Words I can't yet share with you

Your absence leaves me wanting, wondering. When will you return? When will you return to me? There are a million things you could accomplish with your life, a million and one with me by your side. I want to change the world with you, Jen. I want us to sing together, go round the world exploring our love as we explore each new continent, help others live better and more fulfilling lives, show the world what love can be and do when it is given the opportunity to flourish. I want my life to be yours so that i may finally live and i want desperately to share these words with you, but I dare not send them for fear of overwhelming you and pushing you away. May the Sun shine on you this morning where you are. May it light your path and warm your heart like I've not yet been able to, and may it guide you safely back to me.

When I Rise

How sweet it is to rise as the dawn comes
with kindly warming rays to lift the veil of night,
when all my dreams of you have reached their sum
and you, who give them life, come into sight,

for no amount of dreams could e'er suffice
to bring the joy that comes with seeing you,
nor could a slumbering vision e'er contrive
a beauty such as yours each night anew.

But waking brings an ever-present love
embodied in the woman of my dreams,
a love unmatched below or e'en above,
a love the gods themselves could scarce conceive,

and rising draws the nightly ours near
with hope to dream again the one so dear.

My dearest, sweetest, most beautiful girl...

was the opening to the letter for the one my heart belongs to. A little over two years ago when i left to DFW i cut her out of my life. We've known each other about ten years and there's always been a spark of romance, but for just as long she has hesitated to grant me the privilege of being hers for fear of "ruining a good friendship." I offered then to decline the job offer in Farmers Branch and stay here so we could be together but she wouldn't accept it, so i deleted her from my contacts lists, stopped communicating with her altogether and left.

About two years later to the day I came back to South Texas from DFW, and about a month and a half after my arrival I awoke to find a message from her in my inbox. Two days after that we went out, and it was the most beautiful experience i've had in a long time. The magnetism was there and as strong as ever, her smile and her eyes, as always, completely took me out of this world and into one where there were only the two of us, and her lips on mine brought my heart back to life. I've always loved her, and she knows this because i've never hesitated to say it...i just hope she meant it when she told me she'd like to give us a chance one day, and i hope it's soon.

For now, she's in California. She had already made plans to go west for two months, but took the time to find me a week before her departure and i'm glad, a much happier man for it even if she isn't next to me right now. I sent her a letter November 1st. Here's the portion that relates exclusively to her and me along with a poem:

  I can't begin to find the words to explain
  with speech or pen, how you outglow the moon,
  or how the sun competes against you'n vain
  to outshine you from its rising 'til the noon.

  Great Helios, with valiant darting steeds
  has not your strength to illumine my day,
  just as each night the radiant Selene
  to light my way has insufficient rays,

  and Boreas, approaching from the north
  with winds to chill our hearts and passions freeze,
  will never have the power to give forth
  a warming breath like yours to bring me ease.

  And what of Morpheus, who reigns our sleep?
  He's lost his throne to you in every dream.

You asked before you left, why you? The truth is that just as you described what you felt when you first saw me, well, i felt exactly the same for you, and more after we began to know each other. Everything about you is beautifully intoxicating to me - your voice, your words, your lips and the feel of your skin, even your sometimes brash pronouncements and plaguing insecurities - all of it is lovely, and all of it what i've always wanted. Even when I was dating N------, remember the time she and i met you at Newman's? When we left for home that evening she asked if she had any reason to fear my leaving her for you. Naturally I said no, but the truth is i have always loved you. You said you know dozens of women who would kill for my skin, my eyes, my lips - well, i know countless men would do just the same for yours...i am one of them, and i hope one day i can be so blessed as to have them for myself alone.

I miss you, J--, and my only hope tonight is to receive news of you and see you soon, and know that my words have found you well.

    All my love, always,
       n--

--- --- ---

Honestly, i don't know why i put these things out here for others to read. It isn't like i advertise this blog or give my friends the address so they can read, it's all just kind of floating around in cyberspace for people to stumble upon. But it's therapeutic to let it all out, and maybe, just maybe someone out there is of a similar mind and spirit as me and can relate. I just hope it's her.

