I know... it's been over a month, but it has been quite a month for me. I've been promoted to foreman at my job, I had a reality check at my house towards the size of my ego that made me realize that I'm not as saavy in this program as I thought I was and in turn gave me inspiration to move even more, I made my first trip back home to College Station and made amends, and I got a new sponsor since my old one left. There is more to tell, and there is more I will expand on, but really, the first thing that comes to my mind I have to share is an experience I had a couple of weeks ago when I went to a rehab here to do something called and an Hospital and Insititution's panel (an H and I for short).
What an H and I really is is where people that have time in the program (CA in this case [Cocaine Anonymous]) go to a rehab, jail, hospital or something (rehab in this case) and share a message of the twelve steps with the people that are currently patients in there. Each H and I have different formats. Some are topics from the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous, some are open topic, some are pure Q and A, and like the one I went to, some are tell your life story, and then leave time for Q and A.
So, at this particular H and I, I went with a couple of friends of mine. We each shared a 15 minute version of what we used to be like, how we got to what we were like now, and how we are like now. I was the last to speak, and if I do say so myself, I felt very inspired. I shared five minutes on my life, because I felt more important to share on how my life changed. I went off on finding God and doing service work. Of course, I talked about finding God, Higher Power, in tenents of CA and the Big Book, and I was very political about it not to throw anybody. I could see in people's eyes that they were responding to me- I even noticed this one girl that didn't listen to Robert and Tara and instead was painting the whole time they spoke, she had her eyes fixated on me. So, I thought I spoke well.
Anyway, when it came to Q and A, we answered questions as a group, and everything was going fine, until this question was asked: "How did you guys find your higher power and realize that you were powerless (a reference to steps 1 and 2 to those of you not in the program)?" I had to think about that question, so Tara and Robert spoke before me. My answer was somewhere around this: most people when they come into rehab think that they have hit rock bottom, but they haven't. They can always go lower and lower until they are dead or in jail. If you've ever relapsed, you really know what I'm talking about (I've relapsed many times). There is always more pain out there, and everytime you are in the middle of your addiction, you know that there is more pain out there and there is nothing you can do about it. But, when you reach that point of desperation when you are willing to so anything to stop, you will turn to God- you will realize that just like drugs were stronger than you, there is something stronger than drugs, and something is God and he will save you from going any lower. That's how I found God.
After I was done, someone raised their hand, and asked me this question: "Well, how about the people that are dead or in jail- are we just lucky or something or does God not care about them?" And that question fucked me because I didn't know how to answer that. Thank God for Robert because he gave some bullshit political answer that really didn't answer that man's question but went right around it but sounded good enough that no one said anything, but I could see that man looking at me with a pain and animosity that I did nothing to help him, and that really fucked me up. And even though people after the meeting came and thanked me for their help, and even some told me that they like my answer about not hitting a bottom, I couldn't get that man's eyes out of my head.
Right after that, we went straight to a meeting, but my mind was still on that question- what about the people in jail or those that are dead? It brought me down that I couldn't answer that, and I was shaken. Then, I heard something that cleared my path. This woman, someone who couldn't seem to stay sober longer than a few weeks was speaking, and she said: "You know, I don't get why this isn't working. I turn my will over to God, and I pray and I pray and pray and pray, and I still get fucked up. I don't get it. Why doesn't he hear my prayers?" And two things became clear to me. First, that when I turn my will over to the care of God, it doesn't only mean what God wants me to do in my life, but it also means that I have to pay attention to what God puts other people in my life for and what do they mean in my life and that my life should be dedicated to them. Other people are parts of God's will in my life. The second part was the answer to the question that bothered me. Those people that are dead or in jail, they aren't unlucky, they had their chance and we very well could become those people at some point in the future if we don't practice God's will in our life. Those people in jail can go lower, and those people that are dead, it could've also just have been God's will. The thing is, we can't stand around idly hoping that God will scoop us up and save us, we have to take some action, and God will help us. We have to walk with God. It's like this: God has given us a car and we sit in the drivers seat and he's in the passenger seat. If we don't drive the car, then he can't guide us. We have to drive the car, once we do that, he will guide us, and once he tells us somewhere to go, we better damn well take that order too. We must walk hand in hand with him, praying isn't just enough- the power of prayer is amazing, but faith without works is dead. Those people that are dead or even lower than we are now aren't unlucky, they just didn't drive the car, they stayed idle, and they couldn't escape the storm. And I felt peace.
