you see who they're still in touch with after you had a running fight for three months about them literally sexting them and staying out after hours way too late and magically happening to run into each other and finding out they're a known rapist and telling her and still they're just firing away ... you get the "ewwwwwwww gross, what the fuck?!?!?" feeling of surprise instead of a an "oh yeah, makes sense, why am I shocked at all that her behavior hasn't changed" feeling.
Clean with alcohol only. Do not attempt to replace blown fuses. Do not remove access panels. Return to certified mechanic for regular maintenance. Made in the USA.
10/26/19
10/21/19
That Instant
you realize you have to move your Al-Anon meeting, but you actually have to move your matinee film to fit around it and you gas at adult problems.
10/19/19
Dear (_____)
Dear Alcohol,
I've been pretty high functioning for a while. I know I'll never be cured. There is no cure. I remember you. I remember everything you took from me. You took a person I wanted to marry from me the same way you took me from someone I wanted to marry more than a decade later. It's unreal being on the other side of you and the heartache. Feeling like there is nothing I can do to stop you. More than a decade ago, you snatched the first person that loved me away from me because I didn't know what you are. A decade of growth later. More than. I have changed and can see you for what you are. I can see your tendrils and suction cups, your butterfly wings that look like fungus and friendly moss, your horned growths and twigs and flowers and sun beam colors. I can see your off seasonal artisanal aromas and hellishly intriguing recipes for what they are. Your get togethers and time cheaters and machinery and armors plated with reactive impenetrable metal scales. I can see you and you've taken someone from me.
We are even.
We are square.
You took some of my friends, both of my uncles and a few aunts, my father's actual father that I never got to meet, my grandmother's husband, cousins, untold family members I'll never know, both of my parents by proxy, my childhood, myself away from my first real love, and my second real love away from me.
Fuck you.
I would say "never again", but the devils greatest feat was convincing the world it didn't exist.
You do.
Sincerely,
Hobbes
I've been pretty high functioning for a while. I know I'll never be cured. There is no cure. I remember you. I remember everything you took from me. You took a person I wanted to marry from me the same way you took me from someone I wanted to marry more than a decade later. It's unreal being on the other side of you and the heartache. Feeling like there is nothing I can do to stop you. More than a decade ago, you snatched the first person that loved me away from me because I didn't know what you are. A decade of growth later. More than. I have changed and can see you for what you are. I can see your tendrils and suction cups, your butterfly wings that look like fungus and friendly moss, your horned growths and twigs and flowers and sun beam colors. I can see your off seasonal artisanal aromas and hellishly intriguing recipes for what they are. Your get togethers and time cheaters and machinery and armors plated with reactive impenetrable metal scales. I can see you and you've taken someone from me.
We are even.
We are square.
You took some of my friends, both of my uncles and a few aunts, my father's actual father that I never got to meet, my grandmother's husband, cousins, untold family members I'll never know, both of my parents by proxy, my childhood, myself away from my first real love, and my second real love away from me.
Fuck you.
I would say "never again", but the devils greatest feat was convincing the world it didn't exist.
You do.
Sincerely,
Hobbes
That Instant
you walk up to an old man with more teeth missing than present and the few still in silver capped while he's speaking with your charge and he stands up and cannot recognize your face and goes "oooooooh, what's up dog" like he's seen you before, but you know the scars on your face make you pretty god damn unmistakable and you know for a fact he hasn't seen you before, but you play along just to see how comfy he'll try to get and you almost ask him where he knows you from.
That Instant
you realize she was never bisexual after she's drunk herself into a raging stupor and shouts at you that you are a "cock sucking faggot."
That Instant
you convince yourself that you are static, you have sentenced yourself to death and you should find a quiet plot of land with a porch and push your way in through the lattice along its side that a few enterprising rats chewed through and lay down to die.
10/1/19
Where the Time Went V
Banished.
Banished from the lands. I almost said unfortunately. Fortune has little to do with what a person decides to do with their present. Fortune has everything to do with what and who you are up until "now", but maybe fifty percent to do with after. Fortune has fifty percent or less to do with what happens to you after you realize what the system is and what you're in for and who you are and where you've been with an open eye. Of course, you've still got to get "lucky" in part for good things to happen to you, but you also have to be prepared to act.
