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?
The narrative catalyst that brought about the ultimate physical separation of my wife from myself — when she texted me from Rochester threatening to never bring the children back unless I vacated our rental home — was a story I wrote about a character in a Star Wars role-playing game I’d started playing on the advice of my therapist. To start doing some of my “own” things.
Apparently, to her, it resembled too closely our real family, and she took offense, or was frightened, or merely offended or annoyed, but, in any case– we are not “we” any longer, nor ever shall be again.
I admit I was a bit of a mess becoming messier when this bomb was dropped, but in the past half-year, I’ve cleaned up. I’m with a good woman. I’m not as impulsive and reckless as some might say I had been. Not as many entertaining stories, but then, I don’t live to amuse “you”, eh?
In the course of becoming a better person who is always a worse person when tomorrow’s version glances back at him, my “free” time has diminished, and I’ve left that group of role-players. That group of fellow Star Wars geeks are closer friends to me than nearly any of the others in my orbit who hold that title. When my wif– when I was involuntarily placed into a mental hospital, all but one of the non-family callers were part of that group.
As such, they deserved more than an unexplained cessation of my semi-monthly visits. Here it is, reposted from its permanent location within our campaign files at Obsidian Portal.
My character is (was) Kelyn Langolier. When we meet him, he’s a smuggler. A scoundrel. His father killed himself when Kelyn was on the cusp of adolescence, willing him The Spelljammer — a modified starship with a weird and ancient engine that was stolen by a group of Trandoshan slavers.
As an adult, while Kelyn was off-world working as a legitimate “Space Trucker”, his wife turned up the gas and went to bed with their two daughters. None of them woke up.
Or so he thought.
Due to some dark pedigree of Force-sensitivity unbeknownst to Kelyn, the Imperial Inquisitors orchestrated the murder of Kelyn’s wife, but left clones in place of his abducted daughters, making it appear to be a murder-suicide resulting from the depression of a wife left behind once too often by a trucker trying to make ends meet.
Kelyn’s daughters — Adria and Bella — were tutored by Grand Inquisitor Draco as Sith “witches”. Kelyn turned to smuggling, then stumbled upon the “Dawn of Defiance” — the period between “Revenge of the Sith” and “A New Hope” wherein Senator Bail Organa is funding the nascent rebellion against the growing Empire. Eventually, he recovered his birthright starship, and his companions redeemed and returned his daughters to him.
If you’re a fellow Star Wars geek, you’ll love it. I hope. If you’re not, you might still like it. If you’re my please-soon-to-be-ex-wife, you’ll probably think it’s more about real life than it is.
In any case, here it be: a future-long-time-ago shock that will shit you up. Enjoy.
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.
