A last look at a dead city, within myself as well as without....a goodbye isn't necessary and so goodbye....

The price of having a life worth living is the life you live. Sounds like poetic fluff or just philosophical bullshit but it really is truth in this statement. Many times I've taken the course that would bring possible problems but promised an epic memory or tale... I've chased the experience for an experience when truth wa I knew it wasn't the right thing to do and when I really wasn't interested in doing it or didn't feel inclined to waste my efforts or resources. I did it for the sake of my life being worthy of living......pride ego etc etc what ever it may be its all a layer of man that has no defined meaning other than trying to give meaning by way of meaningless actions. And knowing this I still chance down regrets whenever I can. I hope I can one day reflect on the experiences I try to accomplish with a satisfied smile and a few personal pats on the back

My last weekend my last hurrah or whatever, yeah she'll be home in a couple days and our new lives begin no more drugs for me and no more anything else but her and I know she is so much more than I deserve. So here I sit anticipating these last few days or the last few highs . Of course this isn't the first time its been my last time but its definitely the most serious time I've ever decided to quit. And the funny thing is, its at a time in my life when I really have the least reasons to get clean than any other time in my life. I'm a fugitive, no family lost all hope of contact with my kids, and really not much of a future to hold for, but, there's her, a woman who's always been just out of reach from me. She's been down the same roads as me her whole life and has been a bigger player in the drug scene than I ever was. She cleaned up changed her life and has told me that if I choose to keep getting high she's got to cut me loose. She wants to start a movement to get people off the dope and serving God. With her reputation and mine we can probably shake things up a bit and who knows maybe our stories will help someone else avoid the life I've lived. And that's what I'm finally gonna leave the dope behind and try to live for a change. Being completely honest I'm kinda sad ill miss the numbing and the scene. My whole life has been wrapped up in drugs and the streets. Even the 20 years I've done in prison was me getting high and staying on top of the hierarchy of that environment. Not much different inside or out. Now I'm leaving everything I know behind me and going to be someone else. Someone who has no idea what a drug free life even looks like. So yeah its a scary thing to contemplate. And a sadness sits on me now. All I've known is about to be only a memory for me. I've been in numerous rehab and read all the books. I know its said you can't get sober for someone else you have to do it for yourself. But the thing is my self worth is pretty low and only because I'm honest about what I'm worth. So doing it for myself has never worked for me. And in reality doing it for her is really doing it for me cause the me she brings out me is the me I want and need to be. I'm doing it for her because I need her in my life. To make me see the value of myself I have to see the man she seems to bring out in me. That me is who I've always saw myself as. The world and life had me looking down on myself and what I once considered right and worthy I now doubted and thought differently about. I'm not sure if I've written anything that makes any sense or not. But she did it. She makes me think and want to be better. She said to tell them to right together

Almost right is always wrong....

What she did.....

I've known her since junior high. She rode the bus with me always the first on the last to get off, I was second so we rode the whole route together everyday. I still remember her eyes even back then they had a brightness that defied the darkness that was just outside of her space. A sadness that wasn't quite there yet but then again that could just be my imagination adding to my memories, the past and the present. Through the years we would run across one another, both being in the drug scene and both being well known,our paths seemed to cross at times that weren't quite ideal for us but seemed to serve a purpose in one of our lives. We got close while I was in prison. She would write me from time to time, at one time she was the only contact I had on the outside. The letters she would write meant a lot to me and she became someone very special to me. I can remember every time we were together, always as friends because she was always with someone else. I became accustomed to her being married to someone else and she became like a sister to me. Through all the years I was in prison she was going through her own he'll in and out of prison herself and the hard life a woman lives while being caught up in the life of addiction. But through it a she somehow managed to uphold her name and to stay beautiful with those remarkable eyes never losing that glow they've always had. And that was the first thing I noticed when she walked into the room I had been hiding in. I was on the run and trying to come to terms with What I'd done. She hugged me and said "Just breathe" I can't tell you the effect those two words had on me at the time. The title to my favorite song for years and she didn't even know it at the time. I spent the night with her and her fiance and the next day she took me to meet a ride out of town. I remember her standing in the rain crying as we were pulling out of the parking lot. I thought this is the last time I will ever see her again and she's crying.

A hollow feeling of anxious expectation. A nothingness full of wonder and aspiration. How else can one look at everything and see nothing? Being an obsolete being or useless potential. These are the demons inside that scratch and tear at my insides leaving my mind scarred and numb. Confusion inspired by creative ramblings ..looking back I see myself reaching forward grasping at a myth of hope. Lights and a distant glow call me onward beckoning me to close my mind to anything outside of here and now. And this cold hollow feeling is my own and wrapped in this emptiness I am at home, I am safe....

