After 15 years of drinking almost everyday I was sick and tired of being tired. Squandering my potential on a cheap buzz wasn't worth the squeeze, especially because I was leading a watered down life, a hollow existence that ultimately led to death. What was I hiding from? Why was I hurting myself continually for so long? I started feeling something was off when I was going through puberty. My brain chemistry was shifting.
I remember watching Adult Swim on my lime green futon, a lily pad, in my frog, or 'front room over garage'. A zombified amphibian, eyes wide and Indian style watching Cowboy Beebop and Lupin the Third, zoning out in a post pubescent daze marinating in the fuzzy glow of pastels emanating from the space opera tv show. It was business as usual but this late summer night of binge watching started to feel different. A malaise glazed a melancholic layer, static like my old tv began to envelop my disposition. I wouldn't call it depression but it left an impression, an insidious haunting, syrupy but untouchable, hidden in plain sight, like dark matter in space. I was observing this new feeling, keeping an eye on it as if it were clouds of insects softly buzzing over my head.
I started sleeping more than other kids. Gradually withdrawing inside myself, sometimes over-stimulated by emotions and my environment, decisions became terrifying, my mind catastrophizing a mile a minute processing viruses, postulations, bizarre red herrings turned to farce and terabytes of doubt. Infinite flimsy scenarios that always led a cart with no horse to a valley of debilitating dread and anxiety. I smoked, I drank, it helped, or so I thought, slowly draining me.
My addiction masked the devices I employed, slapping stickers on the side of a spilling oil tanker, never solving any problems, only making them worse. Working in the restaurant industry wasn't akin to drinking a lot, it was like breathing water. The vessel was a sunken pirate ship, each restaurant its own, infested with lost souls in competitions of misery. Coke could keep me drinking and was around all local haunts, the dives, islands glowing with dark red light, noxious fumes comforting their inhabitants, dank decayed wood and green velvety tables sustained a toxic ecosystem of broken creatures.
Cripplingly broke and perpetually hungover, I was going nowhere at the light speed in a vicious circle, my candle burning at both ends, snaking back to consume its tail then going back to suck on the bones. I was a deadly mercenary for hire going from ship to ship, a notorious half dead pirate armed to the teeth with lethal machinations that only sharpened detrimental skills like working on no sleep, half conscious . From a Michelin star restaurant to fry cook, opening a restaurant to almost homeless. I felt like a nuclear blast victim most days, radio activity eating away at my mind and body, wandering around faceless, toiling away in vicious, infernal kitchen environments with cruel chefs, some kind, others with a sick propensity for humiliation. My skills barely paid the bills, and my soul was paying the price.
I decided to go to detox, and my family helped me go to rehab. I wanted to change. Group therapy, eating right, yoga, meditation and medication splitting a hydrogen molecule in the Gobi desert, resulting in a different nuclear fission of hydration, an ocean tsunami detonated inside my body and mind surrounded by the gentle green of the Appalachian mountains. Something happened that I didn't expect. Like the ring of power surprised that a hobbit became its keeper. I didn't want to hurt myself anymore.
I began to want to protect this recovery. I became a fox lightly padding over thin ice, keeping my head down and not thinking of my progress as to not trip and fall back into the water before I reached the other side. Synchronous snowballing into maelstrom blizzards resembled a compassionate universe conspiring my progress and highest excitement. I was holding on for dear life, burning all the ships behind me, my new found health, a golden temple conquest. Practicing the 'Tao Te Ching' and reading about the quantum became my bread and butter, lubricating my dreams and inhibitions, no longer feeling like Bilbo and the ring,
“I am old, Gandalf. I don't look it, but I am beginning to feel it in my heart of hearts. Well-preserved indeed! (my addiction) Why, I feel all thin, sort of stretched, if you know what I mean: like butter that has been scraped over too much bread. That can't be right. I need a change, or something.”
They say there's no such thing as cold, only the lack of heat, no darkness only the lack of light, or maybe that's just wishful thinking, watching the stars regulate the Milky Way, light houses permeating the void. The stars shine brightly here. I was no longer living in fear. I didn't have to hide in the shadows. It's nice outside.
Spring time is here in Ashville. The winter solstice is loosening its icy fingers around the mountains. I watched two redheaded woodpeckers fight with my friend Maddison, laughing about needing to quit smoking. I'm about to start making the music I always wanted to. I found laughter, kindness and deep connections in the room of AA, so I keep going back. It turns out i was running away from the connections i so desperately needed. I got my life back with the help of kind people I could relate with.
Relinquishing control was no longer a tall order. Addiction and depression became something I could put a finger on. My momentum built and the days are getting better. I know in my heart everyone deserves to know that they deserve to live, and that this life is worth living.
your life is your life
don't let it be clubbed into dank submission.
be on the watch.
there are ways out.
there is a light somewhere.
it may not be much light but
it beats the darkness.
be on the watch.
the gods will offer you chances.
know them.
take them.
you can't beat death but
you can beat death in life, sometimes.
and the more often you learn to do it,
the more light there will be.
your life is your life.
know it while you have it.
you are marvelous
the gods wait to delight
in you.
-Charles Bukowski
Lee Marshall