I tried to stay away. I really did. But I'm friggin' addicted. It's like a drug. Blogging is my goddamn heroin. Which I guess is slightly better than heroin being my heroin, but not by much.
I've been writing in my paper journal but my nib is frigged so the ink keeps bleeding and the truth is it's just not the same. Writing private things in a private journal is like sitting in a dark room quietly talking to yourself. Writing private things in a public journal is like sitting in a diner mumbling to yourself about the aliens trying to hot wire your Buick and occasionally attempting to fight off giant mutant flies with a butter knife while scratching your sack.
What a shit analogy. How'd I get so rusty so quick?
And as usual fighting one addiction took my concentration off fighting another. Although in this case trying not to blog meant that I a) ate entirely too much b) spent entirely too much on expensive scotch and cheap women c) totally lost my goddamn mind at least three times in the past five days.
Ain't life a bitch?
But, like always, I keep managing to find that one thing every single day which helps me keep going. That one thing every day that lets me get by. Surprising where it comes from sometimes though.
Today as my old man was opening the mail (he got to it before me) he found a single small handwritten envelope addressed to me. When I looked at the return address I recognized the name right away, it was from a couple that worked for me a number of years ago. Hadn't heard from them in about two years, but I think about them every now and then. They had a real tough run when they were here and we'd helped them out with money a couple of times. About three years ago the husband came to me looking for a little cash because they were short again. They owed the company quite a bit and though my father (in one of his more human moments) wasn't too worried about collecting the balance he also didn't want to lend them anymore money. I couldn't give him money out of the company, so I gave it to him out of my pocket. Just a couple of hundred bucks, nothing too serious. Said for him to pay me back when he could, but if he couldn't I wasn't too worried about it. Not long after he moved his family out of state, heard from him a couple of times, one time he even said that he hadn't forgotten what we did for him. I didn't think about it again. So today when I saw the envelope I figured he was just dropping us a line to say hello and happy holidays. I was pretty shocked to find a check in there. I don't need the money (thought it's nice to have it around the holidays) but the very fact that all these years later they still made good on a debt has sort of renewed my faith in people. You just never know now do you?
Last Thursday (right after I shut this down really, right after I'd lost my goddamn mind actually) I paid a visit to an old friend. I really needed someone to talk to, really needed to get my shit straight quick. It's not the most healthy environment to get square in but like I always say sometimes you just have to do what you have to do to be ok. She helped a lot (doesn't she always?) even though the sensitivity of several subjects led me to be so vague I sort of doubt she had any idea what I was talking about. At one point I apologized for just talking about my problems and she said something which she couldn't have expected to affect me like it did. She said that it was ok I was unloading my problems because she understood how much it could help to vent about things like that to someone that you trusted but weren't all that close too. I laughed even though I hadn't meant to, not because I didn't understand but because she was both spot on and ridiculously far off. And things like that always amuse me. You just never know where you're going to find your moments.
So Friday went long, but good. Saturday hit the high and the low on the spectrum and just about every imaginable spot in between. Sunday I sat at my desk and almost had a real cry for the first time in years, instead I just sort of died. Monday I officially hit rock bottom and not surprisingly did exactly what I always said I would, I bounced. Tuesday I stabilized. Today...well today I came back. Ain't that something?
I've been awfully raw these past few weeks. I'm feeling everything for some reason. Maybe I'm just getting old, maybe I'm getting scared about everything that's coming next. I don't really know. But I know that as long as there's a way for me to survive, I'll find it. I'll probably fuck it up and make it a million times more difficult than it need be, but I'll find it.
And I'll survive.
Right up until I don't.
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