ControlDaddy
Bluelighter
A few mornings after my ex wife told me she was divorcing me, that there would be no trial separation and no chance of reconciliation, I stopped bawling and howling like a baby crucified and I summed up enough manhood to resolve to at least make my exit from the marriage as proud as it could possibly be, at this. My wife went to her job, she had a great work ethic, and never missed a day. Missing days of work, were one of my principal joys in life, but I admired her for it. Maybe it is not too late in that regard for me.
I pulled on my farmer boots, and tried to find work to do around the house and the property, which was difficult as my nerves were beyond frazzled. I focused on fixing things I had broken over the years when drunk, and never got around to repairing because I would rather slam pints of Svedka and pass out, all day, every day. I didn't manage the stoic demeanor I hoped, and I broke down a couple of times to sob at my unfortunate situation. There was a patio door I had thrown myself through, so I was framing in the new one, so there was a very long extension cord attached to a heavy duty circular saw I had been using. Three times, I felt the best way to express how I felt about the rest of my life, would be to pick up that saw, hold down the trigger to make that ultra high frequency whirr, and jump into the pool holding it. I didn't do it, because I wasn't sure it would kill me and I am a stickler for not botching suicide as it is one of the most important things I will have done, if I did do it.
I was exhausted by the time I usually made us supper, but I wanted to be working for a change when my wife got home. So, I gathered up a bunch of small projects and sat at the picnic table in the center of the large patio area, and commenced to tinker with them. Sobs, came, and wracked my body. I took off the handkerchief from my forehead, and wiped the big snots coming out of my nose away. When my wife did get home, I was back to sobbing hysterically as I trying to write something to my future self in my cell phone, that would stop him from drinking ever again. I got nowhere with it, as I still haven't the faintest clue how that is done. My wife, who had not said a mean word to me in eight years of marriage until a few nights before, walked up quietly behind me and cleared her throat.
I stammered out some contrite anti-affirmations, followed by actual affirmations, and tried to describe my confusion. Shouldn't all those good qualities offset my negative characteristics and net me some neutral result? Even a zero was better than how it was all going to end up now. I hoped, the steadfast affection and understanding she had shown me throughout our ten year love affair, would come back at least a little bit now that a few days had passed. I waited for her to walk up behind me and embrace me.
She did not, she stood about one meter behind me, and in a soft, calm voice, proceeded to dress me down completely. She simply said she agreed with me about all of my worst aspects, most of which were mortal sins, and enough of those it was pointless to list the venal ones, easier to assume there would be lots of those as well. She then took each of my positive qualities, one by one, and with simple, clear language, example instances, and leaving nothing equivocal at all in her arguments banished all of these from my identity.
"You say you are a handyman, with hundreds of skills practiced and under your belt, but you never fix anything or make household improvements in the five years we have owned this homestead."
"You say you are a martial artist, and thus built a mixed martial arts gym in our house that you used once a season, but you also only went to practice with your team, or study with one of your sensei, that infrequently as well."
"You say you are a cannabis farmer, and you have taken over half the barn with tents, and filled it with the top of the line equipment at great expense, saying you would recoup all of it with your first crop. Well, none of your crops made so much as dime, you gave away a little bit to friends and family, but you smoked the rest of it yourself, trying in vain not to substitute it for alcohol."
"You say you are training yourself to be an electrical engineer, and when we first met you made me those two darling electronic jewelry pieces. Excited by that success, you spent God knows how much money on electronics, and a laptop just for this hobby, dozens of Arduinos and Beagleboards and the most expensive maker kits and tools and what have you built since those two pieces of jewelry? One kit, correct? Taking you a whole day, if that? I thought so."
She went on like this for about one hour. I just sat there, knowing she knew I couldn't look her in the eye and hear what she had to say to me.
Thus, I hit the terminal velocity for my descent into an abyss I had been heading into since a bit more than three years before. I had been misdiagnosed with a personality disorder, which determined that I was a hopeless case, as people with this disorder never really recover. I would ride the waves of my good fortune as long as they would carry me, become the best mental health wizard I could be in an attempt to stabilize my irregular and dysfunctional emotional states, but I would also became complacent in battling my addictions, and willingly disabled as a professional in my field.
