There I Still Was

My neck and shoulder had ached since the car accident. The most recent. Elle and I had ended up in some trees just off the interstate at somewhere near seventy at one in the morning and we were both fine except her hand hurt and my car was destroyed and my neck and shoulder ached since. Everyone said we were lucky and I guess we were. Everyone kept saying, "You must be so glad to be alive, right?" and I said "yeah, totally different now," because it's easier than saying, "No man, I could have been done with this, but here I fucking am. Here we fucking are. This conversation. This day. A hundred just like it. Waiting for me. Real lucky."

Nobody wants to hear indifference toward what should have been a life changing moment. Indifference, or disappointment. In August I had found myself accidentally mid-trip on the interstate and quite literally had to scream at myself to not crash into what may have been the same trees because I was afraid that if I died and it was found that I was fucked up then people would assume I had made a mistake, or that for whatever reason, I wouldn't have wanted it. But there I was, a little after one in the morning, Sober. Sitting out of breath, bruises coming to the surface, seatbelt burns brightening, and fucking alive.  I called my mother because I am pretty sure I don't actually have anyone else. She answered and Elle was waking up next to me.

"I crashed the car."

My mother panicked on the phone.

"It's fine." I was jiggling the door handle but it wouldn't open.

"We have to get out of here," Elle said, still half asleep,  or whatever the term is for someone knocked out in a car crash.

Stupidly, I tried to put it in reverse, but the engine made no sound. "Nope," I said.

My mother asked where I was. I said I was near Springer, maybe. I had to go out and find a mile marker.

I tried to open the door again but it wouldn't open. "I can't get the fucking door open," I said to my mother.

She told me to calm down. I unbuckled and pulled at the door handle and kicked and pulled and kicked again and the door swung open and hit a tree and I shoved myself out.

My mother, on the phone, in my ear, kept telling me to stay calm. Kept asking me if I was okay. If Elle was okay. Yes, yes, yes, I kept replying. I walked up the embankment and slipped once or twice but when I got to the top we were at a mile marker and I told my mother which one and she said she was on her way. She said she loved me and she hung up. I looked at the car and Elle was pushing her door open also. Headlights came near and pulled to the side of the interstate and stopped.

The two doors I could see of the Jeep opened and on the side I couldn't see the other two doors also opened.

I couldn't see them at first, but once they stepped in front of the headlights I could. They were thin men, not unhealthy though. All thin features, and the faces of working men, real working men, not in an office. A farm maybe. They all had blonde hair and I thought, maybe concussed, that they were all the same person. They all looked the same. They were all the same. All four. 

Two went down the hill and one went to the back of the Jeep after looking the scene over and one handed me a cell phone. "Call the police."

"Okay," I said and used his phone. It wasn't locked and I didn't use my phone. 

The other one that had stayed with us topside came back with flares, and while I described to the police what happened he lit them and set them down then stood next to the one that handed me the phone. The other two came back up the hill and I could see Elle following them.

"You'll be all right. Help is coming," the one with the phone said. Another nodded and they all climbed back into the Jeep and drove off and in the light of the flares I held Elle and we waited for the police or my mother.

"What happened?" Elle asked.

"I don't know."

"I mean... Did you fall asleep?"

"No."

"Is it a dream?"

"I don't think so."

"I don't feel okay."

"We have to."

"I'm glad you're okay," she said.

I kissed her head. "I'm glad you're okay. I am so sorry."

The police came first. Then the tow truck. Then my mother.

There I was. Sober and a little after one in the morning, holding a girl I had loved and betrayed and watching one of the last pillars, crushed and bent, pulled from the woods and into the past. 

There I still was. 

