Proverbs 3: 3-7
Let not steadfast love and faithfulness forsake you; bind them on the tablet of your heart. So you will find favor and good success in the sight of God and man. Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths. Be not wise in your own eyes; fear the Lord, and turn away from evil.
I feel awful. Why am I all mixed up in this mess anyways?
I didn't want to die. Why did I feel like death was so constantly inevitably close?
I wanted to feel that warm everything-is-alright feeling, that everyone-is-here feeling. I didn't know if I'd ever really feel it.
It was like a cup of coffee in the morning but better, and I felt so uncertain of things. I knew I kept sabotaging myself and I wanted so badly to stop. How does something fix itself? My friends were suggesting rehab. Amy Winehouse's song "Rehab" played in my head in the most distasteful irony. I'd started hating looking at myself in the mirror. I looked dirty, unkempt, scary. I didn't look like someone's dad. I didn't look like a good dad. I didn't look like a good anything. I didn't like that.
Maybe I was supposed to keep looking at myself more often.
It felt like all I did everyday was think about myself or think about how God could save me or think about how I felt like I was losing my mind but maybe if I just focused on what was right in front of me I'd be okay. Maybe? My writing had lost it's cadence even. I felt insecure, unhinged, and unlikable.
I wanted to fix things for my daughter, for Stefany, for anyone and everyone who had ever supported me and been there for me.
Proverbs 3: 3-7
Let not steadfast love and faithfulness forsake you; bind them on the tablet of your heart. So you will find favor and good success in the sight of God and man. Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths. Be not wise in your own eyes; fear the Lord, and turn away from evil.
Yet here I was, attempting to lean on my own understanding, unwilling to trust God. Unable, maybe. I didn't truly trust anything or anyone and that was because of my own understanding. Sure, I could read the Bible, but could I ever truly trust it? I mean, after I'd gone so far down a path of sin?
It seemed pretty accurate, showing the mistakes I'd made had been made for thousands of years and everyone ended up exactly where I sat now;
Dead or in Hell. Or both. I mean, I was still alive but if you really confronted me about it I'd like to say I was dead and living in Hell. A Hell that I'd created.
I felt dead to God, just like I felt dead to the rest of the world. The only thing that I really liked sometimes was music. The Bible made sense, but sense sometimes just made me want to kill myself.
That's not honorable.
My thoughts were perverse. I was pretty wicked. I didn't know how I was going to change but at the same time staying the same didn't seem like an option. In fact, I was trying to staunchly to get out of my own skin that I was convinced I'd be dead within the next couple months if something didn't change.
I was losing hope. I had faith in the Bible, that it could save people. Not that it could save me. I didn't really believe anything could save me. All I really wanted was company, and then when I had company I was so miserable in it, and all I wanted was peace, and then as soon as I had peace I wanted company, and so on and so forth the state of man is constant restlessness.
I was probably quoting atheists. I believed in God. I just didn't think the universe had a happy ending planned out for me, and I felt like I was making sure it wouldn't either. That, at least, I could be certain of. Hell could be planned, predestined. You could ruin your own life very easily, very certainly making everything you do uncertain in a way that was actually comforting.
"Even hell can get comfy once you're settled in."
I wanted to hear from Stefany. I was so mad at myself for trying to stop her from talking to me the week before. It hadn't even been ten days. What the fuck had I done?
Why the fuck had I done it?
We all have our horrors and our demons confined; but how can I win when I'm paralyzed? They crawl up on my back and wrap their fingers 'round my throat; is this what I get for the choices that I've made? God, forgive me for all my sins. God, forgive me, for everything. Don't go.
"Don't Go" - Bring Me the Horizon
I wanted Amelia back. I wanted all the things I'd neglected in life because I was so uncertain of their success that I was terrified of them, terrified of the pain of losing them. It was okay if I was the reason that I lost them, but I wasn't okay with losing them of some other accord; how the fuck did that make sense in my head?
I felt unbalanced, uncertain, alone. It didn't make sense because tons of people had told me that they were there that I could talk to them but what was I supposed to say? Hey, I feel like offing myself again. Don't really know why. Oh yeah, the inescapable fact of limitless possibilities and possible failure of succeeding at anything I tried made me terrified of life itself. Now I want to die.