Banished and returned out of sympathy for their survival, them having flailed in the vacuum of space and been over matched by the very things they spat in my face they could handle on their own so often and myself being fed incomplete information (what I call lies and they call "telling the full truth when they're ready"). So now we are trapped into providing shelter for the wayward addict and trying to lay down ground rules in their defiance and abuse of kindness. Few things feel more alone than living with someone who is not prepared or capable yet of living outside of their own interests, whatever those interests may be.
If you're still in the mindset of "I am a fuck up, I can't do this" and won't even honest to yourself try, you're going to miss it. Four months long attempts at trying to wake them up to that simplicity. Trying to be the best person I could be toward the person I loved. Maximum effort. Whether I wanted to or not, whether I was upset or not, whether it would cost me or not. We had a conversation the other evening about what love is. Is it an emotion? A feeling? A pile of chemicals? An exchange of ideas, ideals, memories, and hopes? Is it that metaphorical eternal flame of the soul and yadda yadda that keeps everything and everyone connected and relationships blossom where the connections happen to be stronger instead of weaker? She sort of fumbled around for some time, at points fading into and out of the "a person can fall into and out of love conundrum so it can only be, but so much of this or that and" basically a word salad of chopped up experiences, tossed with a little salt and vinegarette and served halting.
Love at its core is sacrifice. Love is willfully putting yourself second for the betterment of someone else. Love is not whispering "I would die for you" while your heads lay on the same pillow and your faces are six inches away from each other. Every time someone tells me they would die for me I tell them to live for me.
I'm not looking for apologies anymore. Whatever form they come in, apologies, an acknowledgement that you did something that did not account for that action's, that decision's, that event's happening's impact on my life, or you did and chose to disregard it, or you did and it did not weigh out to enough to sway you, but you cared enough to inform me and help me better understand where I fall in your calculus and explore the otherverses of paths so that we can figure out whether we should or should not cross paths in the future, if it can be avoided.
I am looking for changes in behavior. Whatever forms the apologies take, if you find yourself offering apologies and sacrifices to the same You, it is vainity at its root. Isn't it? As long as you can forgive you, everything should be good with the person you are bowing your head for the knife for. As long as you're in the loop, you are your own executioner. And yes, you will die in dramatic fashion. The applause will rain. Everyone will believe something was accomplished in the display. The executioner will go to their home, once the crowd applause fade, and there's some sort of proclamation about sins and wrongs and the pigeons and crows will come to peck up the bits of food the audience left in the courtyard. The morticians will get to work and the janitors too. The executioner's phone will buzz a "hey, are you up? Let's hang out" the following night. You'll do your make up, cross legged on the floor, and say to yourself you must go meet so-and-so because...
Apologies and "sorry" are not worthless. They carry some merit on their own, though tacit.
You'll befriend fall guys and walking excuses and you'll apologize later. Beheading yourself used to mean something. It used to be painful. Cognitive dissonance is something for therapy couches, though. Why respect the opinions of people that have spent their lives studying people, just like you. With enough repetitions, a person can become anything they want to be.
///Fatboy Slim - "The State We're In" ~
Banished from the lands. I almost said unfortunately. Fortune has little to do with what a person decides to do with their present. Fortune has everything to do with what and who you are up until "now", but maybe fifty percent to do with after. Fortune has fifty percent or less to do with what happens to you after you realize what the system is and what you're in for and who you are and where you've been with an open eye. Of course, you've still got to get "lucky" in part for good things to happen to you, but you also have to be prepared to act.
Banished and returned out of sympathy for their survival, them having flailed in the vacuum of space and been over matched by the very things they spat in my face they could handle on their own so often and myself being fed incomplete information (what I call lies and they call "telling the full truth when they're ready"). So now we are trapped into providing shelter for the wayward addict and trying to lay down ground rules in their defiance and abuse of kindness. Few things feel more alone than living with someone who is not prepared or capable yet of living outside of their own interests, whatever those interests may be.
