When the Going Gets Weird, The Weird Turn Pro

To be successful in sobriety you need to abandon some obvious bad habits, foster some new, healthy ones and maintain some existing, important ones. For instance, I needed to stop visiting the bar even though I wasn't drinking there, I needed to improve my diet and find sober evening activities to occupy my time, and I needed to rekindle my old hobbies like writing, reading and hiking. I was full of irrational fears when I got sober (still am, sometimes) and one of those (ridiculous and trivial) fears was that I would never enjoy the music that I used to listen to while drinking or the writings of Hunter S. Thompson again. Fortunately, I'm retarded. Both of those things remain favorite past times of mine.

I have taken a lot of inspiration from Hunter S. Thompson. In my teens I admired the Johnny Depp version of him for his drug habits, but I grew to appreciate the real talent and insightful writings of the guy as I got older. I love reading his letters. I find him thoughtful, poignant, honest and exceedingly funny. In sobriety, I began to call my home The Unicorn Ranch which is a mocking nod to Charlie Sheen and an honest homage to Dr. Thompson. Sheen because he named his Beverly Hills (or Malibu or wherever the fuck) home The Sober Valley Lodge when he was drinking tiger blood all over TMZ three years ago, Dr. Thompson because he lived for decades in Aspen, Colorado on a property he called The Owl Ranch. He reportedly had gongs hanging around the canyon walls and he would step outside and shoot them with his .44 magnum. Man, I love this guy.

I also read once that he was obsessed with breakfast. I'll let him explain this for you:

           "I like to eat breakfast alone, and almost never before noon; anybody with a terminally jangled lifestyle needs at least one psychic anchor every twenty-four hours, and mine is breakfast. In Hong Kong, Dallas, or at home—and regardless of whether or not I have been to bed—breakfast is a personal ritual that can only be properly observed alone, and in a spirit of genuine excess. The food factor should always be massive: four Bloody Marys, two grapefruits, a pot of coffee, Rangoon crêpes, a half-pound of either sausage, bacon, or corned-beef hash with diced chilies, a Spanish omelette or eggs Benedict, a quart of milk, a chopped lemon for random seasoning, and something like a slice of key lime pie, two margaritas and six lines of the best cocaine for dessert…Right, and there should also be two or three newspapers, all mail and messages, a telephone, a notebook for planning the next twenty-four hours, and at least one source of good music…all of which should be dealt with outside, in the warmth of a hot sun, and preferably stone naked."

Awesome. Just, awesome.

One of the new habits I've developed has been a consistent morning routine. It has none of the panache, drugs or booze that Thompson's had, but all of the psychic anchor qualities in a life that frequently borders on unhinged and unexplained. I almost always devote a good hour to waking up slowly. On days when I need to leave the house by 6:30 AM, I wake at 5 just so that I may have a solid hour to absorb my ritual. A French press of coffee, the morning news, a solid breakfast with some protein, 5 or 10 minutes of quiet thinking and two very important books. The books I look at are both recovery focused "daily readers". By this I mean there is a different entry for each day of the year. There are exactly 366 entries (one for leap year) and they often feel so incredibly timely in their subject matter. 

Having a morning routine that I stick to fairly obediently helps me stay grounded and present. It helps me remember to live life one day at a time and stay out of the past and future. By waking up and planning my day, I acknowledge that this day is all I am promised and I commit to making the most of it. By noon I might have abandoned those plans and be squarely stuck on some problem from eight years ago or panicking and fretting about an imagined decision I'm certain I'll need to face in 8 months, but at least I make a morning pledge to try and stay in the present. 

This post comes about on the second to the last day of the year when I read one of the more powerful entries in one of my books.  I'll summarize the entry:
           
           "The unpleasant things other people say or do have no power to destroy my peace of mind or ruin my day unless I permit it. Do I allow myself to respond to the words of a sick person as if they were the truth? ... There is so much to appreciate in this life. I won't waste another moment feeling sorry for myself."

It takes 364 days to reach that entry. At the end of the year you can look back on all the good and bad, tell the bad to slip away and focus on the good. No matter how much bad might outweigh the good, you can focus on the good and make that the estimation of your year. Lucky for me, it's been an awesome year. Easily the best ever. The triumphs dwarf the tribulations and the mere thought of the people I've met and things I learned bring an earnest and honest smile to my face. 

I'll look forward to 2014 and every morning I'll plan on living life to it's fullest. Outside, in the warmth of a hot sun, preferably stone naked.

