So let's be honest before we start lying.
I'm going to preface this post by saying I've been drinking pretty steadily for the last 6 hours. You would think after a day like this, that might be the last thing I'd do, but I couldn't help it. Drinking today is hopefully the beginning of my final days for doing so... It feels like spending time with a great lover towards the end of a long torrid love affair.
Today was rough. Very rough. Yesterday was great and full of love. But today I finally got myself to see a counselor in what was conveyed to me as the first and very basic step of a long process of therapy and AA.
I can't even begin to explain to you all how sad I am that I'm here again.
So I began to sob at my appointment. I found out the counselor who was going to be helping consult me was FREE to me and downstairs and less that 100 steps from where I work. I felt betrayed. I've spent more than a year, completely and openly telling people within my workplace about my alcoholism... these last 3 months spent very vocally asking people to help me find out how to use the resources available to me. There was never any answer. Nothing.
Then one coworker, among the last people I'd expect to help me, Ms. Tonya Love who took notice. Before she dropped me off at BART last weekend she told me by the time I'd come back from SF from my weekend and back to work that she would have all the research done and all I'd need to do was schedule the appointment. When I came into work yesterday and found out that she kept her word, I was very nearly moved to tears. As it turns out, the help that I actively sought was merely downstairs and very easily within reach. She had used her exemplary reputation to get thru the red-tape that had been standing in my way.
Tomorrow, I have to follow-up with my counselor and tell her that I've completed certain steps... an appointment with a psychiatrist and a plan for going to AA either here or in SF. She also gave me a plan. Told me about the paperwork I need to get to get my time off, the disability I might need to go on. She discussed the various types of AA, informed me that she could get me rides to AA if I needed them... and meanwhile she extracted the very basic sweeps of all the things I'd been internalizing over the last 10 years, and told me that more help was on it's way if I'd only promise to let her help me.
Unfortunately, my appointment with this counselor was scheduled during my lunch break. I reported back to work immediately afterwards with a blank expressionless face. My first appointment with therapy since I was 18 had stolen my soul for the afternoon. It was as if I couldn't see. I couldn't see them, those people who I've become close to over the last 2 years. I decided at that moment that I needed to go home.
My walk home was one of the emptiest and loneliest walks of my life. I stopped by a japanese restaurant, got myself something to eat and began to drink beer after beer after beer, by myself, with nothing but me and my IPOD.
We shall see what happens from this step. I hope for the best and fear the worst. We'll see....
Showing posts with label Alcoholism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Alcoholism. Show all posts
Wednesday, March 28, 2007
Sunday, March 4, 2007
Finally...
I haven't spoken to Gary in about 6 months. You know, come to think of it, it's about 6 months exactly, a couple weeks before my birthday in September. It couldn't have come at a better time because I've been thinking about him a lot recently.
Never more so, in these last 6 months, than last night... when I spent most of my afternoon amongst friends in Chinatown SF where he was born and raised all the way untill, well, last September. I recall even walking by the random ghetto apartments where his family lived and pointing towards them w/Adrienne saying "I think that's where Gary grew up..." as if she had any idea at all who I was talking about. Or even wondering w/Chanelle "I wonder if we'll run into Gary today..." though I know damn well that he's living his life as a lawyer in Manhattan these days.
When me and Gary were together, it was impossible not to encounter him, even when we were fighting. We traveled in similar packs... eventually our packs were so similar, there were instances of cross dating between our social groups. We partied in the same places. I ran into him EVERY time I went out, broken up or not. And we broke up several times only to end up putting eachother through another cycle of pain and delaying the inevitable.
Gary stopped talking to me just before he was about to embark on his fresh new start. He knew it was right for him. He also knew he loved me and that I had warned him what the dangers would be if he were to be with me, and though he didn't want to believe it, he watched it all come true. I told him very nearly at the start of our relationship that he shouldn't get involved w/me because as with everyone in my life, I will grow very close and we will be mutually attached... but... to be with me would be putting yourself in a foolish danger and that there were many perils to being involved w/an alcoholic whose prior relationship was mentally cruel and abusive.
So we cycled in an out of relationships for more than a year, unable to be apart and having the constant confrontation of running into eachother drunk or on ecstacy... and for those couple hours setting aside all the logical reasons for being away from eachother.
Gary is a self-made success story. As mentioned before he grew up in the ghettos of Chinatown w/his garment district working mother, blind father, and two sisters all in a small apartment within a project building. He'd tell me stories of walking into the elevator to go to school and finding it covered in blood. He did well in school, fought for his individuality, went directly to Georgetown after graduating from the distinguished Lowell High School in SF. After Georgetown he went to Berkeley's Boalt Law School and pursued his ultimate dream of being a civil rights attorney. And what impressed me most was that he maintained his flamboyance, his fun-loving disposition, and his pure heart which was nothing but loving all the while juggling the strenuous schedule of being a law student at a reputable school. He was a good boy personified. He was always something to be proud of.
