Wow.  Fucking Wow.  All the stuff I wrote about love in years and years and years of this blog doesn't even begin to describe the feeling of what it is.  To have a woman completely and totally into me.  Who trusts me inharently, mind, body, soul.  Who looks at me with such love and caring and adoration that it melts my heart and makes me want to give her the world.  For whom I would do anything for, anything.  Small things, big things, everything in between.  It's not tit for tat at all.  It's not that I feel like I owe her a god damned thing, but I take such pure joy in doing things for her.  From opening a door and lighting a cigarette for her, to cleaning up our area while she's sleeping because I know it calms her to wake up to an orderly environment.  I'm not doing this because I have to, not because she wants me to, because it truly makes me happy to be doing something, anything for her.  Not just the easy stuff either.  The hard stuff too.  Like pulling away from her at the airport because I know that if I don't, she never will and as much as we bothin

The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil

I have just eaten from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  I know why there is evil in the universe.  Finally!  I'll do my best to explain it:

God created all things good and man and Satan corrupted us because he gave us free will.  For example: food is good, man corrupted it into gluttony, obesity, over eating, food addiction.  Fruit, fermentation is good, man corrupted it by becoming drunkards and addicts.  God created man with the desire to protect his family and what is his, man corrupted this into violence. 

So if God knows everything and knew that his good would be corrupted, then doesn't that make him the creator of evil as well?  Not really.  When God created man and the angles (Satan) he gave us free will because he wanted us to choose to love him. He is a jealous god, he wants us to choose to love him.  As a consequence of that free choice to love him or not to love him, evil and sin is created.  He knew it would happen, but he knew that it would eventually lead to good and he did create all things good. 

This is too new an idea for me to fully articulate, but let me talk about the consequences of this revelation.

I finally know why there is evil in the universe and evil is good.  God is not a bad guy.  I knew that, but now I  KNOW that God is good.  I have an almighty Father looking out for me.  God is such an awesome father.  He is the father that I never had.  I think maybe he created me very intellectual.  He gave me gifts for words and the desire, the thirst for knowledge, but he wants me to know him.  In order for me to know his true glory, I had to thirst for a father figure my entire life so when I found God, I would understand the true gift of his love.  Every single thing that has happened to me, every bit of darkness, has lead up to this Supreme Good in my life.

I have glimpsed God's plan for me.  And OMG, life is so good.  I have received my reward in Jill.  Jill is the culmination of every bit of darkness that I ever experienced.  For so many ways, she is the perfect woman for me.  She is everything I ever dreamed of in a woman.  Just a small example.  I got out of class and I NEEDED to talk to her.  Not only did she answer me while sitting at her desk and spend 15 minutes talking to me about nothing and everything (the conversation that never ends), she helped me to focus on something other than myself.  She told me about her day and some guy not showing up for a big job with a major client, and suddenly, my mind was off of me and onto: oh my god, my woman is having a stressful day, I need to make her feel better.  I asked her if she was caffeinated, I asked her if she ate breakfast (she didn't, [brat!]) but I told her she needed something fruity for lunch to help her with her headache.  That is the kind of man I want to be.  She helps me get out of my own head and brings out the protector in me.  She makes me less selfish and then took care of me by having coffee delivered to Wal-Mart here so I have coffee for the week.  We take care of each other.  Life is SOOOOO good, and I wouldn't appreciate it if it weren't for every dark thing that happened to me.  Every bit of pain, fear, loneliness lead up to the rewards I am reaping now.

Thank you God.  For life.  For everything that has ever happened to me to lead me to this moment.

Total free write about the woman of my dreams

Disclaimer as per usual:  This is not a letter to Jill.  She will be reading it because I trust her to love it no matter what I write, but as always, this is an emotional snap shot.  Time to work through issues.  To put thoughts to paper (kinda) and yeah, never mind.  The temptress has me distracted. 