"...the greater part of our happiness or misery depends on our dispositions and not on our circumstances."
       -Martha Washington

I don't know much about perfection, but I know it ain't you.

"Perfection" is not a word I would use to describe any aspects of my personality or life a few years ago. "Haphazard," "fraudulent," or "stolen" would be more appropriate words for describing my possessions or general state. What I have grown to realize, however, is that perfection-ism is far different than perfection itself. Perfectionism is an obsession with perfection. You can look it up if you don't believe me. Actually, would you look it up for me? I'm dreadfully tired and dictionary.com feels like it's miles away from this blog right now.

Perfectionism did and does describe my past and present mental fixations. Although I would measure the results of my alcoholic efforts as a solid C average, I was never satisfied with anything in my life that wasn't of the highest quality. Please note the distinction. I did not demand perfection from anything that I produced, I demanded perfection from you and all that the world brought into my life. And you let me down. Oh, boy... you let me down.

I believe it is likely part of the male condition to obsess over the idea that somewhere out there exists the perfect mate, the perfect job, the perfect porno flick, the perfect cup of coffee. We are so obsessed with the notion that something better is sitting on a bar stool down the street that we keep walking out on a good thing and we've shot to hell all chances at happiness with the perfectly good circumstances that are already in our life. For me, this obsession certainly manifested itself most devastatingly in the form of alcoholism. I kept looking for happiness at the bottom of the next pint of beer, and I just kept ordering another until I was drunker than drunk. But for other men who aren't alcoholics, they simply abandon partners and jobs at the first sign of weight gain or the first suggestion that they won't get the promotion they want. I did that too, but because I'm an alcoholic I also got drunk and shouted things like "you'll never find another guy like me!" To which she would reply, "God, I hope not."

The notion that I should not accept imperfection in my circumstances was killing me. I was satisfied with jobs for about two weeks. I'm fond of saying that "I've never met a restaurant I couldn't run better myself" although my titles have never included the words "supervisor, director or manager." My titles have included "probationary, trainee and inmate," so that should tell you something about what I was bringing to the table. Nevertheless, in the face of my own blistering half-effort, I insisted that somewhere out there (probably at that quaint little bar across town) existed a job where I would always be managed appropriately, fall in love with the girl of my dreams and make lots of money (probably get tipped with a winning lottery ticket or something).

One of the most interesting things I've learned in sobriety is that no one person can be all things to me. There does not exist a person who will never frustrate me, never be cross with me or never make a mistake.
The same can be said for a job. No job can give me every feeling of worthiness, financial security and creative license that I wish it would. So the secret to solving this is to have a multifaceted life.

About a year ago I started down a path to a new career. The path has been winding and the progress is slower than I would like. I intend to end up a social worker doing incredibly important work that will pay me an enormous sum and impress you so much that you'll name a formidable landmark after me. While my goals are certainly worthy and I love having ambition, I've had to practice patience and allow myself to make some mistakes along the way. I've been anxious to start an internship, find a second job and begin a slow departure from the restaurant industry and move into a career that I can picture myself doing at the age of 60. In the meantime, I have occasionally found myself feeling restless and antsy. But the anxiety subsided when I realized that I didn't need a job to make me feel worthy and useful. I could feel worthy and useful by being worthy and useful. This is what I mean by having a multifaceted life.

I have found refuge in things like volunteer work, attending 12-step fellowships and helping others, and my schoolwork. I realized that although I would like to find work as a social worker (and deep down I know I will, eventually), I can be perfectly satisfied with my life exactly the way it is. I make a great living working only 25 hours a week. With the remainder of my week I can find opportunities to fulfill the need I have for feeling useful and helpful.

I take the same approach to relationships. I have been blessed with an extraordinary family and a loving girlfriend. But when they fall short of what I think I need in my life, I don't have to look far to find that other aspects of my life are supplying me with a dose of love and support. When I stop demanding that one person, one job or one meal be perfect, then other people, hobbies and bowls of ice cream come along and deliver the goods. When we accept imperfection in ourselves and others, we open ourselves up to the possibility of greatness in friends and opportunities that we have been taking for granted.

All of this comes on the heels of the most special work Christmas party I've ever attended. It felt so warm, familiar and downright loving that it feels cheap to refer to it as "work" Christmas party. The fantastic restaurant that I am so privileged to call my place of employment threw a smashing little dinner for us tonight. My gracious girlfriend came and sat down with nearly the entire staff and we ate an amazing meal with the owners. We had a "secret Santa" exchange and the gifts that were given were remarkably thoughtful. It's not as if I hadn't realized it before, but I remembered how lucky I am. I see that I have more love in my life than I knew.

