The following was written of the course of the day, from the a.m. until just now, with frequent interruptions:

I woke up so sick, it was terrifying.  I am doing what the G.I. doc said to try to fix it,  but it’s such a long, and slow process.  The problem medication (methadone), that the doc thinks is aggravating sh*t, is one that the prescribing doctor does not believe is the problem.  I agree with the G.I. specialist, and convinced the other specialist to take the dose down slowly.  I wanted to knock off 2 mg every four days – she wanted to do nothing.  We compromised on knocking off 3 mg a week – for my dosage, that probably is about as fast as I would want to go.  It’s very close to what I was asking for, and Charlie thinks it’s a better idea than what I wanted.  I get the impression that he thinks I am pushing myself too hard with the taper.  But, I need to get this done.  I need to get well (or as well as I can), and get the f@ck on with my life.  My twenties pretty much slipped by me, while I chased my tail, and spent my time surviving, instead of LIVING.  Certainly not living up to my potential…  The rest of my life will not be lost to madness.  I will not let that happen.  Not now that I’ve dug my heels in, and weathered this much of the storm…  I’ve come too far to turn back.  Seen too much of what I could have….  of what I should have…

What I deserved, and owed myself a long time ago.

Can’t get this song out of my head:

"The king’s crossing was the main attraction
Dominoes falling in a chain reaction
A scraping subject ruled by fear
Told me whiskey works better than beer"

Charlie’s in the shower, I will probably have to interrupt this entry, and help him get ready for work, to get him out the door on time.  Lately, I walk him to the el.  It’s a nice walk, and I just keep going from there – to the beach, or to shop, or whatever.  Just walking around the neighborhood that I love.  Rogers Park really is a wonderful place.

Once, when I took acid and ex, I swear this place was the f@cking Emerald City (haha).  It was pretty f@cking fantastic.  My friend and I were so happy, we decided to go to the southside, grab our friend Kevin, buy him breakfast, and show him how incredible Rogers Park was on that magical day (haha).  Of course, it was 7:30 am, and he wanted to kill our drug-addled asses when he saw me tapping on his window, but being a great sport, he actually did get up, and come with us.  Obviously, the Shangrilah effect was lost o him (haha).

"The judge is on vinyl, decisions are final
And nobody gets a reprieve
And every wave is tidal – if you hang around
You’re going to get wet"

So, I am fighting to hold onto my positive outlook.  There are good things to hold onto.  Beautiful things…  I have happiness in my life.  Things are happening for me.  I am stronger than I used to be.  Much stronger…  I can keep fighting the good fight.  I have to.  There are people who need me, as I am now.  No one needed the wreck I was, before.  I was ready to f@cking kill that b*tch.

"I can’t prepare for death any more than I already have
All you can do now is watch the shells
The game looks easy, that’s why it sells
Frustrated fireworks inside your head
Are going to stand and deliver – duck instead"

So, as predicted, this blog was just pre-empted by a trip to the el (to drop off Charlie), and a side trip to run errands, which were not completed.  On my way, I discovered that my phone was off – it’s a pay as you go phone from US Cellular, so, if I don’t remember to pay it on the 14th, it shuts off on the 15th.  Worse yet, if I do pay on the 14th, but run out of minutes that day, it will start eating into my balance, to facilitate my calls.  So, I can make the payment on the 14th, and still wake up phoneless on the 15th.  WTF?!  So annoying…  but, this time I just plain forgot.  I paid Charlie’s bill while I was there, too.  I shouldn’t have.  I resent the hell out of that phone.  Not only does he not need his own separate phone (we have shared one as long as we’ve been together), but he kept it from me for (supposedly) a month, if not longer.  That makes me wonder about him, the phone, and numerous other things.  Maybe, I deserve that.  I don’t know. 

But, I shouldn’t be so damn helpful. 

I walked with him to the bus, and the near coldness with which he said goodbye…  it hit me like a slug to the gut.  It’s a strike I see coming all the time, but I just can’t get out of the way.  I don’t know how. 