I am so enamored.  She has my attention always.  We joked days ago (seems so long ago) that she will always have the majority share of my attention, but now it's usually at least 90% unless a good friend needs me or I'm in class or lost in prayer or hymns.  Though adimently most of my prayers are about her.  I pray to make her strong, to be the strong man she needs me to be.  I pray to meet her some day, soon hopfully.  I pray that she's real and not a cruel joke.  And this is where I start to feel bad.  She is so incredibly in so many ways that to quote the bible, the world itself could not contain all the ways she is special to me if I wrote them down.  And yet, at night when I'm alone, I'm sometimes scared.  I'm afraid that if she knew how scared I was, how insecure, I might lose her.  I don't want to lose her anymore.  I know it's better to have loved and lost, etc. but I don't want to know what it feels like to lose this and the thought terrifies me sometimes.  She knows all the big dark things about me, but what if I stumble upon something small and dark that is a deal breaker for her? 
And now I just heard her voice.

That's just to see how she changes me.  Now I feel incredible.  Happy.  I walked taller back into the library.  She told me not to let this be a letter to her, but it is at least partially.  I am my main audience in this writing, but so are my readers and at the moment she is my favorite and most dedicated fan.  My fan girl.  Can you believe that I have fan girls (besides my Kiwi Princess, sorry Jaime, you've been replaced).  Okay.  Now I can breathe.  The insecurities are all but forgotten.  They are there.  I think they always will be.  What's great is that she used to be as insecure as I was 2 months ago, 2 years ago.  Oh, btw, 66 days clean!  I rock!  And that brings me to another random subject change.

Yesterday I talked to Val.  I don't know if you (my readers) know who Val is, but I know and this means a lot to me.  She is the one I relapsed with time and time and time again.  Always with her.  When I first tried to get sober, I got 90 something days.  I was spending the weekend with her and the voices were screaming, I wandered into a church and was sitting in the corner, crying, praying to God for help.  And the elders after the service came to me and asked me what was wrong and I spilled out my life to them.  I told  them I'd been up for days and the voices were torturing me and they prayed over me and God touched me and they were gone.  That was the first time I made the decision to quit and I went home and I threw away my pipes and I was clean for 90+ days.  Val was there for that decision and there when I decided that I couldn't take the pain of life.  Val was there when I went into in patient rehab 2 years ago and got 100+ days clean and she was there when I came out with a loaded pipe to welcome me home.  She was there for all the 30 day tags, and there when I changed my mind every time.  Don't get me wrong.  She never forced me to do anything.  She never offered directly to help me relapse, but she never told me no more than once either and she never hesitated to let me know that it was an option.  Still not her fault.  Always my decision.  Anyway, since I've been up in Salem, I've been wanting to show off the new me.  The feels me.  I wanted to show off my new confidence and show off my cute new friend and show her the pic of the woman that has my heart and whos heart I seem to have as well.  We were planning on hanging out tomorrow, but I asked Rachel (my friend) to come with me to remind me of how far I came and she made me realize that I'm not ready to be around Val right now.  I want to be.  I love Val as one of my longest friends, I used to say my only true friend. My day to day friend.  So many good memories with her.  But now I have too much to lose.  Not just Jill.  She is the icing on my cake.  What makes me sweet and too sweet for some.  (personally, I scrape icing off my cake usually, in reality and metaphorically.)  I have my family back.  And I'm a better brother, son, grandson, uncle, nephew, cousin, all my titles, I'm earning for the first time in my life.  I know the true meaning of friendship.  I know what it means to be a friend and to have friends.  Today in class, I was okay leading the discussion.  I trusted myself to know that I'm asking all the right questions.  Lately people have been coming to me and confiding in me, I am the me I always wanted to be and more of the me I always was. And I refuse to lose that.  Period.  I will not give any of it up.  Not a single thing of the new me and my new life.  I was always so reluctant to give Val up, maybe it was needing to know that if life got too painful I could always go back.  Now  I know that no matter how dark and how painful life gets, it will never be worth compromising it for a momentary relief from Meth. 

To be honest, I long for the days when I can drink a cold beer on a hot day.  A strong Tom Collins in the dog days of summer as the sun goes down, my woman beside me, losing myself in all the joys of life.  But I know alcohol is dangerous to me too.  I quit meth for over a year once and switched to alcohol to relieve my pain.  So maybe someday, maybe never, but I'm okay with that.  If alcohol could possibly lead back to drugs, I won't do it.  This is getting to be a book so now I will stop.

A note to Jill (and for me to remember what it's like to talk to her right now): I know I promised you an exploration of romance and the erotic connect, but that is for your eyes only.