When she was finished, I was committed to totally letting go of any claims of success, wealth, security, or my possession of any the character traits that had created those for me. It was the last time I would let any accomplishment, skill, ability, or past good deed buoy my self-esteem for about one year and a half.
Which brings up to the last time I found sleep. I slept more than an hour only three times the month before this one. That would have been March, which started for me with near the end of what I thought would be an epic seven to nine, maybe ten day meth binge. Instead, a week of March had already elapsed before I forced myself to take a break. One night of ragged, alcohol induced nonsense apocolypse world dreams, and I was back at the meth for another long run, and had been repeating that until a week of April had also been burned, doing nothing but meth and meth things. Meth things are either literally maturbatory, or they are so figuratively. Enjoyable at the time, perhaps, but pointless and frivolous with no long term benefits at all, just something lost for no gain. So, the night before the one coming up soon, I slept last, and I slept very soundly with the aid of both booze and an antipsychotic dose of an antipsychotic medication.
Now, in my life lately, the only matter of business I have attended to at all, is the necessary efforts to evacuate my former stronghold of what possessions I can afford to store long term, so that it could be made ready to put on the housing market, as well as all of the tasks necessary to uphold a divorce settlement agreement, where I committed a useless, romantic, ill-advised financial suicide in order to offer my ex wife some form of reparations. I learned, only after that act had served as a balm as much as it could for my guilt, that it wasn't enough money to heal her or enough contrition for my salvation, as well as too much to throw away on such a wild goose chase as it was. The only true reparations in this case, are something I may never be able to pay in full: the remaining life I have left should be lived with a fervent determination to abstain completely from drinking alcohol, the one thing that again and again has proven it can undo anything, and everything good in me.
I grew up moving from home to home, usually not staying anywhere for a year or more, until I was already thirty and halfway to forty. About one year after moving in and making it my own, I started to notice a new fixture in my aura, or sense of my own being. It was the home and the land it was on itself, such that when I was present, I could feel all of it at once around me, grounding me, and giving me a sense of security I think most people have most of their lives and take for granted. When I was away from home, it still was a part of me, the place to return to when done with outside business, and also a safe place to retreat to in case business didn't go my way.
My real estate went on the market the morning before I slept, and I viewed the listing and for the first time saw the photos I had hired made. It was a comprehensive catalog of my life's work realized. My forever home. A perfect sanctuary, playland, and nursery for my hopes and dreams. I had invested almost all of my fortune to purchase it and make it just so for me. A photo for every little special place in that most special of places for me. The home, I would grow old with that wonderful woman, watch her skin turn all the way paper thin as she grew ever dearer to me, and the only place I ever envisioned my own death, in old age, not by my own hand.
In the dream, I was at my home for the weekend long open houses; and this would be the first time I was allowed to see or speak to my former bride in more than a year. I was there only to do my best salesman routine, to get those buyers competing to be the highest bidder, as I had done when we sold the condo we had when we were newlyweds. I knew not to expect anything, nevertheless I am still a man in love, so I couldn't help holding out hope for something, anything, to survive our divorce. I was conscious that her civility towards me was complete, as I would expect as it was one of the strongest family traits in her line. Constant civility, no matter what, part of the reason I was so bewildered by the sudden divorce. But the constancy of it here was strained, from the rigors of the divorce process I suppose. This was the only time I had ever seen her strain to act out that charade.
I thought, perhaps she felt weakened from losing what was once a piece of herself, the wedded me she had gained as a needed partner. We shored up each other's weaknesses, didn't we? Certainly. I knew I had once been a big source of strength to her, and in our marriage, after all our bottom line - no matter what we sold this central asset for - was worth more than double what we had in wealth when we first got together. Surely, she must be missing my easy affluence and the way it seemed to attract money even in my misadventures. Even if all the other things I was once were now lost, this weekend it would be hard for anyone to not see my hand in what was going to be huge payday for her. Even the small portion of this asset that I deemed I deserved was a tidy sum, nothing to be sneezed at. Surely that, and maybe even some of my other handsome parts she was now missing, could explain why she seemed so ragged, and on the brink of a breakdown.
