Rants, Observations, & Random Epiphanies

I just returned to Asheville from my two-day mini-jaunt to Atlanta and brought back far more than a suitcase worth of memories.

First, the very sight of the city skyline elicited a deep sense of appreciation and love.  Atlanta is my home.  The sights and sounds of the city welcomed me back, and I received them openly and with a glad heart.  It has been so long since I left, and we didn’t part on the friendliest of terms when I departed.

I left Atlanta on December of 2007 to go to rehab in the mountains of North Carolina.  I have not returned home since, except to catch a flight to (and back from) France.  To be back for the soul purpose of breathing in the city itself was…overwhelming. I have never experienced such a barrage of memories.  Good memories, bad memories, scary ones, happy ones, happy ones layered on sad ones, topped by scary ones, the whole gamut.  In one word, it was surreal.

Sadly and ironically, on the night of my arrival, I received an email from an unknown source which inquired if I had heard the news about my friend.  I had not heard any news, and found out the next day that my old friend passed away last week from “PCP…pneumocystis…something,” from shooting meth on top of complications which resulted from not seeking medical attention when he learned he was HIV positive.  I read the text as I was walking past his former office building and I cried for the first time in months.   I won’t go into too much detail, but this friend was very dear to me at one time, and he was one of the most good-natured, self-sacrificing people I have ever met.   I will miss knowing that he is doing some good deed for someone somewhere on earth, and pray that his spirit is at peace now after struggling for so long with an addiction not unlike my own.

That same day, my boyfriend and I went to the GA Aquarium (his first aquarium experience, my first sober one in Atlanta) , had lunch at the CNN tower, went shopping, and had dinner with my best friend, before ending the night with coffee, tea, and desserts at the most romantic spot I know in Atlanta.

I also went by my old apartment, where my legs turned to jelly and even walking proved challenging (which wasn’t too unfamiliar since it was the place where I experienced the longest and sharpest descent into my disease).  I was met by a host of memories, thoughts, and ghosts at the place.  I had memories of fights, parties, terror, hiding liquor bottles all over the building, throwing up, breaking up, breaking things, lost possessions, lost pride, and lost self.

All of this proved emotionally taxing and I slept four straight hours when I arrived back to my apartment in Asheville this afternoon.

All things considered, it was a good trip, and far more therapeutic than I had anticipated.  I learned a lot about myself, my attitudes, values, and fears from just being there, where my active alcoholism and all the terror associated with it began and culminated almost a year and a half ago. Just being near some of those old places made me feel almost nauseated with a sense of dread and anxiety over the chaos I experienced there.  However, I am excited about returning in August and finishing my degree.  I look forward to being back in the city, because it suits me and I feel at home there.  I also look forward to building new memories and enjoying new friendships and healthy, happy experiences with new friends (and a couple really great, old, dear ones).

Most importantly, perhaps, and certainly a fact that I noted a number of times while I was there, moving back to Atlanta will require reinvention.  As I am the same person I was back then, with adjustments and modifications, so must my perception of the city be.  I am the same, but different, and I must realize that Atlanta is like that too.  I am still and will forever be an alcoholic, and Atlanta will always have alcohol.  But I am also a person that is in the process of growing and exploring, healing and bettering myself, and Atlanta is that too.  All things considered, although it will not be the same, I look forward to doing this thing one more time in Atlanta, and making a life there that is worth something, and as beautiful and fantastic as Atlanta itself.

Dear Atlanta,

I will be coming to see you this week.  I hope that we can get some things straightened out, and I hope that you will not be mad at me for having abandoned you for over a year now.  You know I love you, and I have thought of you every day since I left you, but things are different now and it’s imperative that you know where I stand.

The relationship that we once shared was amazing, way back when.  I know things got bad in the end, and I know it was all my fault.  Really.  But I have changed.  I used to thrive on the electricity that you and I shared.  In you, I found comfort, solace, happiness, a sense of belonging and in the end, misery, deception, hate, and a million little deaths that made me very sick.

I want you to know that I am aware that you never did anything to me.  You never forced me to do anything that I didn’t want to do, and I appreciate that. I know that some of my friends and family regard you as evil, but I know the truth, and it’s that you are wonderful.  I used you for ill, and that was all my doing.