Good day to you my faithful readers.  To my future self:  I am so happy right now.  If life gets dark, please don't forget this feeling.  You are strong.  And in this moment, I love who you are.  No matter what else happens.  Right now.  Today.  I am happy.  Please never forget that.

So there's still this girl . . .

Disclaimer:  I know that Jill will be reading this.  As always.  This is not a letter to her.  This is because I want to capture my feelings.  An emotional snap shot.  That being said, I know the fact that she will be reading this will affect what I say, I won't say for example, that . . . yeah, that.  Here I go.

Is this really only day 8?  Every cliché I hated about feelings is more true than I ever imagined, and yet so inaddaquite.  Food really does tastes better.  Things smell better and worse.  (OMG, the mission stinks so bad), but my cologne smells better and lingers longer.  Music sounds better.  I told her last night that Amazing Grace has never sounded so sweet (look at the crap I'm writing!).  But seriously (yeah I know, Mrs. May, can't start a sentence with but [butt, he he]), the hymns make so much more sense now that I have my reward. I still don't deserve it, but I'm starting to think that maybe I do.

She has me questioning all my old beliefs about everything and I love it.  Not that I'm changing everything.  I don't want you guys to get the wrong idea.  As anything, there are lines I won't cross.  I won't take my phone to church.  My family will always have top priority.  She suggested Superbowl weekend to meet, I said no.  As much as I want to be in her arms, forever, Superbowl belongs to gpa.  He has given me so much, and every year could be the last.  I've sacrificed things for the Superbowl before, but a chance to spend 3 hours just me and my gpa watching football, I will never turn down for anything ever again, including her.  Isn't that amazing?  I have priorities, values. I am the me I always was, but without all the bullshit extra baggage and I LOVE the me I am.  She makes me love me more because of how she feels.  If someone like her can see the good in me, who am I to doubt.  Does that mean I'm taking my confidence from her?  Maybe, but not like I used to take from people.  Not in the emotional leech way, I can't really describe it.

So disorganized today.  I have a bunch of thoughts I want to get out, but I'm kinda scattered and I love it.  Have you ever seen The Crown?  You should, Matt Smith is incredible and deserves an Emmy.  Anyway, it's the story of Prince Phillip and Queen Elizabeth.  Their relationship.  She is a powerful woman.  A leader of men.  She spends all day going toe to toe with powerful men (Winston Churchill, JFK, Lord Montbottom (sp?)) and at the end of the day, she needs a strong man to support her.  She needs a man to let her guard down to, to love and care about, to vent to, to cry to, to express her secret worries.  That is the man I want to be.  I want to be the strong man behind a powerful woman and Jill is a very powerful woman.  This isn't a new thought, just refined.  I've liked powerful women all my life.  I used to say I had a crush on Hillary Clinton (yeah, I went there brat), or that I liked Scorpios because they were so hard on the outside and I liked to be the one they show their soft side to, this is just a new expression of an old desire.

One more thought before I really write a novel, well the second to last one.  Today she said that she showed off yesterday's entry to her friend and her friend cried and so did she.  Wow.  I always knew in my heart that my writing was good, maybe better than good, but I never knew I wanted to make people feel with my writing.  I've always understood the power of words.  Bad memories, and even as a kid, it fascinated me how words could bring so much emotion from people without an action, in me and others.  Today, I realized I have that power and I want to use it.  I want to make people feel.  I want to make people smile, and cry, laugh, and get mad.  Now it seems possible.  Anything seems possible.  Can my writing make me famous?  Maybe.  I know I want to share this gift with the world, I guess I always have since I've kept this blog for 7 years and before that an open diary which is apparently dead.  Again, new expression of old desires.  I love it.

One last thought, almost anticlamtic after all I've written.  But I remember years ago, when I was living with Grant and Whitney, pre-addiction (which I've said this before, but I want to put in here:  I didn't like who I was before my addiction, I hated who I was in my addiction, but I love who I am now and I wouldn't have be who I am if I hadn't been through Hell, so I am grateful for my addiction.)  Anyway (bad punctuation, I know!) pre-addiction, I was talking to Whitney and I told her that I understood feelings (yeah right!) and I understood sex (yeah right!) but I couldn't see how they connect.  She couldn't explain, she just that they just do.  Now I understand, and someday I will try to explain, in maybe a private blog post.