After two days of schmoozing and gesturing and putting on aires for the buyers, so they might see the place as even more valuable than comparable homes were, there was an hour or so set aside I had been looking forward to throughout the weekend. The agenda called for cocktails for the now two separate selling parties, with their mutual realtor. Now, this being a dream I suppose, all of the potential buyers would have submitted their formal offers by then, along with persona heartfelt letters expressing why they were most deserving to be the new owners of our home. I remember the joy we shared at this point when we sold together as partners, another time in my life I felt at last that I was "winning".
I even thought that the proposal I was about to make, was sure to be acceptable. Now that my ex-wife had her own wealth, enough to buy a modest home outright and still put away the rest for security, she would probably want to get on with that as soon as was feasible. Meanwhile, I would be happy to take over the upkeep, mowing the lawn, feeding the chickens, and so forth, and stay in the home for the next few months until the deal was closing. It would finally give me a chance to have some closure, and say goodbye to this place so I could move on in my mind.
As I rounded the shed for my tractor, passed the chicken coup, down past the little fountain pond, on the patio around the pool I saw the party drawing together. I was startled, however to see a tall, handsome man, about ten years my senior, sitting next to my ex-wife, holding her hand in a soothing way. If that startled me, the next thing I noticed caused my heart and my stomach to fall through my body completely. There was my poor ex-wife, who I thought so fatigued and diminished lately, as upright and capable and in control of herself as she had ever been, and positively beaming with love for the man embracing her hand. I staggered up, now the one who would appear a ghost of himself, feeling much diminished already.
I will spare you every detail of the next hour of my dream, suffice it to say that I would feel much more diminished when it was over. Her new beau, which I thought she might be a long time if ever before the would begin to seek, let alone find, was my match in every way. And then some. He was from old-money, but very successful himself, and he would be raising her lifestyle many grades to esteem his own. He was a glib speaker, very confident and self-assured, and he seemed very knowledgeable on everything anyone brought up. On top of all that, he was humorous and funny in an everyman kind of way, which tempered any thoughts of calling him a snob. All said, he and I shared many of the qualities of our favorite television drunk characters, and of course it came up that while he has never had any addiction issues with alcohol or of any other kind, he simply preferred not to drink outside of champagne toasts at weddings. But, was as he as handsome as me? Some little spark of pride, or vanity, inside me wanted to ask this out loud. I didn't bother to pit myself against him in such a subjective way, especially considering my ex wife thought that the least of my merits, and pointed out that to her it was more of a liability. Still, I knew the answer was that even though older than me by some years, had not lived his so hard, and he was a striking man as well.
I woke up, as I was considering that my subconscious was about to deliver to me his references and recommendations, stud fees earned to date, and standardized scores in lovemaking, shagging, doing the nasty, and fucking like an animal.
I spent the last day or so trying to figure out what this all means to me. What is my secret, fervent wish? That is what dreams like this are supposed to represent.
I decided on a practical course of action. First, I am going to binge as fast as I can through the rest of my stash. When that is gone, I am not going to reup again, until I have met certain criteria.
Also, without methamphetamine dragging its ass and stretching everything out to its maximum, including recreation time, and if alcohol is not sending me to the sanitarium every few months, I think I will be able to grow that admirable work ethic I mentioned at the start of this essay. The consistency will be good for me, and I need new things to take pride in, now that I have seen everything else fail me. At least, when I become overdependent on any one thing it has lost effectiveness for me, so new things are needed to spread the load. It is time to grow up again.
Finally, I will be adding my walls o' text, and moving much of my good samaritan energy, over to our recovery forums, and see how those might aid me and if I can be of aid to the bluelighters that congregate there. Fear not, fellow tweakers, verbose motherfuckers, readers who aren't scared of a little more reading, the diverted, the deranged, the ravers, and seekers - I can write with full strength methamphetamine flavor even when no meth cometh near me. All you have to do is inspire it or plain ask me to.