Letter to a Friend

H-----,

Sorry i didn't respond to your first message, but i have to respond to the second one. I've been working on weeding people out of my life who i feel i don't need...not that you're unneeded, but we did meet thanks to certain unsavory parts of our pasts and sometimes that's something i would rather not think about. But the reason i can't do that with you and felt i should respond to your second message is that the night before you sent it i dreamt of you.

For some reason we were both back at SAFP, and i have in my mind the persistent thought that our stay was only to be a week long, but i can't say for sure if that was true in the dream. We were doing well and looking forward to being released soon, when all of a sudden we were both facing the electric chair - i have no idea why. It seemed to me we were in some sort of cafeteria, being observed by a large group of people, and i was the first to arrive at the chair - i was electrocuted, and died and came back to life! Then it was your turn, and it was complicated and without such a propitious outcome as mine.

I observed the ordeal. Your limbs were strapped to the chair for sentence, but you were given an opportunity to elude its execution in the following way: when one of the executioners struck a match to light some unknown object, or perhaps just the match itself, you could somehow escape before its combustion. By disappearing, or unstrapping your limbs and walking off, or simply opening your eyes? I don't know how, but you had the opportunity to escape the punishment, something i did not have but still managed to do. You were sitting, strapped to the chair while at a distance the match was struck and set aflame, and i tried yelling that it was about to happen so you could save yourself but you wouldn't acknowledge me or open your eyes and the process began. The chair swiveled round and reclined as if to form a table you were now lying on, and i could see your right leg twitching. And you were dead, and in the morning i had a message from you.

I have no idea what to make of it, or any of my other dreams, but they've been extremely vivid for the past couple weeks. It coincides that shortly before my dreams became so i knocked my head pretty hard on the floor, but whether or not the head trauma has anything to do with my dreams coming alive again i don't know. Sometimes what i dream is overwhelming, at other times outright frightening. There was also another night or afternoon within the past week when i was in bed dozing off, and it felt as though i were leaving my body when i was suddenly slung back into it and snapped back to consciousness, and i think it happened again last night. I know there are times when one is between a conscious and unconscious state and comes to with a start,but these occurrences were nothing like that. Sometimes i'm lucid in my dreams, too. I'm not controlling them, but am consciously analyzing them as they unfold. I have no idea what to make of any  of what i've written so far.

Other than all this, i'm well. Of course, the "free world" isn't quite so free, but i'm healthy, have a job that allows me to fulfill my basic obligations, and i look forward to the brighter days ahead. I recently went to my first probation appointment and am still waiting to have my after-care scheduled, which i'm really not looking forward to, but it's only temporary. I'm hoping my probation officer was able to obtain a travel permit for me to visit my great-grandfather in Mexico this weekend for his 100th birthday...really hope it pans out. Oh, and i just got a new laptop and am working on having my first Android application finished and in the Play Store by the end of the year. It's going to be awesome, and I'm going to make obscene amounts of money.

What about you? How's life in...Te-------? I look forward to reading that all is well, as you're "free" and it seems to be. Take care and write soon.

  Your friend,
     n--

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:

unsound sonnet 311km

What is this warmth which comes now forth from in

my breast, to make it rise just so as though

alive again? What is this subtle sting

which makes it beat and pound and of a sudden glow

from a fine venom i cannot resist?

Is it the strain of life applied to me

through memories which from seasons past persist

as ghostly breaths of passing ecstasy?

Or is it not a remnant, but a state

of coming back again to that sweet thing

which never had its birth in time or space,

but through God's grace has e'er allotted been?

It is the latter, i would say if asked,

which now consumes and sets my mind to task.

-------

(If asked, again and e'en again i'd say

it is the last which takes my heart in hand,

to guide it on and lead it not astray,

even if held but by one fleeting strand.

And may it never falter, never break,

that final string of hope i yet have left -

may it hold ever strongly enough to make

me not of light or love ever bereft.)

To the order of night

I've no mind left

to mind my thoughts of you.

My heart,

it has no strength

but that which ought reprove

a fool like me,

for wanting aught be true.

My hands,

they have no grip

to your own ever grasp,

my feet a cadence not

to e'er tread forth

or your steps take to task,

nor my eyes light

enough to look upon

unknown directions past.

Yet i clung still

to that last string

of hope a fool might have

until to-day,

until this night,

when all these gave their last.