I didn't feel any better.
"Trust God. Love God. Have faith." They said it to me over and over again because they could probably tell I didn't have a bone of trust in my body.
I fucking hated feelings. They were so useless. So mundane. But they gave life direction, purpose, meaning, and that made them impossible to escape. So what was I to do? Clearly I couldn't keep escaping my emotions the way I was. I felt like my emotions were wrong.
I tried saying it out loud, that I had faith. It sounded fucking weird. Like, you could feel the cringe of uncertainty in my voice. I tried to say I trusted anything or anyone and it was the same. I tried saying I love Jesus Christ and it sounded a lot more like I loathed him than loved him. I wanted fucking saved by something that didn't fucking exist.
You can't be saved if you don't have faith or love anything. No matter how hard you could try to lie to yourself, at the end of the day you knew the truth and you knew what you felt no matter how many times you said otherwise. It was absolutely horrible. I wanted things and desired things passionately, I cared about things but I didn't seem to show it and it was probably because I'd tried to make myself indestructible and impervious to the feeling of loss and succeeded by throwing away absolutely everything I could ever fear of losing, including myself, my health, and everyone that had faith in me.
I'm so fucking sorry, Amelia, my daughter, I'm so fucking sorry.
I'm so fucking sorry, Stefany, I'm so fucking sorry that I couldn't ever live up to what I wanted to live up to.
I'm so fucking sorry, my brothers, because I left you no good example.
I'm so sorry, my parents, that I was such a failure of a child, and I'm sure a nightmare to watch and actually ever have feelings for.
I'm so fucking sorry, everyone, because even though one tear, maybe two escaped my eyes when I wrote those two lines that I was sorry to Amelia and Stefany, for the rest none escaped.
What good was I if I couldn't feel a fucking thing, and that was all I wanted but couldn't feel it in the end after all? I couldn't have faith if I wanted to, was it true?
"You're scared, I can see you tremble. Shaking like a dog shitting razor blades. Feel the shadows like a stranger, well Join the Club." "Join the Club" - Bring me the Horizon
Alright; here's what I fucking believed in: EMOTIONS and desires that OPPOSED THE CONTINUANCE OF LIFE or ANYTHING that FED INTO THAT were WRONG.
I couldn't trust anything or believe in anything else.
I didn't love anything.
***
I am puzzled. No one, and rightly so, would believe me if I said I believe in God. This is because in the Bible it says that if you meditate on the wisdom contained in it you will be able to let your path be led by God. At the moment, God wasn't leading me anywhere but Rehab.
Stefany wanted me to do it. The Church Gang wanted me to do it. Hell, even Kristen would've agreed with it, she even told me so back in last October.
I am left to assume that is true because if not then God is leading me to Kum and Go to buy a black & mild.
I don't believe that's what God wants. Which is why I'm stuck here, at the Library, pondering it.
I thought about applying for more jobs, but that didn't make any sense if I wasn't fit to stand an interview.
I'd made myself work with what I was dealt, getting my psyche right enough for interviews before the wrong way, but I didn't know if I could keep that up. At least, it didn't look or sound or even feel that way.
What about my phone bill?
What about my child support?
What about probation?
What about my clothing?
What about my job?
Was there any possible way that going to rehab could make my life worse? Is there any possible way I couldn't use it to my benefit?
That was the real question. The slight possibility that rehab wasn't going to work is what turned me off towards it.
A black and mild sounds really nice right now. So does liquor. I could totally afford a really cheap shooter, an airplane bottle, right now.
Holy shit, that's all I cared about.
After work, I'd collected the entire one dollar I'd made in tips and started heading for the gas station to buy one of those cheap cigars. I got as far as the end of the block before deciding to turn around and head to the library instead because the noble and commendable thing to do as well as the wise thing to do would be to not go smoke or drink. However, there I was, considering it, again. At least it isn't sex or masturbating, I thought, amused. I'd felt wicked at work, though, only smiling when a small boy ordered a sandwich that was much larger than his family clearly expected him to order and they made their sandwiches in turn much smaller to compensate.