If you're still in the mindset of "I am a fuck up, I can't do this" and won't even honest to yourself try, you're going to miss it. Four months long attempts at trying to wake them up to that simplicity. Trying to be the best person I could be toward the person I loved. Maximum effort. Whether I wanted to or not, whether I was upset or not, whether it would cost me or not. We had a conversation the other evening about what love is. Is it an emotion? A feeling? A pile of chemicals? An exchange of ideas, ideals, memories, and hopes? Is it that metaphorical eternal flame of the soul and yadda yadda that keeps everything and everyone connected and relationships blossom where the connections happen to be stronger instead of weaker? She sort of fumbled around for some time, at points fading into and out of the "a person can fall into and out of love conundrum so it can only be, but so much of this or that and" basically a word salad of chopped up experiences, tossed with a little salt and vinegarette and served halting.
Love at its core is sacrifice. Love is willfully putting yourself second for the betterment of someone else. Love is not whispering "I would die for you" while your heads lay on the same pillow and your faces are six inches away from each other. Every time someone tells me they would die for me I tell them to live for me.
I'm not looking for apologies anymore. Whatever form they come in, apologies, an acknowledgement that you did something that did not account for that action's, that decision's, that event's happening's impact on my life, or you did and chose to disregard it, or you did and it did not weigh out to enough to sway you, but you cared enough to inform me and help me better understand where I fall in your calculus and explore the otherverses of paths so that we can figure out whether we should or should not cross paths in the future, if it can be avoided.
I am looking for changes in behavior. Whatever forms the apologies take, if you find yourself offering apologies and sacrifices to the same You, it is vainity at its root. Isn't it? As long as you can forgive you, everything should be good with the person you are bowing your head for the knife for. As long as you're in the loop, you are your own executioner. And yes, you will die in dramatic fashion. The applause will rain. Everyone will believe something was accomplished in the display. The executioner will go to their home, once the crowd applause fade, and there's some sort of proclamation about sins and wrongs and the pigeons and crows will come to peck up the bits of food the audience left in the courtyard. The morticians will get to work and the janitors too. The executioner's phone will buzz a "hey, are you up? Let's hang out" the following night. You'll do your make up, cross legged on the floor, and say to yourself you must go meet so-and-so because...
Apologies and "sorry" are not worthless. They carry some merit on their own, though tacit.
You'll befriend fall guys and walking excuses and you'll apologize later. Beheading yourself used to mean something. It used to be painful. Cognitive dissonance is something for therapy couches, though. Why respect the opinions of people that have spent their lives studying people, just like you. With enough repetitions, a person can become anything they want to be.
///Fatboy Slim - "The State We're In" ~
8/30/19
Where the Time Went IV (the message)
Make no mistake: you are not alone, you have not been abandoned, you have not been forsaken, you have not been left to die. It's up to you what you want your future to be.
Chris
Until you figure that out, you cannot affect anyone else's in a meaningful and lasting way. You don't even have to love yourself to at least see the future. Your futures. You are old, just like me. Aged beyond your years too early, just like me. Scarred beyond belief, just like me.
Chris
Our responses to it have been diametrically opposed in the now, but I was just like you.
Chris
Pain is inevitable, physical and spiritual, inevitable the same. Pain does not have to color every aspect of your life. It is not the boogieman. See it, know it, embrace it, splow it out, and keep it moving. It will be your acquaintance from then, until now, and on until the day you die.
Chris
We've both learned death seals nothing. The scars don't evaporate. Minds don't change. Facts don't change. History does not adjust for you and your happiness. So find your own. Make your own. At some point, you have to stop looking back and look ahead at what's in front of you instead of where you've been, who you were, and what you did for answers.
Chris
Spoiler alert: the answers aren't there. You already know everything that's happened. You already know your potential. You already know you are misfit amongst the trash of humanity and far too intelligent to pretend without wincing and dying a little more on the inside each time you muffle who you are to wallow and rub shoulders with the lost beyond repaired
Chris
The rut dwellers, the routiners, the folks that are happy with status quo because "at least nothing else can be blamed on me for trying"
try
Don't be afraid.
Chris
It is flat out terrifying. You've had your wake up calls and bells like the thunder on the surface of Jupiter and his storm systems large enough to engulf several Earths. You've heard them and you still shut your blinds and tell yourself it's fine... just a Summer squall... it'll pass... just a few inches of water...
Chris
Wake up darlin'
It's not too late.