That was something I found to be of importance to me. The other thing that happened in this past month that really was important was that I went back to College Station for the first time since I left. The primary purpose of the trip was to make amends face to face. I already made amends in letters, but I felt it was time to make those amends face to face, and some others that I needed to make. I didn't waste anytime. The first thing I did when I arrived into town was go to my old job at the Holiday Inn and make my first amends. It was a very exhausting trip and I made a great deal of amends, including financial amends which has left me broke to this very day. But, I got to hang out with my friend Felix quite a bit which was great. I miss him a lot. It got me thinking about my friends, and what they mean to me. I almost didn't want to leave. I have these friends that through all the bullshit I did, still drove five hours to Center Point just to visit me in rehab to find out I was in San Antonio in a psych ward and drove there, and to find out they couldn't visit me so they left a letter, and they were okay. I don't know if they know how much that meant to me and how much I cried that day. I'm going to have six months sober soon, and it's hard to think that just six months ago I was sitting around drunk as a skunk and high not caring and taking these people for granted and now I pray for the next time I can see them just to show them my appreciating for not telling a professional liar and manipulator that he is forgiven and loved.
One interesting part about the trip was that I brought my roommate with me. For some reason, he started feeling really sad in the middle of the trip and he didn't really know why. We stayed up one night when I found him crying and talked long about why he was feeling sad and I suggested that maybe it was time that he went home and made his direct amends. I said that we see so many people talk the great talk but not many people but their money where their mouth is, and that's why we see them relapse and why the relapse rate is so great and that's why I've relapsed so many times before. I said that I don't care what people say about me, the one thing I am proud to say is that what I share in meetings, I can back up. And it's true, I am proud to say that I do a hell load of service work- chairing meetings, H and I's, sponsoring, etc. At the end of the conversation, he decided that he wanted to make his face to face amends, and that he also wanted to do more service work, which he is. For some reason, that makes me feel good.
I don't know what much more to say. I decided to finish my bachelors to go along with my LCDC. I start school this summer, hypothetically, and my LCDC course starts in January of 2008. It's funny for look to look at my life now and see how in a few short months the concepts of motivation and atonement are becoming more than privileges, but every day actions. People tell me that they are happy to see this Fernando or Sketch, and it's funny because I still feel essentially the same except for I am catching myself before I tell a lie, or I admit to the lie right I tell it, and I apologize for shit now, but I still feel the same. It's funny to see how my life has moved on for me because I think, at some point, I really resigned myself to believing that there was nowhere for me to go but nowhere. In the past I used to fear tomorrow because I had the feeling that I was going to be alone and scared. Now, I don't know where tomorrow is going to take me, but I can always count on my God being by my side and that's all I need.
There is peace. Serenity is not having everything calm around you- serenity is when everything is chaotic on the outside, and you are calm on the inside.

Here's a timeline for me- I moved out of my old house into a new house; I became foreman of my landscaping crew that I work for; and the consoliated holidays (Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years) are coming to a close. What has changed? Not much in particular? Still, there are people around me are relapsing, and I sometimes sit around and wondering what I am doing around here? Sometimes, I feel like I am playing a game of cards, but the deck is only half there.
I know this is self delusion or fear. The wonder of where my future lays, but a good deal of this comes from my past that every so often pops up and sticks it's head to remind me of who I am or what I was.