Seeing all of the families drove me stir crazy, as if I wasn't already. I wondered if they'd fix that in rehab too. I wondered how long I was going to wait before either going to get a drink or going to grab a cigar.
You know you want it.
Fuck. Even if I disregarded the whole evil, wicked temptation thing I still was faced with the fact that the desire was emotional and contrary to the continuance of life.
I enjoyed being an idiot because it was easy on my conscience. Just do the wrong thing, don't worry about it. It made every other aspect of my life more difficult but just because it was easy on my free will I... chose it.
The thing was, if I chose to go to rehab, it had to be me wanting it for me and not any other reason or it wouldn't work.
That's the gayest thing I've ever heard.
Laziness is bad. I wanted to laugh. I wanted to go watch videos of old vines on Twitter.
Laziness wasn't going to get me anywhere. I didn't think focusing so hard was either though, so I wound up going for a walk.
To the gas station.
Did I make it there?
***
Yeah, I did.
Yeah, I did exactly what you were expecting me to do.
Yes, I'm ashamed of it. Yes, I believe that I need to go to rehab. Yes, I'm going to talk with the dude tonight at Church. Yes, I'm a fucking idiot. Yes, I totally should've known this was coming and done it sooner. Yes, I'm like 22 years late on this bullshit. Yes, Kristen, you were right. Yes, Stefany, you were right. Yes, parents, you were right. Yes, God, you were right. Yes, Manny, you were right. Yes, Tom (or Paul?), you were right.
That being said, I totally knew that if I was going to really convince myself on this Rehab thing, I was going to have to do something before I went.
Yeah, that's a horrible idea.
Don't do that.
But-
Nope.
It'd be really funny.
No it wouldn't.
Where's your sense of adventure?
It's a fortune and a soul in debt with the rest of me!
Well that's great. Now I had reasoned myself into rehab but reasoned myself out of wanting to do any actual self-help on my own. I wanted to spend the rest of my time "in the real world" self-destructing as much as I could. As, I'm sure, anyone about to go to rehab would typically enjoy doing.
I wasn't going to let myself.
Was I?
I was basically ready to go to sleep at it was four in the afternoon. Why I was so tired was beyond me, I hadn't done anything but had been exceptionally weak in the past few weeks. I'd been eating less and less, but it wasn't bothering me as much as it used to. I was just getting used to not eating, like, ever.
If I even wanted a last meal before rehab I'd have to wait a whole fucking week until payday. A whole week. Do you know how many friends it'd be possible for me to convince to get fucked up with me before I left? What on earth was I thinking? I couldn't do that, I was on probation, but at the same time I longed for the risk of doing something I wasn't supposed to.
Nah, I've got to prove it to Stefany that this is for real. She doesn't believe me. As much as that isn't the whole reason behind this, it definitely made a bigger difference than anyone else's word had.
Or I wanted to change it, at least. She'd made the point that I really hadn't been there for Amelia for the first year of her life so why would I even keep trying to be in it? Why don't I just stop, and leave it all behind? Because I didn't believe it was right. Because I wanted to be there for Amelia because of all the bullshit I had to deal with with fathers not being there whether it was involved in the women I dated, my bestfriend's self image, or whatever the fuck else, even religion that it ruined,
(Get it? Because 'father' is never around? That's wicked. Stop it.)
I couldn't let myself live with it, clearly.
I was still upset about how much time I had on my hands. I felt like that sentence in itself would come around to bite me in the ass.
I was still upset about how much time I had on my hands.
I still remembered the day I'd written about a conversation between two people, and ended the post with "What's it like to die of cancer?" and then Gabe and I wound up having that very same conversation, and he ended up dying of cancer.
I was still upset about how much time I had on my hands.
It was so wrong. Some people didn't even get a choice or weren't even aware of how much time on their hands they had and I was sitting here on the rich side of town contemplating rehab vs. continuing to live life addicted to Sin and everything evil complaining about it.
Frowns, all around, from the whole classroom, and probably the whole world if they saw it, too.
Are you comfortable with being that disappointing? I asked myself.