I'm not exactly sure when I lost it, but, I definitely lost it. My interest or desire to love or be loved by anyone. I know how or better he why I lost this so called human need we all seem to have. I had been in a series of empty relationships that seemed to drain me not only my emotional strength,but, also my physical and mental as well. I won't place all the blame on these women I had been involved in. Actually the fact that each one was entirely different from the next left me with only one conclusion. That it was I who could not commit or was incapable of being with one woman. The last relationship was to say the least overwhelming and beyond chaotic. I will say that it was her diabolical ways of gaining control and the head games that were so beyond anything I had ever experienced that put the final nail in the coffin for my love life.

With the extreme amount of drug use involved its a wonder any of us,the women or myself are still alive or even coherent,but, we are. Of course I'm pretty sure each of us has slid a little closer to the edge of insanity now. The thing about meth that makes it so different than other drugs is the havoc it rains on a persons grasp of reality. The paranoia and hallucinations are gradual, the longer a person uses meth the more often these side effect s occur. Which can cause a person to take out of consideration the fact that they are high on meth and truly believe that what they think they see or hear is real and that the paranoia has nothing to do with their drug use. So,when you combine this condition to a relationship the results can be somewhat unstable and completely unhealthy for everyone involved. And at the end of the my final go at love I was completely broken, drained of all all hope or desire for love. I had spent the last 5 years going from one crazy rollercoaster ride to the next with these women and all I had to show for any of it was a heart full of scar tissue and a psyche that was about two steps away from a straight jacket and some very powerful medication. I had been from the top floor of the casino hotels to sleeping in a car. From being engaged to a young lady half my age to standing in the middle of the street in the hood trading blows with my girlfriend. I had tried everything I knew to make things work and nothing seemed to. Of course stopping my use of meth wasn't an option and ofcourse everything was their fault, atleast that's what I kept telling myself. At the end of it all I found myself in a long term Christian based drug rehab facing a life sentence. With a newborn son and not much hope for a future I dove into the bible and gave God everything I had left. I hoped my legal problems would go away and that God would replace my addiction to meth some type of spiritual awakening. For a little while I seemed to have received exactly that and things were working out well for me. I had become somewhat of a leader at the facility and a star student. I was even beginning to believe that my life of drug use and prison terms was finally over. Until one night when I had this uncontrlable desire to get high. And I did just that, with no thought of what this would cost me I threw everything I had been working for and hoping for away. And to this day I can't tell you what made me do it. All I know is one minute I'm giving a sermon to new students there and the next I'm sticking a needle in my arm. I was caught and to avoid going to prison I ran.....from my past, from the guilt and shame of what I'd done, from the life I had wasted and the people I had let down, I ran from God and the life He had in store for me. Little did I know that I was on a journey that would bring me closer to God than ever and would teach me the healing power of love.

My first memory is when I was 3. I lived in south Alabama,and my mom was married to my step father John at the time. We had been visiting some friends of my step fathers and while playing outside with the little girl that lived there a German Sheppard dog attacked me.]a piece of my face was torn loose and I've had a facial scar ever since. I can remember the dog biting me and my mom come running towards me screaming.

A song that found me and not only told the story of us, but, also helped me to understand how I felt about this woman and why I was willing to risk my life to be with her. Because for the first time in my life, what I wanted and what I had,not only were one and the same,but, actually made perfect sense.....

A blind mans bluff....

So now I sit here, listening to the silent rain. An empty cold fills the air and my bones as thoughts of why and when fill my mind. Why does it seem to make sense that I would end up in the situation that I find myself in? Why am I being saught after as if I had truly done some heinous crime or were a real threat to society?

My entire life, it seems, has been an unending array of whys. Why is my family so different from other families? Why can't I live up to my potential? And so on....I could go on and on asking these questions and In sure every answer would bring another question to surface and before long the whole dialog would be a reflection of my actual life ,coming to understand one aspect only opens the door to three more questions to be answered until the moment comes when you realize you're no longer looking for answers,but, actually looking to the questions as though they would bring an understanding of who I am and why I am? And most importantly the biggest question of all.....Who cares?

Really now, who does really care? When its all said and done does anyone really care? And if so "why?"

I've definitely learned more about life and the world around me in these last few years than the the first 40 years of my life and most of that has been learned in the last few months. There's nothing like being on the run to open a man's eyes to the reality of human nature and the complexity of both God and mans desire to be in control.