That's all for now.  She is still not responding, my heart aches with anticipation, but I trust that she will be back and when she comes back, her heart will only grow fonder.  BYE!

So there's this girl . . . .

So yeah I'm back.  I tried to kill this blog many times before.  I tried to start new ones, but this is the one that stuck.  Just a quick update on my life.  Not need to talk about where I've been, though there will be that someday maybe.  63 days ago, I hit my rock bottom, hopefully my last rock bottom.  I used up Albany and I found myself in Salem.  I found this thing called The Program, and it turned my life around.  Life is so much better in so many ways.  But all I really want to talk about is this amazing woman I met.  Can you believe it?  After all the years of trying to find my Happily Ever After, she finds me and she's better than anything I ever dreamed to hope for.  So much I want to say about her.  I only met her a week ago (happy one week anniversary, wtf?). She is smart, beautiful, confident and pure woman.  She is everything I never dreamed to hope for.  She has the looks of Drew Barrymore, the passionate, sexy voice of Julia Styles in 10 Things I hate about you, the bohemian spirit of Kate Winslet in Eternal Sunshine and the utter self assurance of Hillary Clinton.  The trouble is, she's completely fucking nuts.  She kind of has to be.  She knows me.  She knows all the dark side of me, well not all of it, but enough and the worst of it, she knows I'm a recovering meth, food addict with barely 2 months clean working a recovery program attached to a homeless shelter and she even knows what I look like and how much I weigh.  She sees all the bad and somehow, with all her beauty, it completely head over heals, into me without ever having met me.  I trust her more than I should and suddenly that this is all on paper, I'm scared to death.  Somewhere in the 2 days, I lost the disconnect that I had with her.  The buffer in my heart that kept her from feeling too real.  I learned to trust her, to belive that this is real.  The loyal readers of my blog (all 2 of you, or 1, or none [are you still with me Jamie]) will know that I spent 5 years of angst pouring my heart into this blog over every crush and every date and every girl that looked twice at me, longing for a dream that doesn't begin to meet my apparent new reality.  So this is a huge gamble for me.  If this is real, this could be happiness I never thought possible. If it isn't.  I will get hurt.  And that's okay.  Because now I have faith.  I have faith in God, and my program, and my support system, and all the new people in my life, that I will be able to take the hurt and I will not go back to drugs.  Never.  No matter what.  So yeah, this is a risk, a big risk, but I was never one to shy away from a big gamble.  A broken heart waged against unimaginable bliss.  I can survive a broken heart, I'm so ready to take this gamble.

Oh and Jill (yeah she has a name).  I know you're going to read this, in fact I plan to send you a link to this, but I want you to know that this is not a letter to you.  My blog has always been for me.  This is so take an emotional snap shot at this point in time.  Whatever happens, I want to know this is how I felt right now.  The fact that you're reading this, shows how much I trust you.  I still think you're crazy though :P

I'm back

So it's been a few years, but I'm back. A lot has happened since 2014  and I may or may not write about that later. Today I want to talk about what I found out just a few minutes ago. For a long time I was really good friends with this girl Sarah. But I made a promise to her and I broke it and she found out on her birthday after that, we saw each other a few times, but I was falling further into my addiction and she was living the domestic life. We stayed friends on Facebook but we rarely talked. This morning, I checked her profile to see how she was doing, and I found out that she died back in October. No t sure how I feel about this. Just need to get it out.

The End

That's it.  I'm done with this.  Goodbye.  This blog truly has been A Step Towards Oblivion, I've been walking toward nothingness.  I'm going to miss this and I'm going to keep it online, but I'm done walking toward nothing.  Today (and for the past 36 days) I'm no longer walking toward nothing.  I'm walking toward something.  I don't know what it is, but I'll know when I get there.  If you want to continue to follow my journey, you can at: grokkingsobriety.BlogSpot.com .