A week or two ago, I had some friends come visit me. I should start by saying I have two classifications of friends from back home, both of which I am sure care about me, just one was based around the party scene (drugs and alcohol) and the other group was based around who I was- I mean friends I made because we sat, talked, clicked, and got to know each other. Group one I got to know through drugs and then we got to know each other. Group two, doesn't do drugs, drinks like normal human beings, and we got to know each other normally. Both group have people I love in them, and both groups are full of great people in them, but both groups subsribe to a variety of lifestyles that at some point create an exclusivity that makes me wonder how I was able to maintain a friendship in such two different worlds. For instance, it's hard to imagine that my best friend in group one is a pot-head manager at McDonald's (he's a good guy, don't get the wrong impression), and my closest friend from the second group is a senior at Texas A & M, ex- Younglife leader. The irony is, I've known both cats since back in the day, but my relationship with them began around my second rehab about four years ago.
Anyway, two people from the first group came, Matt (my closest friend from that group and my ex- roommate) and Pake. But, let me backtrack a few days. I was sitting in the room where the CA (Cocaine Anonymous) meeting I was going to attend was to be held. I was waiting for it to start (I was thirty minutes early for some reason), writing in my journal, sitting in a chair, when my father called me. I answered the phone, and talked to him for a bit, made some plans for the weekend for when he was to visit me, and then right before we were going to hang up he said: "Oh, hey, by the way, I recieved an e-mail from a friend of yours- someone named Pake." As soon as he said the name, my stomach dropped a bit.
"He just wanted to know how're you're doing and so on."
"It's a she," was all I could think to reply. My mind colluded with thoughts trying to figure what exactly I should do about this situation(when I thought about it later, I lauged because I really just heard a named, panicked because there was no "situation" to do anything about in the first place) and how the hell did she get my father's e-mail (Texas A & M's web page).
"Well," he says. "Okay, she just wanted to know how you're doing, and she left a number. Do you want it?"
This was the critical moment and I didn't know what to do. I sent out many letters to make amends, and she was one of the letters I sent to make amends to, especially to the fact that I haven't seen her in a year because she left to Germany to study abroad, and when she came back, I was gone. I also knew at some point that I had to begin to make amends again face to face with the people that deserved it, but still, I felt like ice ran through me, and it wasn't because it was freezing outside (I was sitting in my car with my heater on at this point). Finally, resigning that it was God telling me that it's about time to get over my fear, I said yes, and my father gave me her phone number.
I call her up immediately, and of course, she was suprised to hear from me. She tells me that Matt was hurt with everything that went on. That he felt betrayed by me hiding my meth addiction, my relapse from all of them (they only smoked pot and drank, and little coke and ecstasy didn't hurt either, right?), but he was beggining to forgive me and wanted to see me, and that she felt hurt, but really wanted to see me, blah blah blah, and so forth.
Anyway, jump ahead, because the rest is just my life, but here are two things that worked out from this situation: one, I decided to make those face to face amends and I'm going to make my first trip back to College Station since I left in August on January 5th. I am taking my sponsee Eric with me, the one that I went with to Fort Worth with so he could make his amends, because he has an amend in Bryan, and we are staying the weekend. Two: Pake and Matt decided to come up that Friday after she talked to me on the phone to visit.
So, we are caught up in the story to where I want to be. That Friday, I get off work, relax, and take a shower, and almost immediately after my shower, Pake and Matt arrive at my house. There is the awkward, how are doing?- and so on, but in the end, we move on.The first thing we do is get a cup of coffee where I make my amends. I admit to every big lie I ever told, everything I stole, all the things I have done, even somethings I thought I wouldn't tell. Suprising myself when I broke down in tears, telling them how much of a coward I am, and how sorry I am, Matt tells me that, "Today, you are not a coward, but you are becoming a man." I just wanted to shake my head and respond, "There are cowardly men, Matt," but I smiled and said nothing.
Then, we went to dinner, talked about old times, and they caught me up with the new drama, which in the past would've interested me, but for some reason, I was dying of boredom for a new topic. I was skipping my meeting, and for some reason, I kept wondering what the topic was. Then, they left eagerly, because, it was obvious to me (especially when Matt ordered a beer at the restaurant, which didn't bother me, I have passed that point where it bothers me to be around alcohol and drugs, I just wondered why he couldn't just not drink for the day...?) that the sober life bores them.
