A Pep Talk

Yop, I sure done fixed my car good. It ran wonderfully until I got a block from the garage- then the CHECK ENGINE light came on and the motor started ghost-revving crazily- the engine runs faster in Park than Drive...I don't know what that means, but I don't think it's good.

Remind me to never, ever be optimistic, cheerful or upbeat again. If I let myself become happy, I am almost always immediately crushed by circumstance.
According to one friend :
" Everyone is put here for a reason, and some people seem be placed here to suffer. You are one of those people."
They meant it as reassurance- that God had a plan and that I would get my reward in Heaven for my suffering on Earth; but I didn't find any comfort in that idea. I almost snapped at my friend:" I don't believe in God, or Heaven or the afterlife and it really pisses me off that people who have known me for years just assume that I am a Christian! Why do you assume that? Blah, angry,blah!"

But I held my tongue. If I am consigned to Damnation, it won't be for being an asshole to my well-meaning superstitious friend.

Anyway, I had to put my car in for a tire alignment and a new pair of tires- I was told it would be approx. $200 total, which isn't too bad. I dropped it off at 8AM and was told it should be ready by lunchtime.

At 10:30 the phone rang. It was the garage.

"Have you been driving this car much since the accident?"

This wasn't what I wanted to hear.

"Yes. Almost 1,000 miles just last week."

"Mmmm. This vehicle is highly unsafe.You really should have your car checked out immediately after a major collision..."

Yeah, I knew that, but I was too busy losing my job to do much more than get the body repaired, besides, I have been broke since the accident...anyway, after I got a mini-lecture on collision protocol I was told that the front wheel assemblies were basically bent all to hell and that there was no way to align them, that they would have to be be replaced. This would add $400 to my bill.

Oh. How about the engine?

They still hadn't run the diagnostic on the engineso I asked them to hold off on that. I don't have the money for it- I'm going to have to call my Twin and ask for another loan just to get the front end fixed.

The bad news is: Volvo parts cost a lot of money.

The good news: Volvos are very safe cars. I was told that most cars wouldn't have survived hitting a deer at 55 mph and I was pretty lucky to walk away from the scene. When I told the mechanic that the deer has been literally split in half, I could hear him whistle to himself..."you got lucky", he said.

Lucky? Since July 4th I have lost my savings , my job and my health insurance. I've had my heart used as dual-purpose trampoline/doormat. My grandmother is back in CCU and I don't even have a car at the moment- it may be a couple of days until I can get the cash to retrieve it...yeah, I feel lucky.

I must admit that my first thought was :"I wish that fucking deer had killed me, because life has pretty much sucked since then."

Then I realized something important.

Exactly two years ago today, I had less than 72 hours to live and I didn't even know it at the time. Back then, I had somehow managed to convince myself that vomiting "a little" blood was normal...that 18 beers and a fifth of vodka per day was perhaps "a little" too much, but certainly not deadly.

Sept. 7, 2005 found me with a ruptured esophagus, bleeding out on a hospital's ER floor, struggling to survive . During this, I went into alcoholic withdrawal and suffered a grand mal seizure on the operating table while I had an endoscopic tube inside me. The docs were sure that I was going to die. Obviously, they were wrong.

Nearly a week later I was released. I am not ashamed to admit that I lied my way out of getting placed in the Psych ward- over and over again I had to tell therapists that , no, of course I never think about suicide, that I never cry for no reason -I even told a priest that I would start going to church if he would just let me go home. I just gave the nodding heads the answers they wanted and kept hoping they'd release me.

Was I sure that I had never thought about suicide?, I would be asked.

Yes, I would lie. I didn't mention that my uncle had blown his own head off just a few months ago or how many times my mother had hurt herself during her drunken depressions...shit, why in the world would I ever think about suicide? Please note that there is a significant difference in thinking about suicide and considering it. I think about it often but I have never consciously
considered it- the drinking was as close as I ever came to tying my own noose. I didn't feel that explaining this was going to do any good so I lied. Repeatedly.

Just about the only true thing that I said was that I really didn't feel like drinking again. That's the only thing no one believed. Eventually, they reluctantly let me go. One therapist said that she felt there was a high probability that I'd be back very soon. Or dead. She was wrong.