Chris
You've got to stop burying yourself alive unless you truly need to die. Not "want", need. Must. Have to. Everybody wants to die at some point in their lives. Some of us, myself included, want to die several times over in a single day and/or kill everyone on the face of the Earth to be alone in life and therefore happy, by any means, and complete in an enforced (and extremely costly) peace.
Chris
What you choose to do will echo for decades through not just your life, but several others. If that does not sway you, before you give up on what you clearly do not know with any certainty whatsoever because YOU'VE LITERALLY NEVER DONE IT OR TRIED WITH ANY MORE TENACITY THAN YOU WOULD GOING TO A DRIVE THROUGH AND FINDING IT CLOSED AND GIVING UP ON EATING FOR AN EVENING give it a chance.
Chris
Give it a chance.
Give it a chance.
Give yourself a chance.
Chris
Has it ever occured to you that maybe, just maybe, this time around, you should give yourself a chance and tell the "I know myself well enough and I'm not going to waste my time" version of you to, for once, give the you that has lived and experienced a real relationship a chance to actually go find herself. You change as time passes. Your old rules of thumb don't apply anymore.
Chris
Your first boy is a man. Your second boy is about to enter Kindergarten (time will fly).
Chris
Why delay any longer to get yourself right? Truly right? You are out of time to pussyfoot and pretend you can make it up as you go. You must grow up. You can still be a big kid, but it's time to bring that child, that inner, fuggit I'll do it tomorrow, fuggit I have enough time for one bump, fuggit I don't care today, fuggit I'll just reschedule, fuggit fuggit fuggit I can do everything and anything I want, you into the bigger and much more important picture of what you want to be.
Chris
Stop putting it off. Stop placing that responsibility on what happens to you. Stop giving that power away. Stop having a reason why things don't happen and start building.
Chris
Start keeping schedules. Start keeping goals. Start planning. Stop reacting and start being active in your own life. You can't afford to drift anymore. You cannot just be in your bubble. That bubble burst a long time ago. You are crowd surfing on an empty infield and the band left four years ago, but they still haven't swept the venue and the stadium shut down right after the show.
Chris
Those aren't people's hands, you've been lying on the ground in weeds six feet tall with now indigenous wildlife occassionally coming by while you hum tunes that haven't graced an ear since the place was littered with ticket stubs way back when. Wake up.
Chris
Time is running out. Take control of your future or don't. Keep convincing yourself you're alone or don't. Continue to tell yourself lullabys of the past or see a future for yourself. Continue to howl at ghosts for wounds that have bled out and scarred over or walk into tomorrow scarred and stronger because you can help someone else get through those horrors in a meaningful and lasting way..... or don't.
Chris
Your future is in your hands.
Chris
The knowledge and the power therein encapsulated in your history can and should be paid forward to your sons. Remember that the next time you tell me I don't love them. Prove to them that you truly love them. Don't prove it to me. Prove it to yourself.
Chris
I have nothing to prove to [][][][][][][] or [][][] (and the crazy thing is I've never even met your eldest son and I know in my heart I have nothing to prove for him to know that I love him - you figure that one out, my pirate queen), but you do. Show them; don't talk about it and weep over it when you're restless and drunk. Show them.
Chris
Don't show me... show them.
Prove it to yourself.
Chris
I love you. I don't just live for me. I live for my little sister, for you, for the people you care about, for your family, for my friends, to bury my father and mother and see them underground, for the people that are fighting similar battles and losing wars, for breathing in nature, for recording history, for music, for things that only I can create because I am YES a unique instance of isness amongst the billions on this overcrowded planet, and yeah sometimes just for me to get high and laugh for a day or two or a month because if I'm going to be stuck on earth and never see space travel I may as well dream about it and make up some fireside sci-fi stories to share because that's fun!
Chris
Live and live well. Die and die alone. Die well and live alone? Good luck. Live well and die alone? That's even worse.
Live well and die well. They don't have to be mutually exclusive.
8/26/19
That Instant
The floor begins to tremble and you hear the single, high pitched, distant screech of the midnight freight train pierce the walls of your bedroom and you remember how much you loved to go for bike rides at night to feel that sound in your bones.
8/23/19
Where The Time Went III
I do suppose, at a point you have to trust your partner. No more benders. No more lost weeks. No more blackouts. If that is where the line must be drawn...
