good things that have been going on, just in larger groups of moments. It's hard to say whether I would have the life I have now if I didn't have the life I had then. It would be unfair to even speculate ... so I don't.

I absolutely love the way I am and the way my world has mutated, but I also know that it could all change at a moment's notice. I realize we can only do what our brain tells us to do.

And that is why I wrote today.


Thanks for reading,

~F.A.J.









2 comments:

Anonymous said...

From the sounds of it, I doubt you have ever been as high as you are now. Bamm

IrishMoss said...

Thanks for writing this blog. Really reached me in so many ways. Very happy for you. Bless. - Rob