For Ever Ever?

Yesterday was tough. Amanda and I attended our fourth funeral of 2019. Every funeral is emotional, but losing my close friend suddenly was particularly shocking and after everything, I have found a new perspective on my sobriety.

I have to be brutally honest here. In the back of my mind, for years, I’ve always had the thought that maybe, just maybe, when I retire, or I get old enough that everybody who I know and cares about me is gone, I could try some controlled drinking. Maybe I could hire a bodyguard to protect others from me, and hire a driver so that I could drink the way that I want to. I could just sit by the lake (by my cabin I don’t own yet) and have a few beers or a margarita. Don’t worry, this is perfectly normal thinking for an alcoholic, what probably isn’t normal is admitting it, and openly writing about it. But I have to do this to help me process this new found need for permanent sobriety.

Having and end in mind for sobriety, or even thinking I could handle a controlled drinking life, is the end to many an alcoholic. It’s how my friend started his relapse that lead to his demise, and even in the Big Book, it speaks heavily on what a waste the idea of controlled drinking is.

My longtime readers will know that when I relapsed sometime in 2006, I started with one beer in a classy Italian restaurant with my girlfriend at the time. The next night I sat at a bar alone and finished a liter of Jack Daniels and blacked out sometime after I laid down a vomit-trail to my house. When I woke up in my piss-soaked clothes the next day with the worst hangover I ever had, I promised myself I would never drink again. And I didn’t. For three days.

Three weeks after I started drinking, I started doing meth, and then it was the year 2015 and I had nothing to show for my life. I was dying very slowly, and fortunately, I was hit by a fast-moving trolley car called prison and I was able to turn it around. But this doesn’t mean I’m safe. None of us is ever safe.

That last line was in the original draft of the eulogy I wrote for my friend. I thought it was too ominous, and I wanted to stay as positive as I could for the moment. When I delivered the eulogy, my eyes welled constantly and I kept thinking that somebody would be doing this for me if I ever have one drink. One sip. If I ever stop going to meetings or talking with my sober network, if I ever stop giving back, calling my sponsor, listening to the newcomer, speaking in front of groups, I will die. Now that’s ominous.

The day that I found out my friend died, I received a letter in the mail stating I had finally been approved to bring meetings into the McLeod County jail. Service work is where I thrive, and I’ve always wanted to bring meetings to people in custody.

 (Just now, the four-year-old came to me on the couch crying because she wanted to give me a hug and a kiss. I obliged but she snuck the kiss in before I realized she had a large trail of snot streaming from her nose and when she touched my face I quickly pulled away and we sort of reverse Lady and the Tramped it and she laughed, I gagged. This is my life now.)

When I was in St. Cloud state prison, we were able to leave our cells very little. You could go to church, school, meals, occasional recreation, and meetings. In the beginning, I went to church and meetings because those were the only places in the building with air conditioning. I stopped going to church because it just wasn’t for me, but I kept going to meetings. I kept listening, and eventually I started sharing some of my story, and people listened to me. And then I started going because it made me feel better. Every time I left a meeting, I was happy. And to this day that remains true, and it’s why I kept going to meetings after I wasn’t forced to do so when I got out.

Bringing meetings into a locked facility will give me the chance to give somebody else that opportunity. I’m only bringing the meeting, they still have to show up, but it will be there for them.

 Too many people are dying from addiction. It’s never hit this close to home, but I know it has for so many others I know. When does it stop?

Today I choose to think of my life without chemicals forever, and it doesn’t sound impossible or boring. My sobriety can define who I am, and it can help others, and it makes me tolerable. I will picture myself by the lake by my cabin (that I don’t own yet) surrounded by grandkids and family, with a clear mind, a clear conscience, and a loving heart. I don’t have to drink. Ever. I just have to put in a little work to make sure I don’t. So I will.

