Exhausted, Manic Ramblings When I Should Be Asleep

Life is good. I’ve too many blessings to count, and though I often lose sight of that, at this moment I recognize them and am grateful for them. I’ve struggled—really struggled—with drug and alcohol addiction for decades. I lost custody of my children, for which I doubt I can forgive myself; I’ve lost jobs, girlfriends, and blacked-out periods of lunatic time when something else was piloting from the cockpit of my skull. First time I tried cocaine, I thought 6 pm was actually 6 am and time for me to go to work. Once I figured out what time it was, clever boy that I was, I took my Rottweiler in a cab from the back of Lemmon Valley to the bar. I bet you can’t do that in Reno anymore. Anyway, when I got home, I smashed up the house I rented with my crazy girlfriend (I know it’s redundant). I have only the vaguest wisp of memory of doing that, but I do remember what she told me later: “You looked like you were possessed.”

I didn’t know then how often I would later rent out my brain like an Uber for demons (or hire them to drive? forgive the poor simile). I used to black out so frequently at the Jazz Club (ah, Fourth Street), I started running into people only my drunken beast-self knew. It was like having a multiple personality disorder. Crack a bottle and let the chaos in. Meth cured my alcoholism. Opiates cured my meth addiction. Shooting heroin not only almost killed me physically, but it numbed me into an emotional un-death. Once I started medication-assisted recovery, I started feeling again, and I was in awe of all the sensations I had ghosted in flight from myself.

I drink some still, but I don’t emotionally shape-shift anymore. I’ve seen demons and been in the presence of the divine—I didn’t need faith either: divinity was there and even as an atheist I could do naught but be humble before it. Laugh if you want to, if it makes you feel better. I have eaten more acid than most people have probably seen, but I’ll wager in blood when the time comes.

What I’m trying to scratch together out of this rambling is that I feel really fucking good. I’m far from cured, and I’m still bi-polar as ever, but the wounds, self-inflicted and otherwise, are healing. For the first time since early childhood, I don’t feel the constant, pressing need to escape my skull. I enjoy that which I have and value those people close to me (formally related or not, I call them “family”) more than some of them probably know. My kids still love me, and my life doesn’t feel like a waking nightmare or a series of car crashes anymore. I’ve been lucky enough to have the mentors I needed, and they were stubborn enough to put up with my lunacy. Joker resonated with me in a way that should make me uncomfortable, but damn it if I don’t spend most of the day laughing because I’m happy-ish, not because of a head injury.

What I’m really trying to say is thank you. Thank you God for having a sense of humor as sick as my own, thank you all my lovers for teaching me lessons I can’t forget (and not for lack of trying), thank you brothers for being down for life, and thank you teachers for giving me gifts I didn’t fully grasp the value of. Thank you mom for doing the best you could with your insane offspring and setting an example I can strive for, and thank you dad for teaching me the importance of a father, even if it was by showing me all the things a father should never do. Fuck you, dad, actually, but you really did make me a better father. And if you read this stumbling mess of words, thank you too, whoever you are.