People

I head out to meet my boy but I'm not really feeling social. Some girl in a romper or a jumpsuit or whatever-the-fuck-it's-called flirts with me and compliments my hair and reaches up to touch it the way semi-drunk girls often do.

A girl recognizes me from one of my fights and gushes over me, then introduces me to some dude who wants to do Tae Kwon Do. This happens a lot more often than I care to admit or discuss on this blog.
I don't have the desire to finish or be a part of this conversation which works out perfectly because some dude with beach muscles tries to drop knowledge about where to train and the girl sees me roll my eyes and grabs my arm but I already know I won't take the time to get to know her because her circle of friends is irritating the shit out of me within record time. The pickings are slim so I leave my work and meet another mutual friend of ours but I'm simply not up for approaching or even thinking about talking to girls. But that dude's in mixed company and I'm over here being too fucking critical to be kicking it with some dumb-ish birds who at least are wearing rompers and heels and doe-eyes.
Who the fuck knows?

The good is the enemy of the best but sometimes I drive too hard a bargain, that much has to be certain. 

We kick it for a bit, some regular of mine is coked up and yakking my motherfucking ear off so I tell him just that and bounce and then head back shortly thereafter and another girl flirts with me but she's wasted and she means well but it's not even here it's me that annoyed and just not ready to sleep so I help my co-worker clean up ever so briefly then head home to eat, watch a pirated TV show and call it a night.

My hand is on the brake, keeping things between the lines/lanes.
I'm forgoing the highs and the lows and coasting in 5th gear, optimal gas mileage as it relates to drag/aerodynamics....I'm using my training wheels for the time being but as I put things back in order, I'll have more energy to focus on the things which do matter.
I'm planning my move out of state and setting up things with work and a place for my girl and I.
It's a grand plan and a grand experiement and even if it fails, I still have decades yet left (barring a freak asteroid strike, a heart attack, or an errant car striking me dead in some 3rd world nation on vacation.

At any rate....I keep some hope in my heart each day and know that slowly but surely things will get better and I'll make better use of my time than when I'm mired in active addiction. Like a muscle that grows when you use it, the more I spend time not doing it and the more I turn it down, the more normal that becomes and then the thought of drinking will (for the vast majority of the time) become habit....so long as I'm keeping my life in order and staying fit psychological, especially emotionally, and eating well, sleeping decent, and doing the things I need to do overall.

I'm walking to my car and I realize the obsession to drink has been lifted and though I don't know if that will stay/last/whatever, I realize now it just means things have gotten tricky because the compulsion, the obsession is not vanquished, but rather simply has run deeper inside to hide and regroup and  find more subtle ways to take me back out when my life has largely all but normalized.


I think back to kicking it with some people from the program the other night. It's hard for me to do but the alternative fucking sucks. I don't want to go back to where I was this last time. I didn't even feel like a person anymore. I felt nothing. I wasn't drunk but I was fucking numb to my core, numb through every fiber of my being and if you're not feeling anything, what's the motherfucking point?

The point of this is to feel and experience and share and grow and alcohol takes all that away.
I'm tired of running and I'm tired of hiding.
Peter Pan is fucking tired.

Good luck and happy hunting, to the young cads and rakes out there just starting this long tawdry road....the road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom. Stay down the rabbit hole as long as you like, but stay just a bit short of so long that you can't get back out.
    - Yrs. in Christ