When I was finally released, it seemed that I had nothing to return to. My old Honda had gotten me to the ER,but it was in worse shape than me. I had lost my temp job, my uninsured medical bills had consumed my entire life savings and I was sobering up and finding out that I was very, very lost and afraid. I didn't want my family to know how bad I had become, so I couldn't turn to them...I had also lost most of my friends by this point-albeit temporarily in some cases- nobody wants to be friends with someone who is drinking themselves to death.

I remember getting home and scrubbing the dried blood off of my bathroom walls and noting how the splash pattern looked exactly like the one Mom left on her bedroom wall when she died.
Then I wondered what sort of splash pattern my uncle Steve left. He used a gun.
After that,I curled up on the cool tile bathroom floor and cried until I was exhausted. It may have been for hours or for days...I forget.
I had a lot of mourning to catch up on.

I kept thinking: "I am never going to make it. My mind is going to snap and something terrible and uncontrollable is going to happen. I am helpless, hopeless and doomed."

I was wrong. I was none of those things and nothing terrible happened.

Lately, I've been having brief episodes of that hopelessness again, but this time I'm much better prepared to face them. I've come clean about the booze and illness with my friends and my family and have found that they are still there for me- I was the one who went away, not them.

Today, almost exactly two years from the time I quit drinking, I find myself in nearly identical straits- broke, unemployed, forced to borrow money just to pay for day-to-day expenses-but it's different this time. This time my friends and family know what's happening and I'm lucky to know that if things really get bad, there are people to help me- if I had a dime for every person who has offered to loan me money over the last two weeks, I wouldn't be in debt right now! (...except for their no-interest loans, of course)
I can't begin to list all the small favors that folks have done for me since i sobered up, I can only try to make it worth their while.

When I was a hopeless drunk, not many people wanted to do me any favors. Not many people are willing to waste time and money on someone who has given up, no matter what their former relationship may have been. Even family has limits. I turned my back on my own father- but he came back last month and I have set aside my anger. For now.

Today, I have help and it is offered willingly. Hopefully, I won't need to accept it, but it is there. That means that there are people in my life who have not given up on me.
There always have been, I just wasn't always one of them. That was a shame.

So yeah, I'm fucking sick to death of my $3 a day diet , I'm tired of getting ambushed by devastating repair bills , my creditors from 2005 are howling again and I pray to Godzilla I can find a decent job before I am forced to become 3rd shift assistant manager at Skippy's Quik-Mart for $9.65 an hour...but I haven't given up.

Sad? Sure. Why shouldn't I be?
Depressed? Yes, but I recognize it this time so I won't let it win.
Despair? Nope. I am done with despair.

I'm down and out but this time there's no shame in it, it's just me being 'lucky'.
Shame is the difference between mere sadness and utter despair. When I drank, I was consumed by shame that could only be eased by shameful drinking. It was truly horrible and I promise that I will never let that happen again.

The only shame would be to give up after surviving so much- first I tried to destroy myself, then others tried to break me and failed and finally it all came full circle and I was watching my grandmother fight for her life in the Critical Care Unit, hooked up to many of the same machines that I was attached to in 2005. As her blood pressure dropped, she reached out her hand and gripped mine with an impossible strength and it was at that moment I realized that she was afraid to die- not because she fears death, but because she is worried about me and what might happen without her to look after me.

I want her to get out of the damn hospital and go back home where she belongs. Then I want to drive my fully-repaired car (it was a beauty before the wreck) show it to her and tell her about my great new job. This isn't likely to happen overnight , but it won't happen at all if I give up now.

I meant for this to be a bitter, depressing post much like the ones that used to cause readers to jump ship in droves- if three can be considered a 'drove'- but when I started putting things into perspective I realized that I'm not as unhappy as I thought. I'm hardly radiant with joy , but I don't exactly have a personal storm cloud either. Things are what they are, is all.

I'm not done yet.

I have shows to do.

Don't touch that dial.

It Never Stops

Good news first, then everything else: I made a road trip without breaking down or colliding with car-killing quadrupeds. My grandmother looks good and she feels better, more so than anyone but her expected- she may even be allowed to return home in two or three weeks if she continues to do well with her therapy. It's a cause for celebration.

At least it should have been.

I didn't get home until late last night and when I did, I had a phone message from my brother. Call him right away- it's important. So I did.


It turns out that the man who got our mother pregnant has started drinking again. If I had taken the time to visit him, I might have been able to stop what happened from happening, but I didn't do that and as a result , things at home have gone from better to worst in less than a day.