I pulled on my farmer boots, and tried to find work to do around the house and the property, which was difficult as my nerves were beyond frazzled. I focused on fixing things I had broken over the years when drunk, and never got around to repairing because I would rather slam pints of Svedka and pass out, all day, every day. I didn't manage the stoic demeanor I hoped, and I broke down a couple of times to sob at my unfortunate situation. There was a patio door I had thrown myself through, so I was framing in the new one, so there was a very long extension cord attached to a heavy duty circular saw I had been using. Three times, I felt the best way to express how I felt about the rest of my life, would be to pick up that saw, hold down the trigger to make that ultra high frequency whirr, and jump into the pool holding it. I didn't do it, because I wasn't sure it would kill me and I am a stickler for not botching suicide as it is one of the most important things I will have done, if I did do it.
I was exhausted by the time I usually made us supper, but I wanted to be working for a change when my wife got home. So, I gathered up a bunch of small projects and sat at the picnic table in the center of the large patio area, and commenced to tinker with them. Sobs, came, and wracked my body. I took off the handkerchief from my forehead, and wiped the big snots coming out of my nose away. When my wife did get home, I was back to sobbing hysterically as I trying to write something to my future self in my cell phone, that would stop him from drinking ever again. I got nowhere with it, as I still haven't the faintest clue how that is done. My wife, who had not said a mean word to me in eight years of marriage until a few nights before, walked up quietly behind me and cleared her throat.
I stammered out some contrite anti-affirmations, followed by actual affirmations, and tried to describe my confusion. Shouldn't all those good qualities offset my negative characteristics and net me some neutral result? Even a zero was better than how it was all going to end up now. I hoped, the steadfast affection and understanding she had shown me throughout our ten year love affair, would come back at least a little bit now that a few days had passed. I waited for her to walk up behind me and embrace me.
She did not, she stood about one meter behind me, and in a soft, calm voice, proceeded to dress me down completely. She simply said she agreed with me about all of my worst aspects, most of which were mortal sins, and enough of those it was pointless to list the venal ones, easier to assume there would be lots of those as well. She then took each of my positive qualities, one by one, and with simple, clear language, example instances, and leaving nothing equivocal at all in her arguments banished all of these from my identity.
"You say you are a handyman, with hundreds of skills practiced and under your belt, but you never fix anything or make household improvements in the five years we have owned this homestead."
"You say you are a martial artist, and thus built a mixed martial arts gym in our house that you used once a season, but you also only went to practice with your team, or study with one of your sensei, that infrequently as well."
"You say you are a cannabis farmer, and you have taken over half the barn with tents, and filled it with the top of the line equipment at great expense, saying you would recoup all of it with your first crop. Well, none of your crops made so much as dime, you gave away a little bit to friends and family, but you smoked the rest of it yourself, trying in vain not to substitute it for alcohol."
"You say you are training yourself to be an electrical engineer, and when we first met you made me those two darling electronic jewelry pieces. Excited by that success, you spent God knows how much money on electronics, and a laptop just for this hobby, dozens of Arduinos and Beagleboards and the most expensive maker kits and tools and what have you built since those two pieces of jewelry? One kit, correct? Taking you a whole day, if that? I thought so."
She went on like this for about one hour. I just sat there, knowing she knew I couldn't look her in the eye and hear what she had to say to me.
Thus, I hit the terminal velocity for my descent into an abyss I had been heading into since a bit more than three years before. I had been misdiagnosed with a personality disorder, which determined that I was a hopeless case, as people with this disorder never really recover. I would ride the waves of my good fortune as long as they would carry me, become the best mental health wizard I could be in an attempt to stabilize my irregular and dysfunctional emotional states, but I would also became complacent in battling my addictions, and willingly disabled as a professional in my field.
When she was finished, I was committed to totally letting go of any claims of success, wealth, security, or my possession of any the character traits that had created those for me. It was the last time I would let any accomplishment, skill, ability, or past good deed buoy my self-esteem for about one year and a half.
