After my nap

Well.

Even on 10mg of amphetamine salts, I did get a nap, however lightly I slept. No dreams, I don’t think, or none that I remember. I’m more surprised that I slept and didn’t just lie there and go over the day in my mind and panic.

I should give credit for that to the Zoloft, I guess.

My former wife (not "ex" because that’s a four-letter word here) has been helping me out, by sending part of her paycheck to me. She is not rich, and is spending her money on helping me. I am grateful. Especially since we got divorced in 1995, almost 20 years ago. Very few people would do that; she is an extraordinary woman. My former wife has given me far more help than anyone with the same last name or who is related to me.

I am a fortunate cat.

She’s between pay checks and cannot help me now.

***

This is a house of cards I live in, and the winds are picking up.

I can’t escape this thought, but it doesn’t hurt very much on these meds, and thank god for that.  The thought relates to what I wrote the other day, that somewhere, there is a note that says fuck over NWC when you can.

That thought gives rise to this one:  That the letter I got from the state Disability Determination Services this week is a hint of what will be.  They will return a determination that I am not disabled and that will end any hopes of Disability.  The house of cards will collapse.  I’ll lose most of what I have – my car, my beloved Dodge Caliber, and…well, I don’t have much else.  The desk that’s been in my life since before I was born, this computer, this 7 year old computer without which life is barren and unexciting, some clothes, some books, some CD’s and DVD’s – not much.  (It’s a 450 sq. ft. studio apartment)  Everything I own but the bed, couch, desks and dresser – everything in them and the closet, would fit in my car.

Back to where I was in the early 80’s, in my late teens/early 20’s.  It is not really much different now; I lived in the Pasadena YMCA then, in a smaller one room place with the bathroom down the hall.  At least here, I have my own bathroom and kitchen.

What a depressing life that was.

I got drunk there one night – tequila – and had to throw up, as one does when he drinks far more than he should have, and instead of running down the hall and puking there, I leaned out the third story window of my room, resting my chest on the speaker on the window sill.  The speaker tumbled out of the window, and only by quickly grabbing the window sill did I avoid going out with it.  I watched in drunken stupidity as it fell the 60 feet to the concrete sidewalk below and exploded in five million pieces, my puke following and splatting all over the wreckage.  My heart was racing nine hundred miles an hour as I collapsed on my bed.  I woke up fearing that I was going to die and afraid I wasn’t; the room spun around in hungover circles as I realized it was no dream, that the speaker was gone, lying in pieces below.

I would love to say that taught me a lesson and it did, but that tequila was not my friend.  It took me 17 more years to learn that bourbon whiskey was not my friend either and that time, I came even closer to dying when I crashed my car on the Morrison Bridge.  You have seen the picture of my car; I did not walk away from that; they had to cut me out of the wreck.  I woke up in a hospital six weeks later.

I would even more love to tell you I stopped drinking entirely then and I would be lying if I did.  I am not the brightest bulb in the chandelier.

It is my fault that I crashed the car, it is my fault that I got that brain injury, and I guess it’s right that I should pay for that stupidity.  I guess I deserve to be god awful poor and it’s appropriate that I live here and have squandered this life. I know I write pretty well, and that I take good photographs, but, really, I may not deserve to live, to be here. My birth mother gave me up for adoption at birth.  My adoptive parents died when I was 15.  My marriage went the way it was meant to; we divorced and I came back here and crashed my car two years later.  I think maybe I was meant to die, and that these 15 years have been a bonus that I haven’t used as I should have.  I don’t, I guess, deserve to be anything but what I am, a failure in most all respects.

Well.  Thank god for Zoloft.  I can be calm as it all comes down around me – that’s what happens when you build a house of cards.

 

*****