Some days I forget that I’m a raging addict. This many years into this project it’s easy to forget how close that line between sanity and insanity really is. It’s easy to forget the line moves, every second of everyday.
Using is not simply about stumbling and falling and slurring words, that’s fun fucked-up. That’s what bridesmaids do at weddings after too much white wine and champagne.
Using is crossing the line.
It’s a one way trip for me. I know this. I know this every day. I lived from fourteen to thirty-five a scorched earth policy. I left nothing undamaged.
People who knew me then, those that lived, tend to forgive and forget. Years can polish anything until it shines like new. Until it makes someone or something, even as deadly as the vile evil bastard, look like not such a bad guy.
Like a Carlos said, “do not kid yourself, my friend.”
I can watch the news today, any day and come up with any one of a million reasons to cross back over.
I can think of friends dying of cancer.
I can think of babies born addicted to heroin.
I can say my back hurts.
I broke a dozen ribs one time and my doctor told me to take Advil.
She knows me.
She knows the vile evil bastard. She’s seen him at work.
That is why she’s been my doctor for twenty-five years.
Some days it’s just thinking that can make me want to cross.
The vile evil bastard; the one I’ve run from for 23 years and 355 days, (but who is counting?), is alive and in the car with the motor running and baggies and bottles full of adventure.
I have pondered drinking bleach wondering if that would wash that vile evil bastard away. Reaching the conclusion it would only kill this façade and release him back into the universe.
The universe does not need him.
Not today…
I always loved the term “triple witching”, today feels like a triple witching day.
A day when you need to focus on the beauty of sobriety and not wish you could escape back to the other side.
It would be monumental.
It would be epic.
Most of the guys I used to sport with are gone.
Dead
I was sad at the funerals. I felt a lot of survivors guilt. In retrospect, it was probably a good thing.
Hector Luis hid with me in the alleys, as the sirens wailed and the lights flashed. He said, “Lobb, you is one ugly motherfucker”.
Luis knew me.
Luis is dead.
Any one of three of today’s events is more than anyone needs to deal with in a month or a year.
Days like today drive home the beautiful concepts of gratitude and clarity. Only a handful of lucky bastards really know of what I speak.
Facing days like this head on. Bring it, bitch, and bring your best game.