...the line should've been drawn a long time ago. I have to become comfortable with notion that my partner will be homeless outright. I've been there. I don't want to do it to someone else. The truth is I'm not doing it to them. They are doing it to themselves.
Is there more I could've done? Sure. Is there more I could've done without killing myself? No. Clarity. Clarity. Clarity. Can't hit he. Can't hit he can't hit. He can't hit. He can't hit. He. Clarity. Clarity. Clarity. Vocal cord rehearsals to explain to her that everything has been askew for almost two years because of her addictions. The motorbike in the backyard still collects rust because of her addictions. The home mortgage fund is short $4000 over two years because of her addictions.
Rehearsing answers to her inevitable retorts and fits of anger.
Rehearse.
Rehearse.
Rehearse.
And know it. Know it like the creases on the back of your hands because they will always be tested. When your support is the rock at the bottom, don't flinch. If it means cutting that base out, try to even though you are crying tears of blood behind stony eyes.
///I miss being able to listen to music without submitting to a five hour long rant about songs we've already listened to the last time hammers fell. Her addiction took even that away from me and she still does not see what it's cost beyond a dollar sign.
...the line should've been drawn a long time ago. I have to become comfortable with notion that my partner will be homeless outright. I've been there. I don't want to do it to someone else. The truth is I'm not doing it to them. They are doing it to themselves.
Is there more I could've done? Sure. Is there more I could've done without killing myself? No. Clarity. Clarity. Clarity. Can't hit he. Can't hit he can't hit. He can't hit. He can't hit. He. Clarity. Clarity. Clarity. Vocal cord rehearsals to explain to her that everything has been askew for almost two years because of her addictions. The motorbike in the backyard still collects rust because of her addictions. The home mortgage fund is short $4000 over two years because of her addictions.
Rehearsing answers to her inevitable retorts and fits of anger.
Rehearse.
Rehearse.
Rehearse.
And know it. Know it like the creases on the back of your hands because they will always be tested. When your support is the rock at the bottom, don't flinch. If it means cutting that base out, try to even though you are crying tears of blood behind stony eyes.
///I miss being able to listen to music without submitting to a five hour long rant about songs we've already listened to the last time hammers fell. Her addiction took even that away from me and she still does not see what it's cost beyond a dollar sign.
8/2/19
Life With Alcoholism
When your friend says "hey, do you want to dress up and go out to (insert bar here) for an hour" after that friend just got done screaming at you 48 hours earlier for not spending your last dollars to buy them a beer at 4 A.M. when they'd spent their entire day drinking and you immediately feel your stomach turn and your eyes gloss over with dread.
If you say no: they'll just go out anyway, be angry with you all night because "we never go anywhere", probably spend far too much money, call you to pick them up, be further upset with you for not trusting them and for "always being tired", and be irritated that "we never spend time together", be angry with you for "judging" wanting to have a good time.
If you say yes: wherever you go they won't want to leave after an hour, pressure you to drink more than you want (if you decide to drink at all), convince you to spend too much money or spend it themselves, try to get you to bring something back to the house for later (but really that night), go out again anyway if you do get home early, make you feel miserable for going cautiously/reluctantly, be upset with you for thinking about how you'll feel tomorrow, be annoyed with you the entire outing for thinking about the chores & things you still need to do at home.
If you say no: they'll just go out anyway, be angry with you all night because "we never go anywhere", probably spend far too much money, call you to pick them up, be further upset with you for not trusting them and for "always being tired", and be irritated that "we never spend time together", be angry with you for "judging" wanting to have a good time.
If you say yes: wherever you go they won't want to leave after an hour, pressure you to drink more than you want (if you decide to drink at all), convince you to spend too much money or spend it themselves, try to get you to bring something back to the house for later (but really that night), go out again anyway if you do get home early, make you feel miserable for going cautiously/reluctantly, be upset with you for thinking about how you'll feel tomorrow, be annoyed with you the entire outing for thinking about the chores & things you still need to do at home.
7/12/19
That Instant
You realize you are pushing your cycles and cams and pistons and engraved toothsets of finished brass over to force change so the person who loves you can see your moss and lichened belly clearly.
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