In Summation

The whole year was waves and mistakes and trials. I felt like goddamned Bambi on the ice. First and immediately the loss. The guilt. Void and vacuum. Pieces of it fell off over time, but others, they lasted for months, and some remain still. I felt nothing. Fucked everyone and saw and felt nothing. Drank and drugged until my body died and when I didn't it shook and felt like it was dying and I wanted to be seen and noticed and loved and I wanted someone to say "stop" but they didn't and now looking back, it was unfair of me to hope they would. Unfair to them. I don't think anyone knew, really knew, what I was doing. They knew I was drinking. They knew I was getting fucked up. But I hid most everything. I couldn't sleep. I would go days and days and sometimes a week here and there without it but people would ask and I'd say "oh, I caught a few hours last night", but it wasn't true and really I was killing a box of wine and painting over photos of the past and burning them in the bathtub and listening to Philip Glass for hours and crying because I couldn't understand. I wanted to drink it all away. To fuck it all away. I wanted to start another band and I'd write songs and sing it away and then I'd feel better. I'd feel right. I'd feel like maybe some good was coming out of it all, but by the time about seven or eight months had gone and I was looking down into another no one's eyes again and still felt absolutely void, I knew it was all nothing.

There was no solution but time.

I didn't have time. 

I didn't want time. 

I wanted to drink and I wanted to paint and I wanted to fuck and I wanted to die. In that order.

I had lost a lot of weight. I had lost a lot of money. The car accident. The behavior. The rejections and reverberations. I mostly just had a few spoons of peanut butter every day and at the time I didn't see anything wrong. It was good and I wasn't hungry and I thought I wasn't sad. A friend had convinced me to see a therapist and they had convinced me to take medications and I saw a doctor about my insomnia and I broke down in her office and had cried for a half hour and when my friend asked how the appointment went I said "It was fine. Got dark, but you know, normal," and I had laughed because that's what people do, right? They laugh? The doctor prescribed me a bunch of shit and diagnosed me with a bunch of shit, most of which I already knew. I wiped my eyes and paid my copay and drove back to work and laughed and lied. 

There was no point in truth.

I didn't have a truth.

I didn't want a truth.

I wanted to drink and I wanted to fuck and I wanted to die. In that order.

I kept trying to quit drinking. I quit drinking at work, but I was killing two bottles of wine before I'd go in, another bottle on lunch, and another three or so after work. It's no wonder, really, where my fucking money went and I'm amazed I was able to sustain it. Drive to Saratoga and find someone to buy me drinks and take whatever they had laying around and fuck whoever I ran into and die in their bed and crawl away in the morning. Never ashamed, but always horribly fucking sober. Liquor stores usually open around ten, which is four hours of misery. I had made a point to fuck a lot of people that inspired jealousy through the years. I thought it would bring closure or revenge or satisfaction or victory, but none of those things happened. Well, maybe one did, but that was it, and only momentarily. Seeing lit eyes to mine, and I remember feeling alien and wondering how I was being seen and why. Three or four had said they had been "waiting" and I only thought "shut the fuck up. I need a drink." Stand over the sink and pound a tall glass of wine. Pour another, pound it too, pour another and a glass of water for her and go back to the bedroom and hand her the water and drink the wine. Lay down and stare at the ceiling. Arms around me. Nothing in me. Wait for peace. Wait for fucking anything.

There was no point in anything.

I didn't have anything.

I didn't want anything.

I wanted to drink and I wanted to die.

My alcoholism began sometime around 2012 and by January of 2015 it wasn't debateable. By February it became a gauntlet, and beyond that, kamikazee. In April a doctor had told me to stop drinking immediately. My liver was shitting out and if I kept it up I'd die. I left her office, went home and threw back a half box of wine. My friends took me out that night and I blew a hundred and fifty bucks on shitty stadium beer and thought "okay, one last night" and in the morning I thought, "no, this is fine."

Drink. Die. 

That was fine.

Art meant nothing. Girls meant nothing. Life was (and mostly is) a fucking joke and I thought sometimes that it just couldn't be real. That I must be dreaming and imagining it all. I would find myself, sometimes, shitfaced lying on some floor and convincing myself that none of it was real. I was dreaming and I knew my brain played horrible tricks on me and this was only one of them. I shaved my head. My beard. None of that was real and I existed without it. I shed my past and my future. Neither were real. Neither mattered. I existed without them and I thought if I could take one more breath I'd be okay and If I took another after I'd be lucky, and now, months later, I feel lucky.

I keep breathing and I keep waking up and I am starting to see. The future. The life. The chance. Opportunity. And remarkably, you.

I want to love. I want to paint. I want to fuck. I want to drink. In that order.

I want to live.