Is this the "spirit of Christmas" or did I just eat too much turkey? Either way, I like it and I'm going to sleep good tonight.

In Which I Ruminate About The Significance of My Pathetic Handwriting...

I have a homework assignment due on Tuesday, so naturally I'm here wasting an hour on my blog. One of the greatest things happening in my life (aside from maintaining the looks of a 25 year old while actually well into my 30's) is enrollment in school and pursuing acceptance into a graduate program at a top-tier university.

On Saturday, I had the good fortune of sitting in on a graduate class at the University of Washington. The title of the class was "Social Work Practice With Chemically Dependent Adults." While I have a passing knowledge of social work, I have an intimate one of chemical dependence and a vague familiarity with adulthood. I know a few adults and I have seen many of them on television. Occasionally, when I go someplace like a bank, I am treated as an adult until the teller accesses my account and sees my purchase history on my debit card. ("This guy went to the same grocery store three times yesterday?") I'm always afraid that they'll recognize the frequent $2.99 purchases at Safeway as my regular pints of Ben & Jerry's and I'll be laughed out of the bank and banished to the check cashing/payday loan industry. But I digress...

I often found that my chemical dependence stood between me and adulthood, but introduced me to many social workers, so this class seemed right up my alley! I have been a student at the local community college for almost a year and have achieved better grades every quarter than I ever earned in high school or during my undergraduate studies. Nevertheless, as I plodded into the Saturday morning class, an old familiar song started playing in my mind. "You're not good enough. This is a joke. You're a joke. You'll never get into this school. These are serious students and you're not one of them." This is the way I talked myself out of every good opportunity I had back in the drinking years.

It's cruel. It hurts. And I do it to myself. To my memory, nobody has ever said these things to me, but I have consistently said them to myself for as long as I can remember. Truthfully, I struggled with school from kindergarten through high school. Assignments went uncompleted. When I did complete them I sometimes chose not to turn them in. I cheated. I cut corners and skipped class. I was not a good student. I barely graduated high school. In fact, and I hope this won't disqualify me for holding public office one day, but I wouldn't have graduated if I hadn't cheated on a major paper during my senior year. *gulp* I can't believe I'm admitting this on the forever internet where everyone can read it (this blog has about 3 readers.)

I've reached a confidence in my life that, combined with a faith that my higher power and the universe will protect me from harm, allows me to explore in-depth and admit to God, myself and others, things that I used to try to keep hidden from all of the above. That means that I have begun examining the things that I formerly thought could hurt me. Over the past year, I have developed a strong faith in a higher power which I choose to call "god". This faith informs my trust that I cannot be hurt by finding out the truth about me.

For several years I took important documents like past due bills, court summons or treatment assessments and stuffed them into the top drawer of my desk. The idea was that I would come back to them "someday" and deal with them. Well, in a way I did.

Eventually, I forgot all about the nature of that drawers contents and decided to clean it out. 18 months into sobriety, I began literally cleaning house and came upon the drawer. I felt so completely protected from what I found that I read every page before burning it in the wood stove. All of the bills were either settled or so old that they will soon be off my credit report. The treatment assessments and police incident reports were nothing more than clarifying records of faded memories that I've discussed ad nauseum with sponsors and counselors. It was like snooping through some other drunk idiots desk. I felt detached. I felt well and healed.

Since that day, I've slowly begun thinking about another fact of Kevin Toth that is profoundly relevant to my academic pursuits. That is the fact of my learning disability.

Last night, after attending the graduate class, while working in the restaurant, I had the distinct pleasure of waiting on my middle school art teacher. Her name is Lara Jones and she's an absolutely wonderful person. I love art. I'm fucking terrible at it too. My paintings look like something my four-year-old nephew would probably mock. If he had a refrigerator of his own he would probably hang up my paintings and think "man, that Uncle Kevin makes some pretty sad paintings. I hope he's good at sports or something. Actually, he sucks at sports. Good thing he's so darn cute." Still, I love to paint my terrifically terrible paintings. At certain points in life I've made lots of them. All of this occurred to me as I wrote down my email address for my former teacher. I wrote it down in my familiar, sloppy, labored handwriting with a mixture of upper and lowercase lettering so that it read "KEVINtoth@gMAIL.com".