 

 

See You, Man

My only cellmate in Moose Lake prison knew that I was going to boot camp. For the first few days he warned off the wannabe bikers from trying to intimidate me into giving them my newspaper every week in exchange for not beating me up because they assumed I was a sex-offender because of my state-issue glasses. I’ll admit, I questioned myself in the mirror a few times. He knew a few other guys that were also non-violent offenders and were going to C.I.P. and he offered to introduce me to a few of them so that I wouldn’t accidentally make friends with an actual rapist.

He brought me out into the common area and took me to a table where there was a rather lanky, tall, bald-headed man playing cards and introduced me to him as a fellow boot camper. We chatted, realized we were both from St. Paul, and spent the next few months playing Monopoly, cribbage, and as many different games as we could find to help pass the time. He became one of my friends along with a select few gentlemen that seemed to care about not being in prison anymore. We were the few that gave a shit.

The tall one I’ll call Mac, to protect his identity. You’ll know why soon enough. Mac was there when I ran my first mile, and he helped me get my technique down and breathing pattern correct enough to pass the fitness test for boot camp. I distinctly remember one time he ran a mile backwards while I was struggling to run a few laps at all. I was wearing my full prison-blue uniform, and he had on his optional sweat shorts and white t-shirt. It was hot, and it was the worst.

Mac went to boot camp two months before I did, and thus left two months earlier. We maintained contact in the program as much as possible even though we were housed in separate barracks, and when he got out, he wrote me a letter. He told me he found work, and that I should come get a job at a laminating factory when I got out.

I did. And I ended up moving into the house he was in and we were roommates for nearly a year. We were really friends. We loved baseball, and went to several Twins games together. We had grill outs, went to meetings, talked at coffee shops. We were sober and we weren’t bored. We remained friends for years after we evolved in our lives and purchased homes, and found our forever-gals. We chatted, we met, and we reminisced.

 

Yesterday, I took the girls to the pool in town after writing my blog post. While I was there, I received a message request over Facebook messenger, and it was his mother. She asked me to call her.

My heart sank.

I knew something was wrong, and I hoped that it wasn’t relapse. I hoped she just wanted to plan a surprise party, and she wanted to invite me. I called her.

Mac died yesterday morning after a short struggle with our mutual disease of addiction and alcoholism.

My heart is shattered; tears streaming as I try to write these words on my keyboard. My friend—one of my true friends who can identify with who I am, what I’ve been through, and how I think—is gone forever.

 

Mac. I need you back. I didn’t know you were hurting, and I want to fix it so you don’t have to die. We need you. We need your love, compassion, and your friendship. I want to go back so you can tell me you need help. I want our times back so I can remember more. I want to hear you laugh and call me Mr. Meartz like we had to do in boot camp. I saw you in the sunrise today through the clouds and I cried because you didn’t answer me. I know you can hear me. I know you know I love you.

You don’t get to see the sunset anymore, and it’s never going to be as beautiful for me knowing you can’t see it. It’s only been a day and I already miss you so much. I should have called you more; I should have seen it coming. I should have seen the signs, but you were hiding. I’m so sorry you were hurting. I’m so sad you’re gone.

 

PooPee Roofie

For three weeks, my life has been a solid mixture of liquid and semi-solid waste. For three weeks, my life has been filled with frustration, confusion, and bitterness toward our new dog that nearly exclusively uses our house as a toilet.

We got him as an older pup: 14 weeks. By then, most dogs are potty-trained, however we got him from a breeder that apparently didn’t have housebreaking in their schedule, and it’s been a literal mess ever since. His name is Roofus, and he is a beautiful German Shepherd.

Imagine a litter box, and then imagine it without litter, then imagine the litter box as our home, then change it from cats to dog. There you have it; my life of shit and piss.

He also excessively whines, barks, and chews. I have frequent urges to hit him, and I fantasize a situation in which he magically disappears and my life is back to normal. (I know negative reinforcement doesn’t make a better dog. I don’t hit him.) But, alas, we keep adapting to him, and closing off areas of our house to ensure we don’t have to use the carpet cleaner every day. And slowly—almost painfully slow—he’s catching on to the fact that he gets a treat when he goes potty outside. I started going outside as well because I really like the flavor of the treats and I think maybe he will learn faster if daddy shows him what to do.