The whole next day at work, I felt somewhat depressed and I didn't know why. My mind blank and dull, and I just worked like machine that needed maintenance. Then, a moment of clarity struck me. As I thought over all the moments of drama they told me about and the root of that drama struck me as the party scene that I removed myself from, I realized that I don't want to go back to that anymore- I realized that maybe, sadly that my friendship with these people will never be the same anymore. Their problems almost seemed childish to me. This guy is sleeping with a girl he doesn't like and this guy is in jail but now weed isn't getting stolen is so sophomoric compared my other friends that are talking to me about marriage, post graduation, careers, and relationships, or in my life, recovery and God put in the mix. I became sad because, I realized, at that moment, that I might have made amends to people so I could also wash my hands clean, and really CLEAN, of a group that no longer appeals to me, or no longer really connects with me spiritually or mentally or physically anymore. It's more than being on a different page, we were two different books on different bookshelves and there is only one person to read us.
It was a growing moment, which is seems of late, I'm having these huge momentsw of growths, and that's all I have. Moments of growth and clarity (which I am sure has to do with my mind clearing up and becoming more rational).
But, I talked with my friend Felix, who's from the second group, and then there's that feeling that we're in the same sentence- does that make sense? The realization that social classes and cliques and groups don't make you who are is great, but the realization also that those friends of yours make and break you, are critical to helping guide down your path of life, is somewhat euphoric and cathartic and mellowing at the same time.In the end, I became grateful for the friends that were there with me on the outside of the world drugs and stuck with through this sickness becuase while they'll never know the pain of the disease, they will always know the love of God, and for that they are blessed, and for that, I am blessed. For that, I am blessed.
For that, I am blessed.

I'm in Fort Worth right now, with one of my sponsees, as he goes around making his amends. As I watch him go through this process, with a certain amount of pride I might add, something builds inside of me. I am having a hard time verbalizing it, putting it into words, but the best I can do is speak from my own experience.
When I went through my own process of amends, I was worried. I was worried that for all of my sins, I was unforgivable. That even if the Lord could forgive me, I would be alone in a world alienated from my friends. Even so, shaky and worried, I made my amends to my father (step 9: made direct amends to those we had harmed unless to do so would injure them or otheres), and with eyes pleased, calm, and some what sympathetic, he says to me: "I just want you to be happy. I just want you to stay sober and be happy. That's your amends to me." He said nothing of forgiveness, and he didn't have to. I knew I was forgiven the moment he called me his son- again.
Then, there were my friends I thought I were going to lose. I asked for forgiveness and what I could to make things right, and like my friend Shaun said to me, "buddy, you were forgiven even before you asked." And here's the kicker. He says, "I love you, man. I just want you to be happy and sober."
And then, probably the closest friend I have in the world, Felix, comes up, drives to Kerrville, and visits me like nothing happens- like I never took advantage of our friendship of his trust. He tells me of his life and listens to my opinions like I deserve to give them, and he treats me like any other human being. He says, "I love you, bud. You look good and happy. I'm glad for you."
So, let's take a pause from the linearity of the post look at some scripture that comes to mind for me.
1) 2 Cor. 5:17- Therefore if anyone in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come.
2) Isiah 65:17-19- For behold, I create new heavens and a new earth; and the former things will not be remembered or come to mind. But be glad and regoice forever in what I create; For behold, I create Jerusalem for rejoicing and her people for gladness. I will also rejoice in Jerusalem and be glad in My people; And there will no longer be heard in her the voice of weeping and the of crying.
3) Eph. 4: 11-16- Andhe gave some as aposles, and some as prophets, and some as evangelists, and as pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints for the work of service, to the building up of the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of faith, and of the knowledge of faith, and of the knowledge of the son of God, to am mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ. As a reslt, we are no longer to be children, tossed here and there by waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, by craftiness in decietful schemind, but speaking truth in love, we are the head, even Christ, from whom the whole body, being fitted and held together by proper working of each individual part, causes the growth of the body for the building up of itself in love.
