I haven't had anything to say in a long time. I am not too sure I have anything to say now. But the fingers stagger over well-worn keys and the cigarette smoke curls upward into bloodshot eyes and words spill onto the empty page regardless.
Everything has changed. A massive shift in both environment and frame of mind. I have had an epiphany and it has resulted in my sobriety and a completely different way of life for the Lovely, Moon, and I. Everything had to change. My habits were killing me and the stress was killing Sam. I poured the whiskey into the toilet and cried myself to sleep for the next two weeks. The Lovely Sam clutched me in her arms and cried along with me.
I have been addicted to one thing or another for my entire life. Contrary to popular belief, my relationship with my abusive mother was not healthy. I hated her and she hated me and we tried to love each other but never quite got there. Most of my childhood was an exercise in escape. I read thousands of books before I finally began writing my own fictions. I just felt like I had to get away and stay there. When I discovered booze and women, I never looked back. And then there was B.J.'s marijuana and and I ran away to California with the Navy. Cocaine and a stripper named Dixie from Austin, TX ended that.
Then there was LSD and the drum circle hippies in Golden Gate Park and after that it was the Road and pills. I hitchhiked from coast to coast, my boots never touching the ground. A chubby blond, not my wife, with a bag of crystal meth, nearly destroyed me both mentally and physically but I survived strong enough to become a raging alcoholic in the years that followed.
All along the way, I hurt people. I cheated and I lied. I betrayed and I stole. The Saint inside of me was no match for the bullying of the Sinner. The Saint inside of me also wanted to hide from who He had become. Booze became judge, jury, and executioner, painkiller, excuse, symptom...I ran away. Mentally, emotionally and geographically. I ran away to the Florida Keys over 10 years ago, no suitcase but plenty of baggage. I was intent on disappearing from the face of the earth and destroying myself along with the guilt. Riding alongside me, in a beat up Buick, was a woman with her own past to outrun and who was perfectly content to watch me drown myself in mine.
She began caring long before me.
Oh well.
I became a drunk. Plain and simple. And plain and simple, I quit. I had given up narcotics on Thanksgiving of last year and I figured, How hard could it be?
Right...
For the last decade I have drank, on the average, a fifth of whiskey(gin, vodka, rum, what ya got?) every single day...sometimes more. EVERY DAY. FOR TEN YEARS.
So I quit.
Simple right?
I thought so too. Quitting drinking is super easy. You just don't drink. No one told me that not drinking would physically hurt. No one told me about the dry heaves, the tremors, the unexplained anxiety, the nightmares, the self-loathing, and the craving that brought me to my knees, weeping, several times a day...
No one told me that it would be traumatic.
I hate to steal a line from Hank Moody but "I can't write. Which kinda sucks since I am supposed to be a writer and a professional one at that. But lately I haven't been able to produce so much as a goddamn predicate..."
Severe withdrawals twice in one year cannot be good for you. First pills and then the hooch. It has to take its toll on the body and mind. I have found myself staying home so that I don't run into any of my old drinking buddies and spend my time playing computer games. I have nearly become agoraphobic in the last few months, ironically avoiding my means of escape. Escaping my escape.
I don't know if I ever again will have anything to say but if I do...Here is as good a place as any.