Next >>>
Let not steadfast love and faithfulness forsake you; bind them on the tablet of your heart. So you will find favor and good success in the sight of God and man. Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths. Be not wise in your own eyes; fear the Lord, and turn away from evil.
I feel awful. Why am I all mixed up in this mess anyways?
I didn't want to die. Why did I feel like death was so constantly inevitably close?
I wanted to feel that warm everything-is-alright feeling, that everyone-is-here feeling. I didn't know if I'd ever really feel it.
It was like a cup of coffee in the morning but better, and I felt so uncertain of things. I knew I kept sabotaging myself and I wanted so badly to stop. How does something fix itself? My friends were suggesting rehab. Amy Winehouse's song "Rehab" played in my head in the most distasteful irony. I'd started hating looking at myself in the mirror. I looked dirty, unkempt, scary. I didn't look like someone's dad. I didn't look like a good dad. I didn't look like a good anything. I didn't like that.
Maybe I was supposed to keep looking at myself more often.
It felt like all I did everyday was think about myself or think about how God could save me or think about how I felt like I was losing my mind but maybe if I just focused on what was right in front of me I'd be okay. Maybe? My writing had lost it's cadence even. I felt insecure, unhinged, and unlikable.
I wanted to fix things for my daughter, for Stefany, for anyone and everyone who had ever supported me and been there for me.
Proverbs 3: 3-7
Let not steadfast love and faithfulness forsake you; bind them on the tablet of your heart. So you will find favor and good success in the sight of God and man. Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths. Be not wise in your own eyes; fear the Lord, and turn away from evil.
Yet here I was, attempting to lean on my own understanding, unwilling to trust God. Unable, maybe. I didn't truly trust anything or anyone and that was because of my own understanding. Sure, I could read the Bible, but could I ever truly trust it? I mean, after I'd gone so far down a path of sin?
It seemed pretty accurate, showing the mistakes I'd made had been made for thousands of years and everyone ended up exactly where I sat now;
Dead or in Hell. Or both. I mean, I was still alive but if you really confronted me about it I'd like to say I was dead and living in Hell. A Hell that I'd created.
I felt dead to God, just like I felt dead to the rest of the world. The only thing that I really liked sometimes was music. The Bible made sense, but sense sometimes just made me want to kill myself.
That's not honorable.
My thoughts were perverse. I was pretty wicked. I didn't know how I was going to change but at the same time staying the same didn't seem like an option. In fact, I was trying to staunchly to get out of my own skin that I was convinced I'd be dead within the next couple months if something didn't change.
I was losing hope. I had faith in the Bible, that it could save people. Not that it could save me. I didn't really believe anything could save me. All I really wanted was company, and then when I had company I was so miserable in it, and all I wanted was peace, and then as soon as I had peace I wanted company, and so on and so forth the state of man is constant restlessness.
I was probably quoting atheists. I believed in God. I just didn't think the universe had a happy ending planned out for me, and I felt like I was making sure it wouldn't either. That, at least, I could be certain of. Hell could be planned, predestined. You could ruin your own life very easily, very certainly making everything you do uncertain in a way that was actually comforting.
"Even hell can get comfy once you're settled in."
I wanted to hear from Stefany. I was so mad at myself for trying to stop her from talking to me the week before. It hadn't even been ten days. What the fuck had I done?
Why the fuck had I done it?
We all have our horrors and our demons confined; but how can I win when I'm paralyzed? They crawl up on my back and wrap their fingers 'round my throat; is this what I get for the choices that I've made? God, forgive me for all my sins. God, forgive me, for everything. Don't go.
"Don't Go" - Bring Me the Horizon
I wanted Amelia back. I wanted all the things I'd neglected in life because I was so uncertain of their success that I was terrified of them, terrified of the pain of losing them. It was okay if I was the reason that I lost them, but I wasn't okay with losing them of some other accord; how the fuck did that make sense in my head?
I felt unbalanced, uncertain, alone. It didn't make sense because tons of people had told me that they were there that I could talk to them but what was I supposed to say? Hey, I feel like offing myself again. Don't really know why. Oh yeah, the inescapable fact of limitless possibilities and possible failure of succeeding at anything I tried made me terrified of life itself. Now I want to die.