As I look at all these scriptures, I derive theses conclusions:
1- I am a new creature. My sins have been forgiven truly by the Lord and I have been born again.
2- Like Shaun pointed out, I am supposed to be happy- we are all supposed to be happy. That is our purpose- to rejoice and to continue to rejoice in the Lord and all that the Lord has provided for us.
3- That Love is the ultimate. I could've written down, Love thy neighbor as you love thyself, but we all know that one. At that point, Love is crucial to glorify the Lord (we must build up his body).
4- We must share his our love, his love, all love, with everyone.
So, as I cruise around with my sponsee, and I see him make amends to all these people and places that he's harm, and see the suprise on his face as all the people that he at once felt he hurt so painfully, forgive him such ease. I see the Lord working in his life. I see the promises of the twelve step program in his life working. I feel the recovery working in his life.
I saw his grandmother cry as he asked for forgiveness, and she said the very thing Shaun said to me. And, as him and I left her house, she hugs me and thanks me from the bottom of her heart for helping her little Eric out. And I was touched. I wanted to cry. I wanted to reach out to that woman and tell her that everything will be alright. That it was a bad dream, that he's just diabetic or something. But the truth, his truth, my truth, glares so brightly in her eyes, in her tears, that I thank her and I say, "Eric has helped me more than you can understand, trust me."
And that's all I can say. I am moved.
I have been thinking lately, why I have so much sentimentality for College Station. It's because in recovery, people drop like flies. It's not like when I moved to college, and I moved into a dorm, and I felt home sick at first, but I made some friends, had some stable relationships, and finally settled in. No, not in Kerrville's sandbox of recovery. You just don't know when someone's going to drop. Just one day, you don't see them around, and then you hear that they pissed dirty, and you shake your head and that's another number deleted off of your cell phone.
At first, you feel for the people that relapse. You feel sorry. At least, I did. I wanted to help them so much. I wanted to find them immediately. Hug them, tell them it will be alright, and them try to get them to a meeting. Then, I realized something happened, and I don't know when. I became numb. They relapse, and I just don't care. It's not that I don't care for them. I love them. It's just that I now that there's nothing I could've done. When I see them again I will reach out my hand to them, and it's up to them to grab it- but I will not shed another tear for those who do not take my hand, just for those whose hands rests limply on the cold floor as a statistic ready to be tabulated.
I just realized that telling them it's going to be alright is bullshit. I'm passed that point. It's life and here people, and it's sometimes hard to see that. It's not going to be alrigt, everything is not going to go the way you always want it. Just stand up and take it as it comes. What we need are God, the steps, and serenity- and serenity is not when everything is calm around is, but when everything is chaotic around us, but we are calm on the inside. We are not body with souls, but souls with bodies.
So I became numb. Like a doctor that sees so much death, I became numb. And then, I came to Fort Worth, and my sponsee's grandmother hugged me and I had to fight tears. I don't know what I have really done. I just thought I was working a program, but instead, I forgot, I was in the program of saving lives. I think I lost sight of something so critical: behind the drug addict is a person, a son, a daughter, a brother, sister, mother, father, lover, painter, singer, lover, Christian, Buddhist, child of God. And with my tears came memories of better times that were washed away with the rain.
So today, I grew up a bit. And my ego was shrunken a bit.

Holidays are a strange time of year, if you ask me. As I walked down the San Antonio River Walk with my father and his girlfriend, fighting the urge to piss, streaming past the bars, recollecting on the notion that no longer are those places ever going to hold the same appeal to me anymore, I recognize how sad I almost feel. I don't really know why is that I feel sad? Is it because lately I fight the urge to drink? That's not it, I'm an alcoholic in early sobriety, that's what I do. I call my sponsor, work with people, and pray- I'll be okay. The problem with that for me is that I'm so young, it's hard to imagine sixty plus more years without taking a drink while my alcoholic peers that are in the elder years are getting clean it almost doesn't seem fair, but then, in reality, I've got it good- I get to nip my problem in the bud, early and save my life and give me a chance to really live. I have it lucky.