I am a dysgraphic. Nobody seems to know what that means, so I'll explain it to you (no need to thank me). In layman's terms I have what you would call "fucking ugly" handwriting. Not only does my handwriting look like it was written by a trained seal with thumbs, it is astonishingly painful for me to write. I get immense cramps in my fingers. My wrist tightens. The sentences stray from the lines and the lower and upper cases mix inappropriately. My penmanship would look more fitting if it were written in crayon and had a few letters backwards like a child's.

In this moment last night, something clicked. This is why my paintings and drawings are so endearingly pathetic. People tend to look at my artwork and react with an "Ah, look! Kevin did some doodles!" as if I'm a puppy who just took an adorable shit on a shag carpet.

I spent decades denying that anything was wrong. I hated the term learning disabled. I never truly felt "dumb", but I thought I might actually be dumb. I feared I would find out the truth that I was. So I took the results of the two learning/neuro-psychological examinations I underwent (at age 12 and 16) and stuffed the manila folder into another drawer of the desk and pretended it didn't exist. Until tonight.

I took 30 minutes to thumb through the reports and saw that these professionals who assessed me twenty years did an amazing job. They got it exactly right. They tested with astounding accuracy my strengths and weaknesses. It is uncanny to read such a vivid, fair and downright correct portrayal of my 12 and 16 year old intellect and academic ability. I just wish they had paid more attention to my looks. They really failed to capture my charm.

But my responses to their testing seem the most illuminating. I was "satisfied" with my B-/C+ grades and felt those were "good". I didn't trust the praise the testers gave me when I scored highly on something. I thought they were lying to me about my high IQ and superior ability to express myself verbally. I now understand that my strength to communicate verbally is a compensation for my early childhood struggle with handwriting. Just like my devilish looks are a compensation for my devilish soul and complete lack of morals. (Just kidding, I have morals. I just choose to ignore them.) What the professionals couldn't quite predict when they tested me in the early 90's, is how much help a computer is to me. As I am frequently told (and thank you very much) is how clear my voice is in this blog. Typing is, in fact, quite easy for me. It seems to be an equalizer for my dysgraphia. I love to write- just not with a pen and paper.

I am really glad that my parents held onto this paperwork and handed it over to me when I got sober. I'm also glad I waited a while to read it. Today I view self-knowledge as liberating and helpful. I'm glad to know more about myself and it feels good to understand my struggles and to see what makes me exceptional. It's nice to know who I actually am. I am not dumb. I am not lazy. I am just as good as every other student in that fucking grad school class. And when I don't get accepted on my first application (and I won't), it won't be because I'm not smart enough. It will because I'm not ready to be accepted yet. But if I apply again, and when I'm accepted, I have as much chance at success as all the other WASP-y, rich kid do-gooders that apply for a master of social work program. In the meantime, I'll be at home finger painting and writing blogs when I should be doing homework. Okay, maybe I am a little bit lazy. But I'm also charming as hell.

I love you. Thanks for reading my blog.

My stupid, boring and glum (happy and incredible) life...that I love.

I'm really quite busy these days. Work, school, graduate school applications, recovery stuff- plus I'm a vigilante at night. The days our just packed. I have about 4 important things I should be working on right now, so naturally I'm not doing any of them and am instead here at The Most Important Blog on the Internet. I left the restaurant bizarrely early this evening to go grocery shopping. 7 PM is the best time to go to the grocery store. It's all guys like me with a get-me-the-fuck-outta-here mentality. We arrive. We shop. We leave. We ask no questions, self check out is fine. No sir, I will not be needing help out.

Glancing into my shopping bag (reusable) I chuckled at the contents. Bread, milk, cream, sugar. Jesus. Where's the beer? The cigarettes? The Tylenol PM? The only thing that could have made that bag more plain would be a bottle of vanilla. Shit, I really did need vanilla for these cookies I'm baking. Christ, I'm baking fucking cookies at 9 PM again.

I must admit, when I got sober I thought that life was going to be pretty monotonous. This is not an uncommon fear for alcoholics. AA's Big Book addresses it with this question "Am I to be consigned to a life which is stupid, boring and glum?" Fortunately, the answer for me is "sort of, yes."

Well, not really. No, not quite at all actually. But there was a point in my life only a couple of years before sobriety when the life I lead today sounded dreadful. For a decade I defined happiness by how many bartenders knew my name. I gauged my success in life by how easily I could score dope and at what price. I prided myself on having the best connections (bouncers, cab drivers, waitresses). I did dangerous, dangerous things and I loved it. Life was chaotic and unpredictable. I remember waking up in a recording studio (no, I was not in a band) with a microphone in one hand and a bottle of whiskey in the other. For a few years this was really fun.