I didn't feel any better.
"Trust God. Love God. Have faith." They said it to me over and over again because they could probably tell I didn't have a bone of trust in my body.
I fucking hated feelings. They were so useless. So mundane. But they gave life direction, purpose, meaning, and that made them impossible to escape. So what was I to do? Clearly I couldn't keep escaping my emotions the way I was. I felt like my emotions were wrong.
I tried saying it out loud, that I had faith. It sounded fucking weird. Like, you could feel the cringe of uncertainty in my voice. I tried to say I trusted anything or anyone and it was the same. I tried saying I love Jesus Christ and it sounded a lot more like I loathed him than loved him. I wanted fucking saved by something that didn't fucking exist.
You can't be saved if you don't have faith or love anything. No matter how hard you could try to lie to yourself, at the end of the day you knew the truth and you knew what you felt no matter how many times you said otherwise. It was absolutely horrible. I wanted things and desired things passionately, I cared about things but I didn't seem to show it and it was probably because I'd tried to make myself indestructible and impervious to the feeling of loss and succeeded by throwing away absolutely everything I could ever fear of losing, including myself, my health, and everyone that had faith in me.
I'm so fucking sorry, Amelia, my daughter, I'm so fucking sorry.
I'm so fucking sorry, Stefany, I'm so fucking sorry that I couldn't ever live up to what I wanted to live up to.
I'm so fucking sorry, my brothers, because I left you no good example.
I'm so sorry, my parents, that I was such a failure of a child, and I'm sure a nightmare to watch and actually ever have feelings for.
I'm so fucking sorry, everyone, because even though one tear, maybe two escaped my eyes when I wrote those two lines that I was sorry to Amelia and Stefany, for the rest none escaped.
What good was I if I couldn't feel a fucking thing, and that was all I wanted but couldn't feel it in the end after all? I couldn't have faith if I wanted to, was it true?
"You're scared, I can see you tremble. Shaking like a dog shitting razor blades. Feel the shadows like a stranger, well Join the Club." "Join the Club" - Bring me the Horizon
Alright; here's what I fucking believed in: EMOTIONS and desires that OPPOSED THE CONTINUANCE OF LIFE or ANYTHING that FED INTO THAT were WRONG.
I couldn't trust anything or believe in anything else.
I didn't love anything.
***
I am puzzled. No one, and rightly so, would believe me if I said I believe in God. This is because in the Bible it says that if you meditate on the wisdom contained in it you will be able to let your path be led by God. At the moment, God wasn't leading me anywhere but Rehab.
Stefany wanted me to do it. The Church Gang wanted me to do it. Hell, even Kristen would've agreed with it, she even told me so back in last October.
I am left to assume that is true because if not then God is leading me to Kum and Go to buy a black & mild.
I don't believe that's what God wants. Which is why I'm stuck here, at the Library, pondering it.
I thought about applying for more jobs, but that didn't make any sense if I wasn't fit to stand an interview.
I'd made myself work with what I was dealt, getting my psyche right enough for interviews before the wrong way, but I didn't know if I could keep that up. At least, it didn't look or sound or even feel that way.
What about my phone bill?
What about my child support?
What about probation?
What about my clothing?
What about my job?
Was there any possible way that going to rehab could make my life worse? Is there any possible way I couldn't use it to my benefit?
That was the real question. The slight possibility that rehab wasn't going to work is what turned me off towards it.
A black and mild sounds really nice right now. So does liquor. I could totally afford a really cheap shooter, an airplane bottle, right now.
Holy shit, that's all I cared about.
After work, I'd collected the entire one dollar I'd made in tips and started heading for the gas station to buy one of those cheap cigars. I got as far as the end of the block before deciding to turn around and head to the library instead because the noble and commendable thing to do as well as the wise thing to do would be to not go smoke or drink. However, there I was, considering it, again. At least it isn't sex or masturbating, I thought, amused. I'd felt wicked at work, though, only smiling when a small boy ordered a sandwich that was much larger than his family clearly expected him to order and they made their sandwiches in turn much smaller to compensate.
