For some, I was on the other side, an adversary. For those who loved me, a spectacle. No matter what, it was bad. Resigned to this failure, this me, the alien who I lived with but did not understand.  Even the self-deception. Absolutely ridiculous. 

There is low and then there is low. To live and die in disaster every day and console myself by dipping potato chips in teriyaki sauce. Alone.  There is no difference in the people around me from anything else as far as I can see. There is anger in them, in the air, the sun, and the trees. Running is no longer possible. If I don’t believe it, just watch what happens when I try it.

I am angry too at the ones who can live my way and still stand at the common and be found acceptable. How do they do it?  How dare they? In my heart, I play out the day they too have to cash in, just as I am being forced to.  It will take 31 years for them to come to me to say, we should have listened. Instead of this bringing me peace it made me thankful they did not listen. Those bitter ironies inside of me can also be sweet.

Despite repeated warnings, I flee.  Running like never before, changing everything.  Maybe changing something. Anything? Anything at all? I push hard for the surface of the syrup like water and blast into the air where there is sun and blue sky and those moments are fantastic. Coming down from the arc I dive even deeper into the dark thickness.  New depths over and over that overshadow my climb into the air and light.  Less light, more darkness. Where is this going?

An old man passes by and throws me a line and I grab it. I rise determinedly from the depths into the living.  Dry ground, the first I have seen in a long time.  What I did not know, is that this is part of the healing as well as what happens next. Soft and friendly voices reassured me that I was safe and that my path was not as treacherous as I thought it was.   As I step across the welcoming threshold and turn the heavy door of ancient steel bars slams hard to let me know, that I have betrayed myself and it is over.

I have written over a dozen times about who saved me from myself one night in September.  It was a man who could save me, but not himself.  For this, I am forever grateful and forever sad. What I had done until now was not living, it was dancing at the zombie zoo.  Taking hope from nowhere, I saw a way back to the land of the living.  I knew for sure this time, it could really be. I walked the piers late at night looking at the reflection of the lights in the water somehow believing that a vessel smashed into 100 pieces can become one piece again.

September 9, 1989, was the last time I ever drank alcohol.  If I had not, I would not be here to tell you about it.  Here, now, 34 years later I still see it as just as dangerous and just as much of a risk.  Even in my worst moments, there was a glimmer of hope within me.  Look away down Gower Avenue.