Which brings up to the last time I found sleep. I slept more than an hour only three times the month before this one. That would have been March, which started for me with near the end of what I thought would be an epic seven to nine, maybe ten day meth binge. Instead, a week of March had already elapsed before I forced myself to take a break. One night of ragged, alcohol induced nonsense apocolypse world dreams, and I was back at the meth for another long run, and had been repeating that until a week of April had also been burned, doing nothing but meth and meth things. Meth things are either literally maturbatory, or they are so figuratively. Enjoyable at the time, perhaps, but pointless and frivolous with no long term benefits at all, just something lost for no gain. So, the night before the one coming up soon, I slept last, and I slept very soundly with the aid of both booze and an antipsychotic dose of an antipsychotic medication.
Now, in my life lately, the only matter of business I have attended to at all, is the necessary efforts to evacuate my former stronghold of what possessions I can afford to store long term, so that it could be made ready to put on the housing market, as well as all of the tasks necessary to uphold a divorce settlement agreement, where I committed a useless, romantic, ill-advised financial suicide in order to offer my ex wife some form of reparations. I learned, only after that act had served as a balm as much as it could for my guilt, that it wasn't enough money to heal her or enough contrition for my salvation, as well as too much to throw away on such a wild goose chase as it was. The only true reparations in this case, are something I may never be able to pay in full: the remaining life I have left should be lived with a fervent determination to abstain completely from drinking alcohol, the one thing that again and again has proven it can undo anything, and everything good in me.
I grew up moving from home to home, usually not staying anywhere for a year or more, until I was already thirty and halfway to forty. About one year after moving in and making it my own, I started to notice a new fixture in my aura, or sense of my own being. It was the home and the land it was on itself, such that when I was present, I could feel all of it at once around me, grounding me, and giving me a sense of security I think most people have most of their lives and take for granted. When I was away from home, it still was a part of me, the place to return to when done with outside business, and also a safe place to retreat to in case business didn't go my way.
My real estate went on the market the morning before I slept, and I viewed the listing and for the first time saw the photos I had hired made. It was a comprehensive catalog of my life's work realized. My forever home. A perfect sanctuary, playland, and nursery for my hopes and dreams. I had invested almost all of my fortune to purchase it and make it just so for me. A photo for every little special place in that most special of places for me. The home, I would grow old with that wonderful woman, watch her skin turn all the way paper thin as she grew ever dearer to me, and the only place I ever envisioned my own death, in old age, not by my own hand.
In the dream, I was at my home for the weekend long open houses; and this would be the first time I was allowed to see or speak to my former bride in more than a year. I was there only to do my best salesman routine, to get those buyers competing to be the highest bidder, as I had done when we sold the condo we had when we were newlyweds. I knew not to expect anything, nevertheless I am still a man in love, so I couldn't help holding out hope for something, anything, to survive our divorce. I was conscious that her civility towards me was complete, as I would expect as it was one of the strongest family traits in her line. Constant civility, no matter what, part of the reason I was so bewildered by the sudden divorce. But the constancy of it here was strained, from the rigors of the divorce process I suppose. This was the only time I had ever seen her strain to act out that charade.
I thought, perhaps she felt weakened from losing what was once a piece of herself, the wedded me she had gained as a needed partner. We shored up each other's weaknesses, didn't we? Certainly. I knew I had once been a big source of strength to her, and in our marriage, after all our bottom line - no matter what we sold this central asset for - was worth more than double what we had in wealth when we first got together. Surely, she must be missing my easy affluence and the way it seemed to attract money even in my misadventures. Even if all the other things I was once were now lost, this weekend it would be hard for anyone to not see my hand in what was going to be huge payday for her. Even the small portion of this asset that I deemed I deserved was a tidy sum, nothing to be sneezed at. Surely that, and maybe even some of my other handsome parts she was now missing, could explain why she seemed so ragged, and on the brink of a breakdown.
After two days of schmoozing and gesturing and putting on aires for the buyers, so they might see the place as even more valuable than comparable homes were, there was an hour or so set aside I had been looking forward to throughout the weekend. The agenda called for cocktails for the now two separate selling parties, with their mutual realtor. Now, this being a dream I suppose, all of the potential buyers would have submitted their formal offers by then, along with persona heartfelt letters expressing why they were most deserving to be the new owners of our home. I remember the joy we shared at this point when we sold together as partners, another time in my life I felt at last that I was "winning".