By the time I reached my late twenties, something had changed. First of all, some of my peers began to drift away to better, more stable lifestyles. People began focusing on careers, getting married, having babies... It all sounded like hell to me, but I noticed that my priorities seemed very different from theirs. The next thing that happened was that my tolerance to drugs and alcohol changed severely. I was able to ingest about the same amount, but blackouts became a frequent problem. By the end of my drinking I was blacking out almost every time I drank. But even scarier, I was blacking out after only a couple of drinks. I would have two beers and two shots and not remember the next six beers and six shots. Whatever happened in those remaining hours was a mystery.

Every morning I had to become a private investigator of my own fucked up life. I would wake up and frantically dig through my pockets to see how much money I'd spent, find receipts to see where I'd been, read text messages for a clue about who I was with.

Several times in the winter when it's dark all the time, I would drink from 3-5 and pass out for a few hours, wake up at 8 and have no idea if it was morning or night until I turned on the television to find the news or Jeopardy.

Aside from the daily drinking mayhem, there were my ongoing employment problems and my depressing financial saga. I will write an entire 30 blog posts on how obnoxious I was to the opposite sex and what a liability I had grown to be for my friends. Life had become very tedious.

Before I got sober, I made a few last-ditch efforts to make drinking work for me. I moved back to my hometown which is 30 minutes away from Seattle and pristine and peaceful. Then, after a year, I moved further into the woods where I intended to drink heavily out of the auspices of anyone that might still care about me.

Nothing in life goes according to my plans. About two weeks after moving into my little house in the woods I nearly totaled my car. God had a brilliant idea for me. The car high-centered on it's way into a ditch at a high-speed. I was arrested for DUI (again), but the car didn't get a scratch. When I got out of jail I got the car outfitted with a breathalyzer and drove my ass to about 500 AA meetings in a year. My daily routine changed drastically.

I've never been happier.

So I'm grateful for some normalcy in my life today. But really, life is rarely boring. I have an exciting life. I am a college student (again), I work in a beautiful restaurant with talented people, I date an amazing girl and have a wonderful family. I read lots of books, see lots of movies and eat lots of cookies. When I wake up in the morning I feel rested, healthy and hopeful. And I remember where every dollar got spent the night before. Usually on ice cream and pizza.

Thanks for reading my blog. I love you.

A..N..XI....E......T..Y....

I've heard it said that in sobriety we have lots of small problems, but when we're drinking we really only have one, major problem- that we can't seem to stop drinking or getting high. I perceived my life to be really quite routine or boring when I was a drunk. I knew that I was a little behind the curve in the career, relationship and social aptitude departments, but I thought my plentiful problems of not paying bills on time, losing jobs, threats of eviction and the occasional arrest or emergency room visit were fairly normal and mundane.

Being addicted to a depressant like alcohol (of which I drank daily and heavily for ten years) did wonders for my fear-riddled life. Like I said, at the time my lifestyle seemed boring, repetitive and not in any way unusual, dangerous or abnormal. I basically went from one mini-crises to the next. There was always a utility about to be shut of- I frequently went weeks without phone service, a boss that was mad at me, a girl that was mad at me, a wound that wouldn't heal, a cold that I couldn't shake, a shake that I couldn't steady, weight that I was losing, money that I owed a bartender or a dealer... Life was never very simple. Booze helped.

For a long time, when I drank, I felt sublime. The problems seemed manageable if I thought about them at all. Drinking calmed my nerves and physically stopped the shaking and quieted my growling stomach. When it stopped working, I drank for a few more years trying to get that fix back. Eventually the whole thing went to shit and something stopped me from drinking any more.

It was then that I realized I was a scared, helpless little motherfucker. In my first 90 days of sobriety I probably had 400 panic attacks. I now understand that I had been experiencing severe anxiety for several years and I was self-medicating with booze and drugs. Depressants like alcohol, benzodiazepines (Xanax, Clonopin, Valium), and opiates treat anxiety very well, but when your body detoxifies, the anxiety returns like a pack of hungry coyotes that chase you around your living room and gnaw out your guts.

To be clear, I had a lot to be fearful of. First of all, I had some fairly serious legal trouble that was threatening to put me in jail for a little while and essentially make me unable to hold a job, pay my rent or bills. There was also the whole "accepting I'm an alcoholic" thing and figuring out what the fuck to do about that. Then I had to face up to the fact that I owed a shitload of money to banks and lenders. I had to acknowledge that things weren't going quite as well as I was leading people to believe. I was an anxious, anxious dude.