But, I'm going on a tangent.
Why do I feel sad, then, on Thanksgiving, then?- the day where I should be grateful for all that God gave me? Maybe it is because all I can think about is all the things I took away from the people that loved me. The hurt and pain and anguish that I cause. And yes, there is those moments of self pity washed with abysmal need for sympathy and a cry for a dash of humanity but in the end it's a lackluster sense of melancholy. I watch under the darkened lights of the once festive river walk, closed for the holiday, glittered with the occasional bar and restaurant serving patrons drinking monstrous margaritas and eating chips and smoking cigarettes and we, us three, we walk. I listen to my father and his girlfriend talk, and they are as content to be free and lively as the lights of the place could be, but me, and I sink in the dark bottom of the river.
Why? I have no idea. Maybe it is the medication. Maybe. And then, I get to thinking about my life recently. I just got a raise. I just got my car. My relationship with friends that I thought I would lose back home is only getting stronger, and my realtionship with my parents is better than ever. I am still sober. And besides Michigan losing to Ohio State, life can't seem to get much better for me. So as my father reminds that we forgot to make the salad for dinner tonight, I smile to myself. I realize why I was sad for Thanksgiving. I was sad for all the Thanksgivings before when I was falsely happy. I had to pay tribute the murdered holidays. And now, I sit back, and give myself the pleasure of moving on. Of looking around and being older and wiser and sober and happier. And what's greater, believing that I deserve this happiness.
There's so much time we have believing we don't deserve happiness for all the pain we created, when in reality, most of the hurt we caused those we love and that loved us was because we were hurting ourselves. I think the common element of all of the amends I have made is that everyone just wants me to stay sober and be happy. For that, I am grateful. For that, I smile. For that, I can close my eyes gently and sleep kindly and dream about a future where I live in a mid-western dream with snowy winters and colorful autumn's and the smell of the fireplace in the brisk air. I have found peace of mind in the words of Robert Frost: "My gentle house upon the hill where I stand so still but fly at will."

Yesterday, after closing in on the days work and preparing to go home, my phone rings. The dispay shows me an unfamiliar number and with the same reluctant curiousity, I answer it, curious as to whom it could be. It turns out, an old friend of mine that I have known over ten years that came into the program about over a year ago and relapsed has come up here to Kerrville, has about a week and a half sober and is thinking about moving up here.
I got to hang out with him last night for a good deal of time when I didn't think I was going to be able to because my meeting was cancelled, and arguably had the best day I have had for a very long time. We talked some in a comical manner of our combined past times to our mutual friends in Kerrville of our high school moments in College Station together, played guitar, and spoke little of the true tragedies that brought us together here in Kerrville together. While he looked jovial in outside, I saw a wrecked shit floating in his eyes, and as he drove me home later that night, we spoke of the gravity and reality of our lives.
A weird sensation swept over me at that moment. I saw a dichotomy of my past and my present. I've known my friend in his alcoholism and through that, I could see myself. I saw who I was and who I am now, and I realized through all the thick and thin the necessity to never forget that who I was and who I am are exactly the same person just looking at the world through a different shade of glasses.
I asked my friend to move up to Kerrville. I told him there was an opening in my house, and I'd help him get set up, which I really could, but I don't know if he's ready for it. Let's wait an see.

I am lazy as I rest my cheek against the cold window of this truck. Shifting uncomfortably, I try to find a spot to cause the smallest wake everytime we hit a bump, but in the end, I stick my hand in between my face and the glass. Gritty with dirt, my fingers tangle with my new beard and I feel my muscles relax as my body finally begins to become aware that my ten hour work day is over. My mind is numb to the music, my friend talking on the phone to some girl right next to me, the cars passing us by, the large rolling hills of the Texas Hill Country, and the deco-noir houses with their southern rustic panache- the only thing that intrigues me is the setting sun hiding behind the lifted trees and the azure rays mixed with echos of violent orange and purple and red. At every turn of the road and crest of a hill there is a new shade and new arrangement of clouds and lights to endure my ever so short fused fascinated mind with indiginatly small ethereal aspects of transcedental life that speaks ever so anthropomorphically to me, "Keep it simple, Sketch." So instead, I think about how beautiful it is, and smoke a cigarette and watch the wisps shatter and dance as the light refracts through the crack in the window.
