Potential clients and employers end up here. People I just met once find out a lot before our next meeting. My family cringes everytime I say fuck. Other people’s friends and moms who hate me find more to hate. Hell, I can’t even legally mention the person-I-am-legally-not-allowed-to-mention.
So I can't share details about what's going on. But it's 11:20 pm and my stomach is in knots of grief.I live alone in a large loft in a neighborhood with a lot of bars. I can’t remember the last night I did not drink at one of them. And tonight, awake but mentally drained, I can’t tell you how tempting it is to just walk across the street and have a couple pints. But it is rarely only a couple. I already have a couple addictions hanging over my head, and adding alcoholism to the list doesn’t really sound good, financially or otherwise. So this morning I promised myself to not go to the bar tonight.
I’m supposedly an introvert. I’m supposedly ok hanging all my lonesome working on some project or another. But lately the nights have been very long, and the project-working has been very not-happening. I’ve been getting out during the day and working around other people, but something kicks in around 10 pm and I get very alone, inside.
I don’t know if this is an after effect of not being alone for 5+ years. I don’t know if it is an effect of the space I now call home. I don’t know if it the simply getting tired of pulling these heavy bodies across the ground by our fingernails, many mirages but no oasises in sight. It’s probably a combination of all, plus some I didn’t just think of.
But I’ve made choices and committments and so I’m left with few options but to continue to crawl. I made choices knowing full well how difficult they would make my life. Knowing full well how post-difficulty, win or lose, they would be the most fulfilling. But in-difficulty it is hard to still see that end, and it is particularly hard when in fear that it will be lose, not win.
History is full of stories of last-minute miracles. Jesus himself seemed unconcerned on a number of occasions when mere men ran to him and said that it was too late. The end had already come, they said.
I’m coming to Jesus tonight and telling him, the end has already come, in many ways. His lack of concern is not comforting. For once I need Jesus to freak out with me, to cry until we’re laughing, then collapsing into comfortable chairs, suddenly forgetting everything, present in the quiet moment.
“You fucked up again, son,” he would say.
“I know,” I would say.
“It’s ok. It’s going to be ok.”
“You mean like last time it was going to be ok?” And my sarcasm would cut him and he would frown in sadness, and I would start crying again, mumbling, “I just don’t know, I just don’t know…”
Eventually, I guess, I would fall asleep. And like Santa Claus, he would be gone back up the chimney by morning.
Eventually, I guess, I will fall asleep. I’ll pray quietly as I lay down for no more nightmares. I’ll pray quietly that I not think about the ten things I didn’t do today, added to the ten things I didn’t do yesterday, added to…
I'm a sinner. That's what we mean when we say that. What I know is right and good I abandon for things that are not right and not good. There are lessons I still have not learned. So tonight, there is only danielsjourney for me. I remember now that's why I started writing here in the first place. I remember those old days when no one knew me and tossing my passion into the void of the Internet felt like casting my bread on the waters. Do you think God might consider danielsjourney one big prayer from me? Even the cussing and the weakness and when I am skewed and crazy? Maybe God will consider what I'm writing tonight as a prayer. I like thinking that could be true. It's raining with me, but there is always an end to the storm. I keep telling myself that.