Seeing all of the families drove me stir crazy, as if I wasn't already. I wondered if they'd fix that in rehab too. I wondered how long I was going to wait before either going to get a drink or going to grab a cigar.
You know you want it.
Fuck. Even if I disregarded the whole evil, wicked temptation thing I still was faced with the fact that the desire was emotional and contrary to the continuance of life.
I enjoyed being an idiot because it was easy on my conscience. Just do the wrong thing, don't worry about it. It made every other aspect of my life more difficult but just because it was easy on my free will I... chose it.
The thing was, if I chose to go to rehab, it had to be me wanting it for me and not any other reason or it wouldn't work.
That's the gayest thing I've ever heard.
Laziness is bad. I wanted to laugh. I wanted to go watch videos of old vines on Twitter.
Laziness wasn't going to get me anywhere. I didn't think focusing so hard was either though, so I wound up going for a walk.
To the gas station.
Did I make it there?
***
Yeah, I did.
Yeah, I did exactly what you were expecting me to do.
Yes, I'm ashamed of it. Yes, I believe that I need to go to rehab. Yes, I'm going to talk with the dude tonight at Church. Yes, I'm a fucking idiot. Yes, I totally should've known this was coming and done it sooner. Yes, I'm like 22 years late on this bullshit. Yes, Kristen, you were right. Yes, Stefany, you were right. Yes, parents, you were right. Yes, God, you were right. Yes, Manny, you were right. Yes, Tom (or Paul?), you were right.
That being said, I totally knew that if I was going to really convince myself on this Rehab thing, I was going to have to do something before I went.
Yeah, that's a horrible idea.
Don't do that.
But-
Nope.
It'd be really funny.
No it wouldn't.
Where's your sense of adventure?
It's a fortune and a soul in debt with the rest of me!
Well that's great. Now I had reasoned myself into rehab but reasoned myself out of wanting to do any actual self-help on my own. I wanted to spend the rest of my time "in the real world" self-destructing as much as I could. As, I'm sure, anyone about to go to rehab would typically enjoy doing.
I wasn't going to let myself.
Was I?
I was basically ready to go to sleep at it was four in the afternoon. Why I was so tired was beyond me, I hadn't done anything but had been exceptionally weak in the past few weeks. I'd been eating less and less, but it wasn't bothering me as much as it used to. I was just getting used to not eating, like, ever.
If I even wanted a last meal before rehab I'd have to wait a whole fucking week until payday. A whole week. Do you know how many friends it'd be possible for me to convince to get fucked up with me before I left? What on earth was I thinking? I couldn't do that, I was on probation, but at the same time I longed for the risk of doing something I wasn't supposed to.
Nah, I've got to prove it to Stefany that this is for real. She doesn't believe me. As much as that isn't the whole reason behind this, it definitely made a bigger difference than anyone else's word had.
Or I wanted to change it, at least. She'd made the point that I really hadn't been there for Amelia for the first year of her life so why would I even keep trying to be in it? Why don't I just stop, and leave it all behind? Because I didn't believe it was right. Because I wanted to be there for Amelia because of all the bullshit I had to deal with with fathers not being there whether it was involved in the women I dated, my bestfriend's self image, or whatever the fuck else, even religion that it ruined,
(Get it? Because 'father' is never around? That's wicked. Stop it.)
I couldn't let myself live with it, clearly.
I was still upset about how much time I had on my hands. I felt like that sentence in itself would come around to bite me in the ass.
I was still upset about how much time I had on my hands.
I still remembered the day I'd written about a conversation between two people, and ended the post with "What's it like to die of cancer?" and then Gabe and I wound up having that very same conversation, and he ended up dying of cancer.
I was still upset about how much time I had on my hands.
It was so wrong. Some people didn't even get a choice or weren't even aware of how much time on their hands they had and I was sitting here on the rich side of town contemplating rehab vs. continuing to live life addicted to Sin and everything evil complaining about it.
Frowns, all around, from the whole classroom, and probably the whole world if they saw it, too.
Are you comfortable with being that disappointing? I asked myself.
Next >>>
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