Yesterday, dad apparently fell down the stairs at the family house and tumbled into my grandmother's most precious piece of furniture - her glass China cabinet. He completely destroyed it, along with many of her most cherished and fragile items...a porcelain doll that Granpa carried back from Okinawa after WWII...plates that belonged to her parents...glassware gifts from relatives no longer with us- I don't yet know the full list of losses or all the details of the accident. I'm sitting at work waiting for and dreading more information.


Here's what I know:


Sharon, who is a friend of Grannie's from church, had stopped by the house to feed the cat and check up on my dad, who can't be trusted, him having a long history of relapsing and fucking up. Sharon used her key to let herself in and saw blood and broken glass everywhere- but no dad. She was calling 911 when my blood-soaked parent returned from the store, carrying more beer. According to my second-hand info, he had a number of serious cuts but refused to seek medical attention- he was more than a little abusive to Sharon, who really does not deserve such treatment, and she left him to stew in his own demise.


After talking to my brother, I actually tried to call my dad. Of course, there was no answer.


I hate myself for making that call. I need to stop caring.


I have tried to care- I had fooled myself into thinking it was possible- I had thought that I had reached a sort of peace with my father and that this peace might possibly lead to forgiveness.


Instead, I am humiliated for wasting so much time and energy on such a lost cause- and my grandmother not only feels disgraced ( it's a small town and everyone knows about my dad) but when she heard about the accident her blood pressure sank like a stone. My father is killing himself and he's killing his mother at the same time- she has undergone weeks of grueling therapy; tests; rehab sessions and life-training classes just to learn that her adult son has smashed what few belongings of hers he hasn't already stolen and sold and is currently lying in a puddle of blood, piss and beer. The puddle he is occupying is on her new carpet where her china cabinet used to be.

When he relapses, her health fails. It's a cycle that's been going on for decades and I have done everything I can think of to break it but I can't. He has to stop drinking or he will die and he knows it - but he doesn't care. He doesn't care if he kills his own mother in the process.

He told his mother that he wants to die.

She has been fighting for her life and her son tells her that he wants to die, that being dead is better than having to take care of her.


If he lives, his actions will kill his mother.


If he dies, his death will have the same result.


I have once again given up all hope for my father. My brother, who has been considerably more loyal than myself, has also given up. My father's younger brother is hardly any better than my dad, he's a daily drunk in a deep state of denial, so there's no help to be had from him.

So the cycle starts again. My dad is a wounded fugitive from reality, a menace to every noun he can reach , and my grandmother is literally worrying herself to death over him and there isn't anything that can be done. The local police don't care what dad does as long as he keeps it off the road and dad has repeatedly turned down our Pastor's very generous offer of a church-funded 28-day rehab clinic. He needs to be locked up and forced to change- it is never going to come from inside him.
I don't know if there is anything left inside my father at all. I don't think he can come back from the place he has chosen for himself and that's where the pain really hits- that he has has chosen this life for himself.
People like to say that alcoholics lack willpower, but that is incorrect. It takes a lot of willpower to cut yourself into ribbons and still manage to limp to the store for more beer.
That takes serious determination.

You would think that no store would sell beer to a man covered in blood, but obviously that is also incorrect. After I hit a deer on Independence Day, I was forced to buy paper towels and cleanser at a crowded gas station and I had deer's blood all over me. Deer blood, for those without large-scale roadkill experience, looks exactly like human blood; over the course of an hour or more, only one person bothered to even ask why I was covered in blood.

Why should they care? Why do I care?

I am trying really hard to not care. I don't want to care. I am tired of the pain of caring and I am weary of the burden of false hope, but what else is there?

It would be so easy to start drinking again. Soon, all my problems would become other people's worries- on top of the frantic phone calls about his father, my brother would also start getting emergency calls regarding myself.

I like to tell people that it's fear that keeps me sober, and in a large part this is true. I know what will happen if I drink and it involves pain , bleeding and a slow death by self-torture.
That scares me away from the booze, but there's more to it than just that; this never-ending trauma with our father is having terrible emotional effects on my brother and I love my brother too much to inflict any more unnecessary, tragic alcoholic bullshit on him. I can't say as how I'm especially fond of myself right now, because I am not- but I love my Twin and the thought of causing him any more pain makes me feel as broken and torn as the deer that I killed two weeks ago.

So I'll add love to my short list of reasons to stay sober.
It will be enough. It has to be.

Them Bones