Okay, I don't know what to write about today but I feel like writing.  I feel like expelling all this pent up anxiety and letting it go into the world.  I know that nobody reads this, well I guess some people do, I get between one and two page views a day.  What should I say?  Right now I'm worried that I haven't gotten any hours since Saturday and now I won't be able to pay rent on time.  That's okay I should be able to pay it just a week late and I'll be able to get December's paid on Friday which is tomorrow.  Wow, this week went by fast.  I should say Merry Christmas to all of those who do read this.  I had a great Christmas.  I got exactly what I wanted and I was able to get something for everyone on my list.  I know already that I won't be alone for New Years, that's a good thing I guess.  I'll be spending it with Val out at the bars, I've never been out for New Years before.  I apologized to Sarah last night and she said that she's not ready to forgive me yet.  I understand.  I guess I understand.  I'm supposed to understand.  I'm lonely, but I've learned that it's nobody else's responsibility to make me less lonely, if I'm lonely I have to take care of it myself.  I'm scared because I won't be able to pay rent on time.  I'm afraid that I'll go a long time without getting any hours.  So I guess that sums in up.  One the day after Christmas, 2013, I'm lonely and scared.  I'm fighting addiction and loneliness.  My mom and sister have move to Springfield because my mom and step-dad divorced, so now they're further away from me than they've ever been.  Not that I see them that much anyway, but I liked the option of seeing them.  I miss them already.  The phrase that keeps on going through my head is "I want to go home."  When I'm actually at home I think that the home I mean is here, and maybe it is, maybe what I'm really saying is I don't want to leave here.  I don't want to go home and back to reality.  Reality is an empty room, alone with my books, an empty fridge, a lonely house.  It means drug using roommates that make it impossible to stay sober.  It means having to lock my door when I go to the bathroom because I don't know what kind of crack whore my roommate will bring into the house and who knows what can happen in the few minutes I'm in the bathroom.  I don't want to go home.  I want to say here wrapped safely in my womb.  Drugs can't get to me here.  I've never alone because Fritzie's always here.  There's always food in the fridge, I'll never go hungry.  I'll never grow up if I stay here forever.  I have to go back to the real world and face the challenges of being an adult.  I'm scared.  I'm always afraid.  I don't want to go home.  I want to cry, but I can't unless I'm coming down off of drugs and I happen to find myself in church.  Yeah, I'm going to church.  The long time atheist has found the joys of God and Jesus.  It's scary to admit, but I'm alone and powerless without God.  God please, I don't want to go home.  I just want to stay here forever.  I have to go home.  I can't stay here forever.  I have to go home and face temptation and addiction and roommates and the constant, undying loneliness.  It's the right thing to do.  It's okay, I'll be fine.

Thanksgiving 2013

Happy Thanksgiving everyone.  What am I thankful for this year?  At the moment, not much.  I'm grateful for all the things that everyone's thankful for, a roof over my head, food in my over inflated belly, a job.  I just don't want to be here, or anywhere for that matter.  I'm going to die when I'm 36, but that's 8 years away and I really don't want to wait that long.  Who knows, maybe I won't.  My little sister used to be my reason for not killing myself and now that I'm not her brother anymore, I really have no reason to keep on going.  My current plan is to wait until my other little sister's wedding day and kill myself then.  That way I ruin her big day.  I'm not sure why I want to ruin her day, but at least the day I died will be remembered then.  I don't want my death to be meaningless.  I could go on a shooting spree and commit suicide by cop, but the part of me that still hopes for a Heaven won't let me do that.  Besides, those people aren't remembered anymore.  It happens too often.  Maybe I'll take a gun to work and shoot myself in the head right in the middle of my first complete of the day.  That would be interesting and at least for the people that are there that day, they'll never forget me, or at least they'll never forget my final act.

So that is me on Thanksgiving 2013, still contemplating suicide.  I really wish I had the guts to just end it all.

So grateful for my new meds . . .

With the help of a very old anti-psychotic medication and Lebanon Urgent Care, Manny is now dead.  Well not dead, but at least asleep for a while.  I love this stuff, just a few days on it and Manny goes to sleep.  Of course it causes me to want to sleep all the time too which I can't really afford now that I'm working 35 hours a week and having to wake up at 5:00 AM, but if it puts Manny to sleep it's worth it.

On another, non-Manny related note, I'm reading "Atlas Shrugged" and not only does it make me feel really smart, it's an amazing book.  You should all read it some time if you get the chance.