Last year I kept joking about how everyone was going to start taking me seriously when I turn 20 years sober. I celebrated and spoke at a couple of AA meetings and then it was as if nothing happened. To be honest I was a little disappointed.
What have I been up to since last year?
I’m glad you asked. I moved into my girlfriend’s apartment, she broke her arm and had a hard time at her job, then I got cancer and spent the last five months getting treated for that and then yesterday my girlfriend breaks up with me and now I’m 38 years old who is turning 21 years sober and single, unemployed, homeless and recovering from a surgery.
So things have gone swimmingly since my last anniversary.
I wrote in my last blog that I continued to not drink over a lot of different painful experiences and again I am not taking a drink. In fact things have gotten so fucked up, I don’t know how to react. I might just crawl into a corner and start laugh/cry hysterically or just sit and stare at the wall with a scowl on my face. I have no idea what to do.
I had a conversation with a friend a month or so back about how I don’t think I can handle one more thing. I was scared that if one more fucking bad thing happened I would lose my goddamned mind.
That one more thing happened and I’m just barely able to keep my mind. I am so sad and depressed that I mostly feel like I’m in a daze after an explosion. I feel alone. I feel very alone.
I’m not even mad. It is the right thing to do and there isn’t anything I can do but sit here in pain and wait until I get better. I can only do the next right thing and someday I’ll just be better and this’ll just be one of those years I look back on and say it was the worst year of my life.
I’m not mad yet.
When I told my dad why she broke up with me, he said, “Well that’s too bad. You deserve happiness too, you know?”
Do I? I don’t know what I deserve. I’d like to be happy. It’s been a goddamned fucking elusive thing to me. I’ve not known happiness very many times in my life. I can count them on my two hands. A few of them happened with my now most recent ex-girlfriend.
A friend from out of town called today and he was talking about maybe moving back to Portland and I said I’m still here, even in a city full of exes.
She isn’t wrong and I’m not a victim. It was the right thing to do and she is strong for doing it. I’ll love her for a long time.
Heartbreak is almost worst then cancer. Almost. I cried all night and tried to cheer myself up by watching YouTube NBA fights, but I couldn’t stop thinking about her and how we were so good together and that I should have fought to keep her a little more or write her a powerful letter that’ll make her regret her decision and come running into my arms or that she’ll just naturally realize that the world is a cold lonely fucking awful place without me and call me up at 3am to let me know that she’s coming to get me.
I know that there is nothing I can do about heartbreak except wait till it ends. I’ve been heartbroken a couple of times before, so I know what I’m looking forward to. I made sure I kept relationships with my guy friends going and never abandoned them for Girlfriend Island. It almost makes it sadder how confidant I am about getting through this.
I was feeling fine until I opened my computer and saw a picture of her on my background. Changed it to snowy trees. Lump in my throat came back.
Now at 21 years I have to start all over. I have to go find a new job when I’m healthy enough and a new place to live. The problem is I thought I would be somewhere much better than I am right now. I didn’t think I might be moving into my parents’ basement at 38. For the first ten years I was sober I actually thought I wouldn’t even be alive at 38 let alone sober, and now that I actually did some work, I thought I’d be a young professional or artist who was married.
Kids are in none of my futures good or bad.
I hate this last year. It was so fucking hard to live through it. I hate that it keeps on going with no relief in sight, but I have to have faith that it is there. I just want to be done with the health stuff and get the fuck on with my life.
Sorry if I swear too much, but goddamn it, life’s been a fucking asshole lately.
Last night I was lying staring into the blackness and I kept thinking that maybe I’m just not good at life. Maybe life is too complicated for a guy like me. I’m smart enough to know how absurd everything is, but not smart enough to make a vocation out of any cause. I’m too much personality and not enough identity. I kept thinking about how the only thing that I have ever really succeeded at is not drinking or doing drugs for a long ass time.
Maybe this is what I needed to change all of that. Maybe having this fucking wicked loser of a year will give me that ‘I-almost-
died’ spirit and I’ll start succeeding at other stuffs. Maybe I’ll not let fear run my life and I’ll go ahead and do the things I don’t think I’m good enough to do.