That being said, there are parts of our relationship that have died and will remain dead.   In those “voids”, however, I hope and believe that beautiful things will eventually grow.  I vow to you that I work daily to grow as a person, and to keep the side of me you knew so well at bay.  On a similar note, I also affirm that I will no longer patronize you for the same things I once did.  I no longer love you for your booze or your drugs, but for who you really are, and the wonderful things you have to offer in place of those things.

I hope that you understand, and I have all the faith in the world that the two of us can not pick back up where we left off, but build something completely new and beautiful from the ground up.  I know we can do it.

What do you say?

Love,

Matt

After completing myriad pros/cons lists and various other diagrams and charts (even one that ended up resembling a beautiful, albeit dead tree), I have decided to move back to Atlanta in August.

Feelings about the decision include (but are not limited to):

Excitement, dread, joy, happiness, confusion, sadness, ad infinitum.

I made a very tentative five-year plan.  I don’t even know what five-year plans are supposed to include, or how in-depth they are supposed to be.  What I do know, however, is that to be where I want to be in five years (when I’ll be nearing 30) I need to go ahead and get my motherfucking degree.  The sonofabitch has been very elusive thusfar.  I want to go ahead and knock it out once and for all…and be done with it.  I want to move onwards and upwards, not because I feel I have to, but because I want to.  I want to work in a field in which I am doing something.  Hotels is fine for today, but it’s not fine five years from today.  I want a career in which I can come home and feel that I’ve made a meaningful difference on some level.  I can eat value brands, shop thrifty, wear hand-me-downs…but I cannot work just to make a dime.  I want to work to do something.  Call me crazy.

I could stay here in Asheville, get a degree in two year’s time from UNCA or Western and pay beaucoup money to do it…or I can go back to my school and get my degree in one semester, and pay beaucoup less.

Anyway, the first step in the right direction, I think, is graduation.  From there, I have no idea.  But I’m ready to take it on, I think.  As a recovering drunk, I think a LOT of people in my life (who aren’t even in recovery) take AA’s “One day at a time…” slogan and try to shove it up my ass while I’m not looking.  I know “one day at a time” and I do it.  But one has to learn to balance living in the moment, appreciating it and feeling OK with life, and setting goals and making plans for the future.  I do not like feeling sedentary and listless, biting at the bit or feeling like I’m not living to my potential.  So I’m making steps to correct/avoid that, and to become the person that I feel I am capable of being.

And it frustrates me when people find that so hard to understand.

Anyway, it’s onwards and upwards.  Wish me luck.

Hospitality industry job + economy woes = royally fucked

Due to hours being drastically cut at my work (the hotel industry), I have earned enough money to pay rent and one bill.  That leaves a second and third bill and food.

Situation, dire.

The means to which I am willing to go to make money just to fucking survive is…

Well, suffice it to say that I subscribe to the idea that what one is capable of doing (and willing to do) under normal circumstances becomes skewed in crises (financial or otherwise) and, under the gun, will find himself doing or contemplating doing things of which he never imagined himself doing in better days.

And to think, I was eating healthy before this.  New diet?  Fucking cheap.

There are but few things in life that really cause my anxiety levels to tip the needle into the “Danger!!!” end of the meter (which is bright red, of course).  Worrying about how I am going to make ends meet is one of those things.  Having enough money to provide for myself, keep a roof over my head, and just enough to enjoy an occasional dinner out or a movie here and there helps to ensure my anxiety levels stay on the opposite, “OK” end of the meter (which, not concidentally, is green in hue, like money).

Basically, when my quality of life takes a hit despite hard work (i.e., job cuts hours to the point that I can’t forsee myself coming close to making ends meet), I hibernate and hope for better, brighter, greener days.

And then I wake up, cast blanket, morals and integrity aside, and do what I have to do…

Thirteen months later…

I still see ghosts.  Everywhere.  In the eyes of loved ones.  From behind closed doors, they jump out at me, but somehow, incredibly, I am safe and I am not afraid.

Sometimes I feel as if I am in a whirlwind and it’s all around me, circling, screaming, waiting…

But I feel peace.

I see the same demons that I have known so well dwelling in the souls of people all the time.  I can sense it when they’re around me.  I see them, and I look in their eyes, and I feel sadness.  Something in my soul cries out and I want to scream.  Not from fear, pain, frustration, sadness, anything…

Just scream.

For every ounce, a memory.  A nightmare.  Thousands of ounces, thousands of deaths.

And I am alive.

Don’t tell me miracles don’t exist.