Anyway, the point of my post is to mention that he finally let me speak to him. I'd tried numerous times and especially through the holidays to reach out selfishly knowing I'd be opening up old wounds. Gary was in love with me and I merely loved Gary. I loved everything about him, but was as I still am, unable to fall in love. He used to muse about how he was going to figure out how to move me to New York with him, or how he was going to have to adjust his life to incorporate me. These were unfulfilled dreams and I knew they would be. I told him today that, though I understood the reasons why he could no longer maintain contact with me, that I've felt that without him, the year that we spent together felt like it didn't exist. I told him about the progression of my alcoholism... he knows all about it... it's main growth occurred when he was my love and he'd schedule my doctor appointments to make sure I was well. I told him about my weight gain, and how I went from semi-cut to semi-fat... that made him laugh. He told me what it feels like to be lonely in a studio in Manhattan, and how also it feels to be independent. Ultimately though... we just reflected about the aftermath of an extremeley emotional time for both of us. And FINALLY, I was given an opportunity to remind him of what he means to me in perspective of the greater good.
Gary has changed the model of what I look for in a relationship. Though I haven't really been on the market since he was in my life, he exemplifies the purity which will eventually be all that I have time for. He's also a warning against hastily throwing myself into emotionally delicate situations. You'll have to forgive me for being a little emotional today. I miss this boy terribly.
Never more so, in these last 6 months, than last night... when I spent most of my afternoon amongst friends in Chinatown SF where he was born and raised all the way untill, well, last September. I recall even walking by the random ghetto apartments where his family lived and pointing towards them w/Adrienne saying "I think that's where Gary grew up..." as if she had any idea at all who I was talking about. Or even wondering w/Chanelle "I wonder if we'll run into Gary today..." though I know damn well that he's living his life as a lawyer in Manhattan these days.
When me and Gary were together, it was impossible not to encounter him, even when we were fighting. We traveled in similar packs... eventually our packs were so similar, there were instances of cross dating between our social groups. We partied in the same places. I ran into him EVERY time I went out, broken up or not. And we broke up several times only to end up putting eachother through another cycle of pain and delaying the inevitable.
Gary stopped talking to me just before he was about to embark on his fresh new start. He knew it was right for him. He also knew he loved me and that I had warned him what the dangers would be if he were to be with me, and though he didn't want to believe it, he watched it all come true. I told him very nearly at the start of our relationship that he shouldn't get involved w/me because as with everyone in my life, I will grow very close and we will be mutually attached... but... to be with me would be putting yourself in a foolish danger and that there were many perils to being involved w/an alcoholic whose prior relationship was mentally cruel and abusive.
So we cycled in an out of relationships for more than a year, unable to be apart and having the constant confrontation of running into eachother drunk or on ecstacy... and for those couple hours setting aside all the logical reasons for being away from eachother.
Gary is a self-made success story. As mentioned before he grew up in the ghettos of Chinatown w/his garment district working mother, blind father, and two sisters all in a small apartment within a project building. He'd tell me stories of walking into the elevator to go to school and finding it covered in blood. He did well in school, fought for his individuality, went directly to Georgetown after graduating from the distinguished Lowell High School in SF. After Georgetown he went to Berkeley's Boalt Law School and pursued his ultimate dream of being a civil rights attorney. And what impressed me most was that he maintained his flamboyance, his fun-loving disposition, and his pure heart which was nothing but loving all the while juggling the strenuous schedule of being a law student at a reputable school. He was a good boy personified. He was always something to be proud of.
Anyway, the point of my post is to mention that he finally let me speak to him. I'd tried numerous times and especially through the holidays to reach out selfishly knowing I'd be opening up old wounds. Gary was in love with me and I merely loved Gary. I loved everything about him, but was as I still am, unable to fall in love. He used to muse about how he was going to figure out how to move me to New York with him, or how he was going to have to adjust his life to incorporate me. These were unfulfilled dreams and I knew they would be. I told him today that, though I understood the reasons why he could no longer maintain contact with me, that I've felt that without him, the year that we spent together felt like it didn't exist. I told him about the progression of my alcoholism... he knows all about it... it's main growth occurred when he was my love and he'd schedule my doctor appointments to make sure I was well. I told him about my weight gain, and how I went from semi-cut to semi-fat... that made him laugh. He told me what it feels like to be lonely in a studio in Manhattan, and how also it feels to be independent. Ultimately though... we just reflected about the aftermath of an extremeley emotional time for both of us. And FINALLY, I was given an opportunity to remind him of what he means to me in perspective of the greater good.
Gary has changed the model of what I look for in a relationship. Though I haven't really been on the market since he was in my life, he exemplifies the purity which will eventually be all that I have time for. He's also a warning against hastily throwing myself into emotionally delicate situations. You'll have to forgive me for being a little emotional today. I miss this boy terribly.
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