If I were sure… 

sure that he we couldn’t… 

that he couldn’t… 

that there was no going back… 

of any number of things…

maybe, then…  

"The method acting that pays my bills
Keeps a fat man feeding in Beverly Hills
I got a heavy metal mouth that hurls obscenity
And I get my check from the trash treasury
Because I took my own insides out"

I really don’t know.  It’s all so unclear.  I feel like an idiot sometimes, the way I’m just drifting around – like a balloon tied to a weight.  The fact that I am lighter than air keeps pulling me toward the sky, so I can’t touch the ground, but I’m still teathered too tightly to drift off, toward the unknown. 

There’s a comfort in certainty, and routine, even when they’re a bitch.  Even when it’s just the survivalist routine of a junkie in the city.

I really have no certainty about anything.  It is a little maddening, at times, but I am usually able to tolerate it.  Today…  not taking it as well as I usually do.  It feels like the walls are closing in.  The walls inside my head…

I can’t pretend that any of it makes sense.  Am I better?  Do I know what I am doing?  Am I headed for the same kind of pain, as before?  How much of what I do is still being influenced by the part of me that’s f@cking nuts?  And, if the medication keeps eclipsing more and more of that, will what’s left be the same person?  I have no intention of stopping my meds, but I do wonder what I will be, if I am not the nut ball I’ve been for so long.  I just have to keep telling myself that I do know myself.  The things that matter most never faded away – they were always there.  Just hidden…  I have to remember that.

I’m not that lost.

Not that lost…

And, I don’t have to keep making the same mistakes.  The mistakes that bury who I am, under a thousand pounds of pain, depression, and mania…  an old friend told me once, that everything moves in circles – that we relive the same mistakes a hundred different ways, because we never really stop making them.  But, that guy always was a f@cking moron.  I doubt the sentiment was his, originally, and he probably misdelivered something in his translation.  Pseudo-intellectuals…

"It don’t matter, cause I have no sex life

And all I want to do now is inject my ex-wife
I’ve seen the movie and I know what happens
It’s Christmas time, and the needles on the tree
A skinny Santa is bringing something to me
His voice is overwhelming, but his speech is slurred
And I only understand every other word"


To numb myself to the uncertainty, and the pain that it brings.  Not knowing used to put knots in my stomach.  I couldn’t eat much of anything for the first couple of weeks, after that day he said it was over.

Around that time, I was completely lost.  I had lost myself some time before that, and what was left of me was barely holding on.  In a lot of ways that really matter, I wasn’t the same person.  Most of the things I like about myself were buried in madness, and heroin…  my writing was the only thing that made me feel redeemable.  I was so unhappy.  So lost – I had so little impulse control.  I was an emotional car wreck.  I just wanted to die.

And, I would have.  I truly believe that.  I was saved by the fact that I found this website.  The friends I have made here have changed my life.  Some friends seem to drift in and out of my life, but I understand how this disembodied world gets interrupted by the more concrete, and how reality often pulls people away.  All of you who leave me little words of encouragement – you don’t know how much that has meant to me. 

"Open your parachute and grab your gun

Falling down like an omen, a setting sun
Read the part, and return at five
It’s a hell of a role, if you can keep it alive
But I don’t care if I fuck up –
I’m going on a date, with a rich white lady
Ain’t life great?
Give me one good reason not to do it
(Because I love you)
So do it"

And, Ace… 

What can you say about someone who saw the good in you, when you couldn’t see it in yourself, anymore?  Who saw something worth fighting for and caring about, even though he met me at my worst…  someone who saved you from yourself, again, and again…  even if I hadn’t killed myself… because, that’s not the scary part, to me…  I’ve never had a normal, healthy fear of death.  Never… 

But living that life, until I’m just broken down, and everything good inside me has completely gone to waste – that scares me more than the thought of dying. 

