Six months. 31.5 times six. 93 days? I’m not particularly mathematically adept at this time.
Nevertheless and irregardless– off the wagon.
First, it was the party for a friend of my lover. Strong through an hour, maybe two. Then anxious. Then was asked to get a drink for her. Hers were weak. I nod and smile. To the bar. Drop a twenty. “Double vodka.”
It was downhill from there. Down into “Proud Mary in the style of Ike and Tina Turner” at some dive called “Longneckers”. Down to a $100 cab ride two turns north and west because, apparently, I slurred “Spring St” into “Springville”. At least I didn’t drive.
But the next morning, with the special lady’s car an hour’s traffic south in Depew? The shower handle breaks off. I’m driving down Transit (the reverse route the cab driver should have taken) in oppressive Sunday morning heat, wondering if the {jury,jerry}-rigged hose was still attached to the drain, or if my apartment was (once again) flooded.
We made it back. It was a good day in the end. I topped off the proverbial, but it was good. In my philosophy of sobriety, a stumble doesn’t necessarily cripple.
A rough week later, after kilobytes of text too tawdry to re-late, the lover and I were back on terms of endearment. We just wanted to *be* together. We did.
I picked up a four-pack of Ommegang Rare Vos before “we did”.
I could barely finish the first. Half of the second, the rest down the drain. It’s a pathetic ABV, anyway.
Next week, things are much worse. I “dialed” a number with three digits. Wasn’t pretty. Swore I’d never do that to someone, but I did.
Gotta swear off swearing.
375mL of … New Amsterdam? I walked for it. To “Liquor Store” on Main in Williamsville. Very somber in the shop. I always play a role. This was the role of the reluctant reprise of an alcoholic. (No, not *that* disease-implicative term, but let’s use the word for expedience before I lose interest in this post.) Took it home. Maybe three shots in three separate talls of Sodastream tonics. Just enough for a buzz, and the remainder went down the drain.
Last night.
Another 375. Sobieski. My old friend.
Downed half that one.
It was enough to conjure the breath of the dragon. It was enough to steer me off and leave me waking to a head full of webs and wisps. It was enough to make me regret.
And? Tonight.
Six-pack of Commodore Perry. I’m experimenting, see? I’m working out what quantity might bring the quality that keeps me from coming home every goddamned night and going straight to bed. I’m figuring what might be enough to erase the mistakes I’ve forced out of recall’s range and be content with myself for an evening.
To the credit of the experiment, I have spilt some admirable word combinations this night.
But.
But … is it worth it?
I can’t be a drunk again. Not a “modern drunkard”. Not an “alcoholic”. Not … not what I said I wouldn’t be.
Am I weak? Am I paralyzed with a fear of being alone with my self?
Maybe every chance ticked itself off the availables on Memorial Day in 2011. Can I only choose one role? If I fail at it, am I doomed to spiral, grasping, down into nothing?
No time right now for a detailed update, so here’s a few of the highlights since my last major life update back near November of 2012.
0x01: Met a wonderful woman at work. She wore a poncho one day. I said, “It’s impossible to be unhappy wearing a poncho.” It’s a Mighty Boosh reference. Next day she left an orange juice bottle on my desk wearing a little poncho. We are still together, despite my sometimes difficult personality. She’s the best female I’ve ever had in my life, with the exception of the one who brought me into the world and the ones I brought here.
0x02: Started “vaping”, as per the penultimate (as of this writing) “Digital/Analog Freaky Smoke” entry. I’ve got 90% lung capacity now. Pretty good for smoking raw zware tobacco for two decades. No more wheezing at the end of a long exhalation, and no more of that stench you only notice when you stop smoking.
0x03: Shaved my head. Kept the goatee and mustache. Without facial hair, a man ain’t a man. A bald man without facial hair is demoted all the way to a baby. Grew the hair back. Shaved it again, and the current HEAD is bald with beard.
0x04: Contact with the girls has continued at $50 a week for a two-hour supervised visit. I contend that the $200 would be better spent directly on the children who want free access to their father. My opinions do not matter to anyone who makes decisions about my participation in my family. Namely: lawyers, this police state of ours, and a woman apparently scorned.
0x05: Continue to see Dr Gandalf. In March we were both surprised to realize it had been a year since my involuntary hospitalization at the Erie County Medical Centre. We’ve made a lot of progress. I’ve made a lot of progress, mostly credited to my new special lady friend. Needless to say, grieving the loss of ones family is “difficult” — even if that loss is (mostly) figurative. Maybe worse in this case, since my daughters aren’t “gone” from the world, but simply being kept from me. They’re not silent in their graves– they live and cry and need their father, yet are restricted to a few hours a month of closely supervised visits that preclude so much as a whisper between us.
0x06: My oldest daughter turns ten soon. I’ve missed over a year of the last years of her childhood. Girl? She’ll be a woman soon.
Orders of protection are generally classified as either “stay-away” or “refrain-from”. The former specifies that a party (the “respondent”) avoid all contact with another party (the “petitioner”) and perhaps other associated parties, such as children under the petitioner’s care. The latter simply requires the respondent to refrain from some specific behavior.
