No One You See is Smarter Than He
JUL 22 2013
Lately friends have been asking me how I’ve been doing with the not drinking thing. I’m not sure why it’s come up so coincidentally often. Maybe because things are on the general up swing in my life and usually that’s the moment I like to tear it to shit. Or it’s just happenstance.
Not drinking it going pretty fucking well. While a friend was telling a story of a horrid hangover she had, she asked if I missed it.
“I don’t miss that shit.”
She replied, “Do you miss oblivion?”
“I miss oblivion every second of every, single day.”
I would choose that over taking my next breath.
I recently landed a job that has the potential to be quite wonderful. I have this intense paranoia that I will somehow, royally fuck it up. Because, why not? Even if you’re being objective and attempting to base a current theory on past evidence, it leaves you with the odds of just about 50/50. During my down time at work I usually surf the internet but I’m afraid to visit a page that might have anything incriminating on it so I’ve spent most of my time on nationalgeographic.com, which feels pretty safe. A few days ago I was reading about dolphins. That they’re incredibly self-aware. They know who they are. If shown a mirror, they can recognize themselves and understand that they’re looking at their own reflection. Dolphins aren’t metabolic-breathers like we are. They have to choose to take every breath. Rise to the surface, grab some air. Every breath is a decision, a conscious effort. And there are these documented cases of dolphin suicide. Dolphins that are stressed for any particular reason, simply choose to not take another breath.
Since Nan’s death, I’ve been trying to be more available to my family. It’s really been quite a pleasure. One must not drop all arms and run around streaking, free of armor – but also take the seconds of happiness as they come. While visiting my parents I saw, on the back of their bedroom door, this paper that’s lived there for eight years. My mother put it up when I first went to rehab. It’s a brief rundown of what to expect from this new person in recovery that’s moving back into your house. The first stage is something like anger and isolation then it progresses and ends with the last stage of recovery being – love. The word “love” she wrote in magic marker, bigger than the others. When I catch an accidental glimpse of that thing, it always makes me regret how I treated the people in my life when I was at my sickest. The feeling is always heavy. This last time I saw it, I felt the closest I’ve ever felt to the final stage.
I still have these marks on my body from the things I’ve done. Little bits of documentation littered in strange places. The last night I drank I was at an underage birthday party for a stripper named Exstacy. [No no, not Ecstasy. But Exstacy]. This was the night that takes place in a four-five hour black out and in the morning I wake up as the most disgusting person I had yet to see myself become – covered in my own shit, vomit and blood. All class. [see first blog entry]. That night I have the memory of opening my third beer, then everything goes black. Then I just have visual memories of points of impact. Any point where my body hits something. Or something hits my body. Those memories live at the speed of a camera flash.
When I started drinking this last time, I just thought I had to out-smart it. Get better. Pretend to be normal. I couldn’t. It lights a fire in me. I physically can’t stop.
I have this scar on my right hip bone from that night. I fell thru the glass shower-doors. It’s dark brown and mimics the crescent contour of the bone for about three inches. I don’t mind it. I want to remember.
Under that is a scar that was intentionally made while I was seventeen years old, sitting in a drug rehab for the second time in my young life. One day this kid was admitted who had scar “tattoos” on his arms. I decided it’d be a good idea to ask him how he did it, spend a couple of days gathering the contraband and then convince the three bunkies I had, to do it with me. So there, on my right hip sits the physical manifestation of childhood idiocy, shaped as a star.
I have a scar centered on the base of my nasal bone. That one is as a result of believing my cocaine induced hallucinations which said there was definitely something underneath my skin which I had to scrap out with a razor in front of the mirror for what was most likely, a few hours. I was fifteen or sixteen.
A few nights ago I was walking home and stopped in a corner Bodega for some smokes. The kid behind the counter looked up with these blood-shot, hazy eyes. In his lap he held his arm and a dripping razor. It was pink and raw, like uncooked meat, jagged and worked over from days of attention. He would have moved faster to hide it if he wasn’t so high. The counter was cluttered with the usual adverting bombardments, one was a coupon for Sea World. Kids get in for free. I got my smokes and left. This shit can be dark. I’m just trying to keep fucking treading.