I even thought that the proposal I was about to make, was sure to be acceptable. Now that my ex-wife had her own wealth, enough to buy a modest home outright and still put away the rest for security, she would probably want to get on with that as soon as was feasible. Meanwhile, I would be happy to take over the upkeep, mowing the lawn, feeding the chickens, and so forth, and stay in the home for the next few months until the deal was closing. It would finally give me a chance to have some closure, and say goodbye to this place so I could move on in my mind.
As I rounded the shed for my tractor, passed the chicken coup, down past the little fountain pond, on the patio around the pool I saw the party drawing together. I was startled, however to see a tall, handsome man, about ten years my senior, sitting next to my ex-wife, holding her hand in a soothing way. If that startled me, the next thing I noticed caused my heart and my stomach to fall through my body completely. There was my poor ex-wife, who I thought so fatigued and diminished lately, as upright and capable and in control of herself as she had ever been, and positively beaming with love for the man embracing her hand. I staggered up, now the one who would appear a ghost of himself, feeling much diminished already.
I will spare you every detail of the next hour of my dream, suffice it to say that I would feel much more diminished when it was over. Her new beau, which I thought she might be a long time if ever before the would begin to seek, let alone find, was my match in every way. And then some. He was from old-money, but very successful himself, and he would be raising her lifestyle many grades to esteem his own. He was a glib speaker, very confident and self-assured, and he seemed very knowledgeable on everything anyone brought up. On top of all that, he was humorous and funny in an everyman kind of way, which tempered any thoughts of calling him a snob. All said, he and I shared many of the qualities of our favorite television drunk characters, and of course it came up that while he has never had any addiction issues with alcohol or of any other kind, he simply preferred not to drink outside of champagne toasts at weddings. But, was as he as handsome as me? Some little spark of pride, or vanity, inside me wanted to ask this out loud. I didn't bother to pit myself against him in such a subjective way, especially considering my ex wife thought that the least of my merits, and pointed out that to her it was more of a liability. Still, I knew the answer was that even though older than me by some years, had not lived his so hard, and he was a striking man as well.
I woke up, as I was considering that my subconscious was about to deliver to me his references and recommendations, stud fees earned to date, and standardized scores in lovemaking, shagging, doing the nasty, and fucking like an animal.
I spent the last day or so trying to figure out what this all means to me. What is my secret, fervent wish? That is what dreams like this are supposed to represent.
I decided on a practical course of action. First, I am going to binge as fast as I can through the rest of my stash. When that is gone, I am not going to reup again, until I have met certain criteria.
- Restored myself as a professional in my chosen field, and worked consistently in a role, or consecutive roles, for at least one year.
- I have rejoined the rest of humanities' most important subset of people, those who like to fuck. I will consider myself a member of this set, when I have sex with a woman again and find that pleasing. If possible, without paying her for the service. Also, I want this to happen while not under the influence of methamphetamine, which is stultifying, after the fact, when you realize any jackass feels like a love god when geared up for sex that way. Bare of that illusion, it is clear you just grunted and sweated and made funny faces for fifty times as long as your normal jackass self, maybe couldn't even find a satisfying climax, and surely jeopardized the twenty-count of digits of any spawn you just sired.
- Have accumulated two million US dollars in liquidity.
Also, without methamphetamine dragging its ass and stretching everything out to its maximum, including recreation time, and if alcohol is not sending me to the sanitarium every few months, I think I will be able to grow that admirable work ethic I mentioned at the start of this essay. The consistency will be good for me, and I need new things to take pride in, now that I have seen everything else fail me. At least, when I become overdependent on any one thing it has lost effectiveness for me, so new things are needed to spread the load. It is time to grow up again.
Finally, I will be adding my walls o' text, and moving much of my good samaritan energy, over to our recovery forums, and see how those might aid me and if I can be of aid to the bluelighters that congregate there. Fear not, fellow tweakers, verbose motherfuckers, readers who aren't scared of a little more reading, the diverted, the deranged, the ravers, and seekers - I can write with full strength methamphetamine flavor even when no meth cometh near me. All you have to do is inspire it or plain ask me to.
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