The Great Escape Artist

I vaguely recall being in the Garrett Memorial Hospital chapel room, while my grieving parents were taken down to the morgue to identify my brothers body. I didn't want to exist, I wanted to crawl out of my own skin. Not in that room, not in that hospital, not in that small town, definetly not in my own head. I just didn't want to be me. Hospital staff, family members, friends of mine, friends of my brothers, etc shuffled in and out. I was just there, hazily existing, the conversation around me sounding like Charlie Browns teacher.. 

I finally had a reaction to the news I had heard an hour earlier, but prohibited myself from accepting. I ran outside to the parking lot and threw up the greasy El Lobo's meal I had eaten a couple hours earlier. About the same time my brother was being ejected from the car he was a passenger of, exhaling his last breath, left lying lifeless on a grassy bank, I was sitting in a grimy dive joint inhaling pizza.

Call me crazy, but somehow pizza is still my favorite food group

After I finished dry heaving, I noticed someone smoking, so I bummed a cigarrette. At less than a week away from my 16th birthday I decided to start chain smoking in the parking lot outside the entrance to the hospital. I didn't really care who saw me, as adults, my parents, everyone witnessed it and didn't seem to care either. At that point I think it made them & more importantly myself realize I was alive & breathing as each exhalation of smoke dissipated into the cool air of that April evening 19 years ago.

Upon leaving the hospital & arriving back at our house on Pennington street, I didn't believe anything could ever change this feeling, this all consuming pit in my stomach. A doctor had apparently offered my parents something to help them sleep... any kind of rest was out of the question of even being a possibilty as my mind was spinning out of control. My mom then handed me one, and just like that cigarette I put it in my mouth & swallowed without hesitation. 

I woke up sometime the next morning to the sounds of Spring, robins singing in our yard, the sun shining softly through the blinds of my second story room. I had apparently slept. Was it all just a bad dream? I didn't want to open the door or walk downstairs to find out.. If this nightmare was our reality, I wanted more of those pills. I wanted all the pills and to fall into a coma until the second coming of my older brother could happen.

Elias Black #85 after catching the game winning touchdown. Circa 1995

If reality is the iron shackles that bind us like prisoners being force fed the truth, then I was about to become Houdini. I would liberate myself from any pain, discomfort, & the truth. I remember the wave hitting me as I looked out the window and saw a row of visitors cars parked outside of our house. My mind trying to bend so it could wrap around this concept of death in our immediate family. I wanted to break out. I wound up searching for escape in many forms, but the freedom I found in mind altering substances always worked best. It delivered relief as promised & it was usually instant gratification. 

I have always thought of death to be the ultimate escape. I didn't even believe in a heavenly after life, I just assumed that when you died, it was all over, the pain of living was alleviated. I have been so selfish in my own pain, struggle, & existence, that I began to idolize his death. Not always to the point of being suicidal, but always to the point of being reckless in my escape to where I wouldn't have minded if I had "an accidental overdose" that would allow me to fade into oblivion.

 This being the 19th anniversary since Elias' passing & marks a point at which he has now been dead longer than he was alive at 18 years 7 months young. It is still as surreal today as it was back when I heard the news and the world turned a few shades greyer.

There have been two people close to me in life that have passed away before their time, that I have always looked up to, always admired.... though recently to the point of being jealous that they escaped before life had a chance to chew them up and spit them back out over & over again like it has in my cycles of 

addiction.

I do not have the need to run away today. I can rely on something greater than myself, and I like to think my brother Elias has had a hand in "assisting me" on my path to spiritual enlightenment so to speak. I just have to walk, wade, & sometimes swim through this pain & not escape one day at a time. This is the second anniversary of his death that I have been able to stay clean & sober. I have surrounded myself with friends, my daughter, my mom, and most importantly my recovery. 

Your Loving mother, niece, and brother on this day 4-27-2015

Innards

TUNE IN TO KFUC FM RADIO

There are times when being in my head is like driving through an infinite desert in the middle of the night while searching for decent radio stations to listen to. All you seem to pick up is dead air, then a crackling noise, some static, inevitably followed by a Christian talk Radio show telling you to repent or burn in Hell.

KFUC radio can be tuned in from seemingly anywhere on the planet, I have the worlds most powerful antenna right between my ears... Voices that are constantly fucking with me, berating & belittling my self worth. Telling me that I only deserve to be in agony, pain, confusion & chaos. I am not good enough to have that healthy relationship, to keep that job with a steady pay check, let alone have luxuries like health insurance, a  house of my own, or a car manufactured in this decade. I feel I will always struggle in the lower class of society but never qualify for welfare, food stamps, medicaid, or an EBT card because I essentially suffer from the disease of ignoring reality.

On the flip side of the AM/FM dial, I occasionally hear that I am doing well in life, even though I can't seem to see my life as they do. I have a close group of people that I have let into my world of recovery. From the outside, these people are supportive. On the outside these people are compassionate of my struggles. On the outside I may seem ok on the surface. On the inside, I am doing all I can do to progress and keep my demons at bay.  my outsides do not match my Insides. . . 

I am realizing that when people tell me "You are doing fine, why do you need 12 step meetings?" or "You have everything going for you, a thriving business, split custody of your beautiful daughter, and everyone who knows you, loves you!" that they probably have good intentions.  The problem I face is, that is the exact same crock of shit that my internal addict tells me when it tries to sell me that lie. The one where it says I don't have a problem anymore, and that things are good enough to go out & party again.

I am tired of hiding that my insides don't fucking match my outsides, and that is why I am vulnerable enough to write it. I have to wake up everyday  and surrender to that fact, then lay my head on my pillow sober every night after thanking a power greater than me for getting me through one more day.

I am becoming more and more aware that I can't run from myself. It wasn't that I was born with the gift of ignorance, I was cursed with the character defect of ignoring. I knew better, but it seemed much easier to check out, effectively escaping the reality of problems. Which also means that you don't have to come up with any immediate solutions. .. even if I intended to eventually.

I chose instead to escape with sex, drugs, & Rock n' Roll as the solution to numb my insides enough that it never fuckin mattered what the outside looked like. No matter the situation, the geographical location, whether it was out of joy or frustration, escape in any form fucking worked.

I use to say stupid shit like "Patience is a virtue, that I don't have time for." and "Ignoring is Bliss" while I stacked failed relationships, lost loves, unfinished plans, unpaid bills, unfilfilled promises until they all couldn't fit under that industrial sized rug I swept them under.

This is why I need endless hours of recovery, therapy, yoga, meditation, self reflection, long walks on the beach. while having limited social life & spilling my guts on this blog. In the faith that one day my insides will match my outsides and both will have progressed to a level that surpasses my wildest intentions.

Touch of Grey

Truth Serum

I am guilty of having a perspective problem. What I take in, the way my brain processess events, the way I experience them is different (however, I am not unique) My first though is wrong. My ideas get me in trouble. To get closer to the illusive truth I have been searching for, I first must be open to the idea that I am not actually in control of situations.

 Can I do anything about the russian military flying over Alaskan airspace?

Could I stop ISIS from filling massive graves with bodies?

All I can really control is my actions... including not putting a drink or drug in or around my body.

For the past two months I have managed to do just that.

All You need to Know.

The truth is, I am sober today. The truth is all we really have is today. Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery. Today I choose to be present. That is enough for everything else to fall in place as my higher power has intended.

What is your truth today?