If the petitioner is in a state of desperation or urgency (e.g. being contacted by an exish-spouse with undue frequency and in states of inebriation and/or otherwise being a nuisance), s/he may not know or (understandably) care to learn the difference between these two types of orders. S/he may ask that the respondent be denied any communication with or access to his or herself and their children. S/he may have felt this was his or her only recourse, and, if s/he is a “she”, the petition will likely be stamped by a “family” court judge without consideration and “he” will be denied his right to be an active and available father.
The more you know…
If such a bureaucratic miscalculation is made, the petitioner may request that the order be vacated by the issuing judge of the original or a subsequently amended version of the order.
If the petitioner still fears some manner of harassment from the respondent, s/he may request the aforementioned “refrain-from” order which, if granted, would result in the arrest of the respondent for contempt of court should s/he “misbehave”. In cases that do not involve violence, a “refrain-from” order is logically the best and fairest choice. And, from the perspective of the petitioner, it puts even greater pressure on the respondent to modify his or her behavior, as s/he is still allowed to communicate with the petitioner, but if the petitioner construes any such communication as harassing or otherwise in violation of the order, s/he may call the authorities and have the respondent immediately arrested.
In the author’s opinion, such risk is worth being allowed access to his or her children.
Furthermore, assuming those children are in no danger from the respondent and were not exposed to the alleged harassment, a single-party refrain-from order is a more fair and just recourse for a petitioner who may have a legitimate reason to limit their communication and feels compelled to seek legal intervention in the matter.
0x07: I’m on Wellbutrin ER 300mg/day, Adderall ER 60mg/day, Klonopin 0.5mg/6h as needed, and some residual Provigil. The Provigil (presumably in conjunction w/the Adderall) gives me the anxiety somethin’ fierce, so it’s rarely used.
0x08: The divorce continues to crawl along. An agreement was made that if a professional evaluated me as suitable for unsupervised visitation, it would be done. The evaluation was made. It hasn’t been done. The next court date is in a week. It will probably be postponed. Again.
0x09: Complicating the divorce issues, my place of work shut down last month. I immediately notified my lawyer of this. I promptly applied for state assistance, and for a modification of the support order. Because speaking with the mother of my children would mean my going to jail, I was unable to freely communicate regarding any issues of financial needs. My modification petition was a blunt request for a “suspension”, since NYS unemployment insurance (“UI”) would barely cover my rent and bare essentials– not counting food as an essential.
0x0A: Got a job about two weeks later, mostly thanks to a good friend from the old place. Received a total of one UI check for about $300. Attended the scheduled support modification hearing after filling out another dozen pages of financial details. Opposing counsel requested it be rolled into the matrimonial proceedings. I don’t know what my obligations are now. My communications with anyone in this debacle has been unreliable, sporadic, downright refused, punished with jail time, costly, necessarily vague, rarely understood or fully addressed– it’s been shite, o my brothers.
That just about brings y’all up to date. I suppose I didn’t have to put it in bullet-list form, but I didn’t want to change the title.
The past year and a half has been, mostly, some kind of a special Hell. A relationship with a woman triggered it, and a relationship with a better woman has helped turn things around. In any case, I’m a better man than I was last year.
If we can’t say, every day, that we’re better than the other-self behind us in the clone-queue of our life, then we might as well be dead.
An account change notice from Verizon inspired a brief and generous presumption that my bill would be lowered due to a large chunk of monthly payment having been extracted.
That was, of course, a ridiculous notion.
In any case, friendly advice to the genital pubic: if an exing-relation wished to extract eir service from a shared martial{sic} account, said relation could get an independent line and tether Internet access to eir house over 4G, getting faster speeds than what s/he pays for DSL now.
S/he may not be able to do that on eir current account, as each line may have a usage cap since the unfortunate demise several months ago of Verizon’s omni-benificent data-usage grandfather.
Also, s/he could get eir own auto insurance, and probably at a cheaper rate than half of what the other-half pays now, and considering the other-half was probably court-ordered to pay half of what that half had been salaried, and will be paying half (or less than half) now that said half’s company may have expired — well, when the other-half finds a new job that likely will pay half-of-half of that previous half, such a cost-cutting measure would not be for the other-half’s sake but for the sake of all involved.
And eir medical insurance may expire at the end of the month.
And s/he should consider public assistance.
And s/he should definitely find a job that pays the money required to keep eir children in food and clothing and under shelter.
Especially if s/he hasn’t managed to do so in twelve or more months since kicking eir sole provider out of the house, presumably because s/he has been too busy holding eir children hostage from the other parent with the friendly help of the Mrs Doubtfire gub’mint.
Speaking of which: When one is allowed to see ones children only through professionally supervised visitation, and such a court-ordered condition is predicated on demonstrably false accusations involving no danger of harm to said person or eir shared children– Well, they would be demonstrated false (in this hypothetical case) if the state cared to afford a parent accused of such wispy, nebulous charges an audience to do so, and considered the emotional support of a single parent (even a *shudder*“father”) more important to their well-being than an inconceivably remote chance of danger to them that was never actually claimed by anyone—
Er.
When that is the case, one should consider whether or not the money paid for such visitation might better be spent on feeding ones children.