I don’t know. 21 years. So thirsty, so alone. Sigh. Maybe this is the year that everyone takes me seriously.
23 was my worst. At least you got yours out of the way early 😉 … Love ya brother.
I’m not sure if it’s pertinent to know why she broke up with you, but that’s lame. It’s like the movie where the dude has cancer and his girlfriend cheats on him with a white dude with dreadlocks. There’s nothing glamorous about cancer. I do think that with the Breast Cancer Ass. and them producing pink hairspray and brushes for cancer awareness kind of sugar coats the whole thing. It distances us from the reality of what happens to people. People die, they loose their job because they are too sick, they don’t have benefits and are in debt, they loose a boob or a ball. None of that crosses my mind when my shampoo turns pink for one month out of the year. I’m really sorry you have to go through this. I’m also really glad you are writing about it. Even the slogan “cancer sucks” has become a hip thing. The only time it really sinks in is when my friend Rivka wears her shirt because she actually had stage 3b thyroid cancer, had to have her thyroid removed and came from a family that neglected her until someone said, ‘hey your neck isn’t fat, that’s a giant tumor.’ I think it’s also important to mention that Rivka has never had a boyfriend and she is 25. I know Rivka would say you are lucky to have had someone there for you even if they didn’t stay until the end. Rivka didn’t speak with her family or see her parents during her cancer. Everyone has their story. Everyone can write their story and everyone has the choice to share it. You are sharing it. Most people don’t have the guts or the motivation. I know there is more to your life then just, ‘I’ve been sober for 21 years, I got cancer and live in my parents basement.’ You probably don’t remember telling me some of the intimate details of your life before you got sober or other things that occurred, but they were shocking, saddening and gave a story of hope. They gave me hope because you aren’t a complete and utter ass hole despite your best efforts and past. I really think focusing on being kind to your body is the best step. I hope to see you do something that WOWS this world no mater how you go about it. You obviously love to write. Bartend, get professional training at a college to write like a scholar and charm the pants out of your female professors and the leaders of literature/journalism departments. If you can keep the attention of young, ADD, know it all drug addicts, you can hold anyone’s attention. And you’re writing about the realities of life. People want to see/do one of two things: see a woman dying of breast cancer, wearing a scarf on her head and her devoted husband laying by her side until the end (usually shot in black and white film) or buying pink hairspray they saw on a commercial with Gwyneth Paltrow (who is like, the worst human being) and think they are making a difference when they buy it. I mean no one REALLY wants to see cancer, but we want to minimize the reality so we can continue to be selfish and self absorbed. And unless we have someone close to us in the grips of it, we don’t really know. I don’t really know. But now know that things got even worse, you have my attention so WOW me (when you’re feeling better). There are cancer conferences, support groups and other various ways of meeting people who’s lives didn’t become awesome because they had a near death experience and now they are avid sky divers. Rivka didn’t think cancer was a big deal and hated the world until she went to the conferences. It would be great to hear your stories and the stories of others that you meet along your journey. And it would be great to hear their stories in YOUR voice (think Cracked) Good luck David. Take good care of your body the best you can and congrats on 21 years, not having cancer and not being an ass hole. If you don’t like my ideas, impressions and interpretations I’m really sorry if I upset you during this hard time.
Ditto friend.
Shit! Dave thanks for the post. Let’s just say this is exactly what I needed to read right now. Also, you sound like the Dave I have always known. Hey, remember that one period in your sobriety that you seemed happy, but you were mostly talking about have faith in God in meetings alot. Which I have say surprised me when I witnessed that for the first time. Whatever you were doing for yourself then, now would be a great time to do it. Whenever someone takes a big shit on my life I always go back to simplicity of the basics. And also are you eating all the right foods? You should check out juicing to make sure your getting all your essential nutrients it helped all my family members who have gone through chemotherapy and radiation. Well I hope you have good stuffs to come to you soon.Take care crazy Dave:)