And I think back to just a few months ago to a moment very similar to this but back in College Station. I think of my life just a short while ago with nostalgia. I think of the people I had a history with and the things we did and the songs we sang along to and the good times we had and promises we made that they would never end. And I look over to my friend, who stares galiantly at the road ahead of him, his task apparent and somatic. Do you ever miss it? I ask him.
Miss what? he responds casually without changing his gaze.
The past. Your friends you used to have.
Without missing a beat, he says to me: yeah- I miss the good times. And everytime I miss the good times, I have to stop and think about what put me here. And then when I think about that, I get depressed, and then I think about what keeps me here, and everything just falls into place.
And that's that?
That's that.
Okay.
What's keeping you here, Sketch? he asks me.
I look out the window. In the reflection, I see my eyes. I don't see the bad moments, I still see the good moments of my past and the beautiful sunset. Maybe, I say to him, I want to have good times again. Maybe, I'm tired of looking at sunsets and just looking at them waiting for it to become night so another day could end.
My friend doesn't say anything. He just keeps driving. We go down a few more bends, take a right, first left, five house on the left, the big blue trailer- that's my place, and I'm off, and as I'm waving him good-bye, something strikes me as to why my friend never responds- I'm still here. I already noticed that sunset.
I sat outside and watched that sun set with all of its glory. I watched it cast its shadows and silhouttes of trees and cars and rays of light and life beamed with life, careening off of mountain tops, and when it was over, when night came, I went inside, and another day ended.

It rains. It rains and I cannot work. I wait for the sun where I am promised a chance to earn money. I remember a time where I used to beg for any excuse not to work- now, I am grateful for any minute I have to work. But it rains, and I am grateful for a chance to relax.
I have been having these dreams lately. They are flashes, images of friends and times that have come to pass- some good, some bad. The other night, I stayed up into the dark night and stared up at my ceiling listening to the breathing of the my two roommates breathing as really thought of the ontology of my situation. Twenty- two. Away from home. Limited college education. Blue collar job. No real teleology. Living in a half-way house. I felt something powerful strike me at that moment. I think it was fear- a sweep of uncertainty.
For most of my life, for some reason or another, I have had a plan. College expectations, movements in work, social desires, etc. Even in my addiction, these parrallels into the routine of my life were formulated and kempt. The situation I am in now is as unique as any situation I have ever experienced in my life. Moving into the dorms in Ann Arbor, thousands of miles from Texas where my father lived still maintained a level of stability for me considering that I anticipated this moment since I entered high school. But, nothing in my life ever prepared me for this. D.A.R.E programs only peaked my interests in drugs, if you ask me.
So, that night, staring into my ceiling, feeling the sort of alienation one gets when they are young, alone, and wondering seriously in their life what the fuck they are doing with it, I began to think about my family and the few good friends I had left back in College Station. To be in the mind of a self-pitying drug addict is not a good place to be primarily because as any drug addict in recovery should know: self-pitying, self-centerdness, selfishness is the root of all our problems in the first place (don't worry, I didn't do anything stupid). In that dark room, I begged for a familiar voice, something to break through the deafining silence to remind that remind that I will be okay, that I will be alright.
And then, I remembered the passage reminded me to be still with the Lord (my own spiritual beliefs). So I got still. I got quiet. I let myself go. And I fell right to sleep. Calmly, like a child.
There's no real point to this post other than to point out a reality in my life: still on a daily basis to I have succumb to battling fear. While the obsession to drink and drug has been lifted, it doesn't mean I have nothing to do anymore. That's all.