redirection

For my few followers and non-followers alike, those who may at some point stumble upon this blog i've never advertised and yet for some reason resurrect...how things have changed. Maybe some part of what i've put myself through will entertain or help you, and if not, then at the very least writing it might help me.

The last two years and nine months have been trying. Could I describe them as having been hell? I don't think I could, but they certainly have been painful. My last entry here was from Friday, March 25, 2011, written in Lewisville, TX. I had already been living there since late September of the previous year, sharing an apartment with my step-sister. Drinking had become a daily part of my life - it was uncontrollable, painful, an imagined solution to a very real problem that arose out of my inability (or unwillingness) to deal with other trials i had romantically concocted.

I moved to Lewisville from Mission, TX, in 2010, and a family member's friend had offered me a job as a teaching assistant at a charter high school. I had been trying for months to find a decent job in the RGV, but with no success...perhaps because i really wasn't trying. I had come back from Taiwan February of 2009, lived off a hefty tax return and a little money saved from teaching abroad, and empty handed, without the woman i loved and for whom i'd traveled east to begin with. With her living in the west coast, too far away to help subdue my passions, i had already started drinking, often and well into the night, occasionally having playful slapping matches with Josh, the best friend i have. It's amazing, i think now, how i allowed my mind to turn my life into a fairy tale involving love lost and financial hardship to justify how much i drank, but i did. Then in January of 2010 the man i knew as my father passed away and i had another reason to continue drinking, and more now.

I took over his much loved liquor collection - brandy, vodka, tequila, scotch and a couple cases of Shiner, it was all mine, and there was nothing i enjoyed more than staying awake into the morning hours downing these alone. Really, it didn't make me happier, but like i said i romanticized what are otherwise normal life situations...oh, the pain! How hard it is to be me, to live this way! These were thoughts i had when i was drunk, as until then I was still relatively happy and had a generally positive outlook on life. But with Dad's passing, well, i kind of used the event to just piss all over my life. I made myself depressed with how much alcohol i consumed when i consumed it, rolling my woes over in my mind and glamorizing my suffering as though i were the only man alive who had ever been through such trials...the woman i love is half a country away, i can't find suitable employment, the only father i've known is dead, woe, woe, woe is me! I offered my mother to move back in with her to keep her company and help her through the tough and lonely times ahead...i really did want to help her, but i confess i also needed help. My drinking escalated, i began getting violent with certain people when we drank together, and in not too long a time i was running low on money. There was a brief time when i worked as an insurance broker and earned enough, but i couldn't live with cheating strangers out of their hard earned money so i quit that job.

Dad passed away in January, i worked as a broker from mid-February 'til about June, and i borrowed money until i departed for Lewisville that September to live with my step-sister and work as a teaching aide.

Many good things happened when i moved to north Texas. I loved my job, i made amazing friends, i was passed and raised, brought from darkness fully into the Light of my beloved Craft by men i'd come to know and love as Brothers. All this, and i couldn't, wouldn't quit drinking. As the beginning of the new year and first anniversary of Dad's death neared i used that as a reason, but looking back i know that was nothing more than an excuse to justify what i did, and on the night of January 21, 2010, that first anniversary, I was stopped and arrested for my third DWI. Scared beyond belief, i quit drinking for about a week, until the gravity of the situation fully set in and i then had a fourth reason to continue drinking. Every day for four months i wore a mask - at work i was someone my students trusted and could come to for help, in society i was a respectable man who gave of his time to the community, but when i wasn't involved in either of these at the end of the day i was drowning. Sometimes i wore the mask badly and it was suffocating. Worst of all, it didn't let me see the brick wall i was about to hit.

May 25, 2011, after those four months, i made my first court appearance. Sure, I was scared witless due to the nature of the charge and used it as an excuse to drink myself into a stupor every night, but i was yet confident my attorney could get me off the hook - after all, i had been driving perfectly and was never told by the arresting officer why i was stopped to begin with (at 2:30 a.m.), i clearly remembered having aced the field sobriety tests, and i couldn't possibly have been above the BAC limit (despite how much i drank) because i had already stopped before midnight...i couldn't have been more wrong. I was stopped because  another driver called 911 after i almost swerved into his vehicle (i listened to the recording), i had failed the field sobriety tests miserably (i saw the video), and my BAC was almost three times the limit...

How the hell could this happen to me!? I drove back to work, my license suspended by then, but could not function and couldn't stop crying. How will i tell my little brother that i'm going to prison? My mother and my grandfather, who's also been like a father to me but had no idea what i was putting myself through, how will they take the news? I was hoping to be a licensed teacher in the coming school year, and what will happen to that? What about the Craft, what will happen with that? God damn this shit!

It took about a week, during which i was severely drunk and depressed, but i did quit drinking. Sure, i felt terrible that i could have hurt someone, but i quit mostly because i realized it would be impossible to survive this ordeal if i didn't. I payed a few thousand dollars for out-patient treatment, regularly attended AA meetings when i ran out of money to pay for that other stuff, had letters of support written by truly outstanding people and kept in constant contact with my attorney to pressure the DA but nothing worked, and on September 7 i was given two choices: two years in state jail, or three months in county before going to SAFP for six more and then about nine years of probation. Well...two years and then i'm done, that does seem like a pretty attractive offer...then again, i'm one of the biggest hippies in the world and would never survive the gladiator farm, plus it would be torture for my mother and grandfather to know i'm there...county, SAFP, half-way house and probation here i come!

To make an already arduously long story short, these past two years and nine months have been the most painful yet rewarding stretch of time in my life. It's madness, i know! But it's true...i've lost the career i was aspiring to (i'd made up my mind to be a math teacher), i can no longer help my community through the Craft i was a part of, i've lost some friends, but i'm finally myself and those who truly love me are still a part of my life. I've learned more than i ever thought i could from spending time with crazy, sober alcoholics. Sometimes i think that after a few years of sobriety i'll be able to enjoy a glass of wine again, i fantasize about this...why the hell not, if my problem wasn't with wine but with beer and liquor? But i think i finally know the truth - the next drink i take will be the first nail in a coffin that won't take long to build and bury. It really angers me, because i want to have a good time with a beer in my hand again like i sometimes used to. Slapping matches with Josh were fun, and so was 9-ball and pool parties and barbecues with bottomless coolers on the beach but, again, i know the truth, and it scares the shit out of me. The truth is that i can't control myself, that i've evolved well past the point of being a social drinker who's happy with having only one or two or three. Taking another drink in the future, sure, i'll be fine for a short while, but it won't take long for one or two drinks to turn into an uncontrollable instinct to drink myself stupid. On top of that, i'm the kind of asshole drunk who wants to be in control of everything and won't let a friend drive me home, and if i'm lucky i'll end up with a fourth DWI and in prison for the rest of my life...if i'm not lucky, i'll end up hurting an innocent person and in prison the rest of my life.

My worry used to be, "I've got two DWIs, i have to be really careful or i'll get a third and lose everything..." Today that thought has morphed into something more like, "Wow, i'm a felon and have lost almost everything...i guess there's nowhere left to go but up." It's fuckin hard sometimes, but we'll see where this takes me.

I can't quite call myself a Christian, but what the hey, it's a good song: