Broken Man 3

I have some Fantastic Friends. That is all today. 

Diary of a broken man--day two.

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Day two of the Journey of a Broken Man

A little better today.  Had a pretty shitty morning.  Super emotional and I really miss my wife.  No real physical symptoms today but the mental shit is pretty bad.  My head is clearing out pretty well though and the thinking is getting faster and more precise.  I don’t really know what to expect in this realm.  I suspect I’ll keep getting clearer as time goes on but I KNOW that means that the anxiety and guilt will become stronger.  I think this will get a lot worse before it gets better.  Still…haven’t had any substances for three days and that is the best I can hope for at this point.

Interesting that a few people reached out to me today.  I guess more people read my blog than I thought.  I didn’t share it on social media so I’m not sure how they found it.  But…i really don’t care either.  Those few people gave me a little more hope in the world and in people…friends.  For those pals:  Thank you.  Thank you mucho.  For a person like me, who has always tried very hard to just fit in…to be liked and respected…to just fit the fuck in!…well I guess that really just surprised me.  Surprised the hell out of me.  You see, I’ve never really trusted many people.  I can count on two hands the number of people I honest to God trust in this world.  I imagine that is a pretty shitty way to live your life.  But I always felt very vulnerable as a kid and I learned super early that the best way to not feel vulnerable is to build big, giant, mental walls that cannot be breached by conventional weapons.  I’ve put myself out there a few times in life and a lot of those times end up in disappointment for me.  

Jesus I sound like a bleeding heart wanker.  But I guess this experiment (the journal) in putting myself out there for realsies.  And since I do not even know who my authentic self is anymore, maybe this will help uncover that kid.  This is not a conventional weapon.  It is an attempt to blow up those walls to smithereens from the inside.  No one else can really do it—especially if I don’t want you to.  Hell, I don’t even know if I really like bike racing in an authentic way.  I suspect I do…but I don’t Really know.  I know I like riding my bike, though.  Of that I am quite certain.  That part goes way back to the Sunblest days.  Escaping the hell that was going on in my house with Curt and his bullshit by riding my BMX bike all over those early, unfinished neighborhoods in Fishers (back before Fishers became a soulless caricature of Carmel by ripping down every last remnant of a once charming small town and replacing it with a GODDAM IKEA and those fucking poser monstrosities they put all over the fucking town hall area).  Fuck you, Fishers, for taking my town from me.

Apologies to anyone who lives in Fishers if you find that rant offensive.  But I find Fishers offensive now and I don’t ever want to go back.  Not even though I owned a business there, either.  The whole place disgusts me.  Except Sunblest, and Cottingham (sp?) Estates, and old downtown, and anywhere else I had friends.  Which was not a lot of places because we only had about 8-10,000 people in the 1980s there.  

I guess I have some anger in me as well.  Probably a lot.  And I curse a lot.  I will probably always do that.  I find it extremely therapeutic.  Like punching and kicking, only with words.  Extremely useful!  Incidentally, that’s one of the reasons I LOVE Beth’s home town.  Largely unchanged since she was a kid there.  

But I am not doing this to be PC or even nice.  I am doing it to get all my shit out in the open.  So I will write what I feel like writing and if anyone is disgusted with me for it, well I guess that’s on them.  

So currently I am watching the World Road Race replay on the tele and holy shit what a great race.  What a finish.  And the women’s race…what a performance by our local hero, Chloe D.  Sublime ride in the TT and one helluva ride in the RR.  Devastating attacks.  In years to come, That chick is going to straight rip the souls out of her peers.  Pure Beast Mode.  Pure Killer Instinct.  Can’t teach that, folks.  A vicious killer in the style of Bernard Hinault and Genghis Khan.  Americans love that shit.

Okay I’m tired and I need some sleep.  I rode my own bike today and felt pretty good after about an hour…finally.  I’ve felt like shit on the bike for a while now.  Burned out.  Had a shitty race season.  I know that a lot of that was due to my substance abuse and lack of actual food intake.  Most days the past year I rarely ate anything before evening because the stimulant effect of the dope I was taking just made me not hungry.  It worked for a while, but it finally caught up to me, I think.  Incidentally I have been starving ass hungry from morning to night since I quit all that shit and have been eating everything in the house.  Which is not a lot due to the fact that if Beth does not do the shopping, I just eat whatever we have left until the fridge is nice and cleaned out…which is the way I like it.  Even when I was eating properly, my diet has always consisted of about ten total foods.  And most of those ten foods are pasta and cans of tuna…hahaha.  

Okay I’m done for today.  More tomorrow….  -C 

Diary of a broken man

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Two days ago I broke down.  I don’t even know how to begin this.  I have been a downright scoundrel for a long time.  I am an alcoholic, a sometime drug abuser, a manipulator and liar, and I have basically let everyone I know down so many times that I cannot even remember most of the those times.  Right now I have been sober for two days and I feel awful.  I feel very vulnerable.  I am filled with anxiety and shame.  I am terrified of losing my wife and our pups.  I made a sacred commitment to her and I have let her down.  I have outright lied to her and I have lied by omission.  She gave grace to me once before when I was drinking a lot and drove drunk with her and put her in danger.  I told her I would quit…and I did for a while but then I did it again.  I have no right to expect that grace again.  So I must be prepared for her to leave me.  I came clean to her two days ago and told her everything I have been doing.  I gave her access to my bank accounts and credit card today so she could see everything.  Funny thing is that I left a paper trail to everything.  So I am terrified.  I am anxious.  I am in a very shitty state right now.  We have agreed that I will go to inpatient treatment.  I admit that I would never have even considered that before…

I have done the following things:  I have been using cough meds (dextromethorphan) on the order of two to three bottles a day (900 mg of dxm), alcohol (a gulp full every few hours to temper the anxiety), marijuana (maybe a puff or two daily), and my own prescriptions (sometimes abused by adding extra doses).  I have been doing this for over a year.  The dxm, when dosed carefully, and especially when combined with pregabalin in my regular dose, creates a dissociative effect and a not-unpleasant “floating” feeling.  It also is effective in alleviating anxiety.  It sometimes puts me in a manic state and I find that I can be much more gregarious and talkative to people, which has helped me sell bikes and be more social in general.  

The combination i have been using worked for awhile…worked like I wanted it to.  Until it started to make me lose my mind.  Also I noticed some pretty crappy side effects.  The dxm causes me to retain water and makes my skin very blotchy.  The marijuana sometimes makes me even more anxious, which is why I used it sparingly.  And I really only started using that fairly recently.  I actually tried cutting out the dex and only using the weed.  But I could only do that if I was already in a happy mood…which is not very often anymore if I am not on the dex and pregabalin.  

Things just started to get more complicated the longer I went on with this regimen.  And I was spending a lot of money going to CVS or Walgreens all the time to buy more dex.  Add in the vodka (and sometimes beer…I really love a good, strong IPA) and my credit card went up and up.  But I found I could escape the guilt and worry if I just kept myself medicated.  So that’s what I did.  I took the easy road.  Funny thing, the easy road…you get quick gratification that way but you miss a hell of a lot of interesting things.  Important things.  Things that matter.  

I missed a hell of a lot of things that matter on the easy road.  

This first journal entry is about me telling whoever will listen (yes, “whoever”, not “whomever”).  I am in a very bad place right now.  My psyche is broken.  I am broken.  I have nothing to lose anymore because I have lost myself.  Sure, I can still lose my marriage and family and my “stuff” (truck, moto, bikes, etc.) but if I don’t even have my mind, that stuff is effectively gone.  Because if I don’t even know who I am anymore, how can I be present for my family?  I am fucked six ways from Sunday and I don’t even know how to find me.  I do not love myself right now.  In fact, I hate myself. Two days ago I wanted to die.  I came close to doing it.  I really, really thought long and hard about it.  I actually planned it all out.  It’s even written down in a little story I wrote.  I put it in this blog a few entries ago.  It has always been comforting to me that if life became to painful for me to endure, I could simply stop it.  

But I thought about Beth and the pups and I became filled with remorse for all the things I have done.  I suddenly realized that I loved them very much and the thought of causing them the sort of pain that a suicide would certainly do broke me in half and split my heart in two.  One half is the manipulative asshole that only cares about himself.  The other half, or more accurately, the tiny little piece that broke off of that shitty half, is somehow a precious little piece of someone that I have not known in a very long time.  I hope I can get to know that person.  I hope that person can become strong enough to save me…whomever I am.  So I will go to inpatient treatment and ask for help.  And I hope they will recognize that person and teach me who he is.  I hope they feed him well and help him to find a sense of self-worth.

I have already had help from Beth, Brian, and Matt.  I owe them my life right now.  Not that my life is worth much these days.  But, maybe…in time.  

I don't really care who sees this post.  I don't have that many followers, anyway.  People will find out sooner or later, anyway.  If you read this, just know that I fucking hate gossip.  So be cool about it, please.  And if you see me, please go ahead and talk to me about it.  I won't mind.  

More stuff tomorrow.  -C