And, by coaxing me into REALLY trying, and talking me through those tough windows of time, on those first few nights, he managed what no one else could.  Sick and scared, and having more or less given up on myself, I didn’t think I could do it.  It’s hard to help someone when they no longer believe it’s possible.  I was sick with sadess, loss, and hopelessness, and he somehow got through.  He made me laugh, and he got me to try (both miraculous).  He’s given me more than I think he will ever realize.  I never would have made it through the kick without his help.

And, not to be egotistical, but two smart people making each other laugh is usually a good time.

"This is the place where time reverses
Dead men talk to all the pretty nurses
Instruments shine on a silver tray
Don’t let me get carried away
Don’t let me get carried away
Don’t let me be carried away"  (Elliot Smith "King’s Crossing")

As far as I’ve come, I don’t know what to do with myself sometimes.  My thoughts still get overwhelming.  I end up writing these marathon blogs, trying to clear my head.  Doesn’t always help…  I started sketching a tree when I was all frustrated on the bus, earlier.  Not my best work, but it wasn’t my worst, either, and it did help restore my patience.  Sometimes, it seems like nothing’s going to make me feel right, again, but I know that’s an illusion – it will pass.  I just need to breathe.  Slowly…  deeply…  and relax… 

It’s a stressful day.  People are expecting things of me, and there’s a lot to do.  I easily get frustrated when I can’t get sh*t squared away the way I want to – right now, I am stuck waiting on someone else, before I can attend to my responsibilites.  What a pain…  and, it makes me seem so unreliable.

"Demons, my demons
Always behind me
Everywhere I go they come along
And demons, my demons
Always remind me
They keep singing my favorite song
And, I keep sliding all around
All my vices are gone, that held me so well, so well
I will come by control of the things you don’t tell
To come by Isabel"

At least Maria’s not in jail.  Don’t know who tried to collect call me from a jail, but whatever.  At least, Maria’s okay.  Still haven’t talked to her since just after the beat down.

God, I can’t stand myself, right now. 

I know how I used to slow down my thoughts.

I don’t know what Charlie wants out of this, anymore.  Sometimes, I think he wants to work it out, and time will tell if that’s really possible.  But, other times, I think, he knows he doesn’t want this, anymore.  I think, he still loves me, but he knows he can’t reconcile the past with the future, and he needs to move on.  I would understand, to some extent.  There’s been a lot of damage done.  And, I am confused as hell, right now.  So confused…  I thought I knew where I belonged.  Even when I was screwing up my marriage, in manic drug-addled fits – I thought I had an underlying sense of where I belonged.  I never thought I was in love with Quinn, or that I wanted to be with him, instead of Charlie.  Though, I had come to question whether Charlie was still in love with me.  Some of that behavior was no doubt connected to his realization of what was happening, but his disinterest in our sex life went much further back than that.  It was the heroin and the depression, I think, but it started two years into our marriage – he just lost all interest in me, in that way.  All interest…

"Early in the morning I lay awake in my bed
Wondering when the day will show a trace
Well it always comes like a prison guard
Looking in my cell
Shining his flashlight in my face
He always says "hey boy,
Where do you think you’re going?"
There’s only one place I can tell, I can tell
I come flat broke, I will come by hell
To come by Isabel
I will come by control, of the things you don’t tell
To come by my Isabel"  (Mason Jennings, "Isabel")

Obviously, I still feel enough that I would be devastated to find out that my marriage is completely over.  I’ve been with him a quarter of my life.  I love him.  I have loved him beyond reason.  I loved him so much, that I got lost in a terrible place, because I decided to follow him there.  I let everything else slip through my fingers, to hold onto him, no matter how far he fell.  I loved him that much.  And, all this distance and uncertainty doesn’t eclipse that.  It just puts me on my guard – that I might have to survive a loss soon, and I can’t be holding on to anything too tightly, right now.  Amongst other considerdations, I can’t be certain if he wants to hold onto me, and that could kind of make every other question moot.

I know, this blog is way too long.  All apologies for redundancy, as well as for rambling…

Hope everyone is well.