The first time we left him home alone, we put him in a kennel, and when I arrived home, all sides—including the top—were completely smeared in feces. Roofus himself was caked from head to tail and just getting him from kennel to door left a splattered trail of poo on everything he neared.  I hosed him down. I hosed down the kennel. And I did it all again the next day. On a completely unrelated note, I have a large, shit-splattered kennel for sale. Cheap.

He is loving, kind, and learning obedience. I have him enrolled in an 18-week obedience course where I go for an hour every Tuesday night and learn some basics and into some advanced stuff for the last six weeks. He picks up simple commands rather quickly, and he’s eager to do anything that’s new. We took him to the dog park earlier this week and he did really well.

Willie gets along with him too, which is very important for him. The cats don’t like him, but I think that’s pretty standard. And, the girls love him and that is the most important. He will be our family dog for hopefully a decade, and even though he’s off to a pretty rough start, he has a lot of time to improve. He can really only improve.

It’s about a hundred degrees outside right now and I am so happy I mowed the lawn yesterday. I am stopping this post short to take the girls down to the pool to cool off and have a little fun. I’ll write more later.

 

Any suggestions on potty training, please let me know.

402 Words and 35 Days

I’m back. I haven’t spent that much time away from writing since I sobered up over five years ago. It feels good to be back in front of the computer screen, thinking about how much I have to write about. Aside from my anniversary post, I haven’t written anything but my wedding vows for nearly two months. Yesterday I finalized my vows, and printed them, and deleted permanently the digital copy so Amanda can’t find them. I wrote 402 words, which is a little over half of a normal blog post. It isn’t a blog post, nor is it written like one. I like it, and I hope she does, too.

A lot has happened in the last two months. We’ve planned, paid for, and talked about the wedding every day since (and well before) the proposal. Weddings are expensive, but not for rich people. I commented in a meeting at work this week that the cost of the salads for a particular wedding at the club was more than our entire food cost. We definitely are on a budget for our event, but I don’t want the focus to be on food, I want people to remember this wedding for so many other reasons, and I hope they do.

In 35 days, I get to marry the woman I love. It’s only symbolic, but it means a lot to a few people. Last week we went to get our marriage license at which point I could have legally had my name changed to King Pineapple after the wedding, but neither Amanda nor the records office employee even hinted at a smile when I made the suggestion.

We reached a milestone. We have received over 100 R.S.V.P.’s. I think that’s a pretty good number for inviting roughly 200 people. There’s still plenty of time, but if you have received an invite and you haven’t responded yes or no, we would appreciate it if you could. Enough on that.

 

Work has been stressful this year. Summers are normally hectic in the restaurant industry, but this season seems to be particularly taxing for so many reasons but mostly a large and consistent turnover of tenured and new staff alike. The middle of the busy season is not when we should be training staff, but this is our steady condition as we collide with each day and somehow survive. There is light at the end of the tunnel as we have hired a new chef and he has made some executive decisions and made moves with our guidance to alleviate pressure on the kitchen. Personally, I haven’t taken a sit-down break in about two months, and I am well-worn at the end of the day but I know I have accomplished an incredible amount of work and have been part of the solution, not part of the problem, much like I try to do in my sobriety.

 

I continue to attend my meeting in town and I always look for opportunity to bring meetings into institutions and recently I applied to the county jail for a monthly spot. The application itself was vague and didn’t ask about my background; however there was a spot at the bottom for the recipient to check a box that said Background check completed. I applied because I was told there just needs to be a two-year window from the last period of incarceration, so I went for it. It’s been three weeks since I sent off my application and I haven’t heard anything. I will call them soon to see what’s happening.

 

Six hundred words in and I now have a four-year-old next to me dying for attention. Also, we have a new member of the family in a German Shepherd. He needs to go pee or poop, much like myself, so I’ll stop this post here and I will take him outside and show him how to go potty on the lawn. I’ll write again soon.

Willie, meet Roofus.