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i'm back (maybe)...
August 02, 2005
...and i'm screaming and shouting.
for over a week, i was "good," not drinking a drop. i sat at the bar at halcyon, waiting for what i thought i wanted, the beer, the liquor lined up before me, not drinking any of it.
and i didn't write. i didn't feel. i didn't feel anything, good or bad, and so, i didn't write. i waited, and it didn't come, the things i wanted, she didn't show. i learned, as if with an insect brain, pared down to just stimulus and response, i learned, i habituated, finally, to the cause and effect of it all.
sunday night, i drank, i crashed to earth, and i was not, as i had once hoped, able to "reach out to touch the cool, comforting familiarity of the earth before it crushed the life out of him."
out of me.
all night long, i would look at the bottles of lone star, and i would see the same vision, attractive in some way, of smashing them against my face, happy with whichever might shatter and do the cutting, happy with whichever might do the bleeding.
i've been doing things wrong for so long. once again, i went back to that day in sixth grade, in mr. wink's english class (mr. wink, who, with his one glass eye, unwittingly taught us irony). once again, it was paul, kanton, and blake, asking why i used such big words.
i stopped that day, dumbed it all down, all about acceptance, all about being the follower, though even for all that, i was never one of them until they grew to appreciate who i really was, beneath all the effort.
and lately, again, playing obesiance,stifling, stomping myself out for the sake of acceptance. the other night, the point guard on the women's team laid it out, in response to my question, that yeah, i was too soft, that i didn't lead so much as i asked and deferred.
i coached them to a one and seven season. one game, won by their effort and discipline, did not win me the respect i always seek.
i've lost my way, again. how many times, now? now, i've made the world what i made of mary - i try so hard for its love that i lose myself, and there is nothing left of me to love, or even like.
so much of it is a function of time and experience - this failure, this pain, is wht i've learned, despite my lifelong best efforts to be better, to be worthwhile.
where am i... the beer is not a bad thing. it is only if being unhappy is the ill that afflicts me. but insofar as being unhappy is the result of seeing the truth, then maybe the alcohol is the lens through which i actually see things clearer, truer, with no excuses, no hope without the support of belief and faith.
i don't know where i am. i've dug myself out of the hole i was in. i'm okay, i'm building, digging up towards the surface. but if i stop to look around me, it's not so good, so i avoid that.
the fear is wondering if i'm tunneling through time, rushing blindly onward like a lemming, for no good reason, no reward, no victory, moral or otherwise.
there's more, a lot more. i'm gonna split it up. maybe this is the death throes of this blog thing, maybe it's a new beginning, the nova that sheds the gasses and material that will one day coalesce and spin and accrete into a new solar system, a new chance at the nearly impossible progression of events and variables that will give rise to life, life that will not destroy itself.
Posted by Rob at August 2, 2005 09:09 PM