Many alcoholics identify "resentment" as the number one engine in their drinking airplane. For me, fear and anxiety were the culprits. I had a wide assortment of fears, but frequently the smallest ones were the most detrimental. For instance, I was afraid of my mailbox. In this day and age, we seldom get good news in the mailbox. For me, it was a box of doom and misery. Because I lived in an apartment building, the tiny mailbox necessitated that I empty it at least bi-monthly. I would pull out a stack of mail that was entirely collection agencies or overdue bills (you really only need to worry when they send the bill in a yellow, pink or blue envelope- then they mean business). I wouldn't even sort through it. I would just take it upstairs with the intention of dealing with it when I got my next tax return- seriously, that was always my plan. I would walk into my studio apartment and plop it down on the previous stack until it was about 8 inches high and it would spill off the shelf onto the floor in the middle of the night, reminding me that I was a delinquent, sad sack of incompetence. In the middle of the night I would hear this "sssshhhhhhh......kerplash!" and I would know the bill pile was all over the floor again. The next morning, I would scoop them up, stuff them into a drawer and wait for the tax return. When I got my refund I would sometimes actually pay off a bill or two, but usually I drank a lot of it away.

Anyways, back to the present. The bills get paid on time these days and I haven't seen a yellow envelope in quite a many months. Once, when I was a few months sober and still pretty broke, I thought that my phone was shut off when I was a few days late on my bill. It turns out that nobody had called or texted me for a few days- which is also pathetic, but less pathetic than getting your phone turned off. But in spite of this renewed responsibility I still suffer from anxiety attacks.

They come from the weirdest things. A couple of months ago I was driving home from a place I'm not familiar with and my GPS failed to give me a direction. The feeling of an anxiety attack crept up quickly. For me, it's a feeling that starts in my heart with a skipped heartbeat. My heart seems to stop for a second, then my stomach tightens and I feel a little nauseous, my heart speeds up and beats irregularly, my shoulders tighten and my mind races. Sometimes these attacks go on for days and days. It's misery.

But I've learned to look for the fear behind the anxiety and find out what it is that's feeding the sense of impending doom. I'm not afraid of mailboxes anymore because I know that I can handle any bills that come my way, and what I can't handle I know my higher power can.

When I sat down to write this, I intended to get into a discussion of the dangers of treating anxiety with prescription medication, but I already wrote that research paper last July. Also, the burger I took out of the freezer has thawed out and I'm hungry. Good night.

THE END

This is a perfect day for listening to melancholy music, drinking coffee and writing bad poetry. I'm no poet so here's a sappy blog post instead.

Unbelievably, it's been a year since I started this thing. It's morphed from a confused, lazy corner of the internet into an unfocused, sometimes-motivated personal diary. Like the rantings of any other crazy man, there seems to be a kernel of truth at the depths of each wandering delusion that I've written about. Some of the posts seem sharp and well-intended while others seem like shots taken from the hip without much thought to aim or accuracy.

The reason that I know it's been a year is because I have reached the one-year anniversary of my good friend Derek passing. I believe I've handled it quite well and I'm not spending a day in mourning, but I awoke with a little sadness in my heart and I'm pleased to have healthy outlets for my emotion.

In the days following Derek's passing I cried. A lot. Like, frequently, and at weird times and moments. I was listening to A Chorus Line while I cleaned the house and cried at a fucking Broadway show tune. Jesus. In hindsight, that was a tough time in my life for a few reasons. I came to realize that I was grieving for Derek and for other people too.

Six months prior to Derek passing, a relationship ended when my girlfriend slipped deep into heroin addiction and all of the awful behavior that comes with it. As a friend put's it, "when you're addicted to heroin, every day is bad. There isn't a lot of 'good news' days." His death was unexpected and startling and it shook loose a lot of emotion that I was gripping tight to my chest like a poker hand I didn't want anyone to see. It was a strong enough experience and a decent enough excuse to relax my strangle hold on my own feelings and just fucking cry forever and ever. But something didn't seem right. I was sad that Derek was gone and I was missing him, but I was crying for lots of reasons and I wasn't sure what they were. Out of the emotion came the understanding that I was truly fucking sad about a lot of stuff. I realized that I was 18 months sober and hadn't yet cried once. I hadn't cried about all of the terrible things I had done when I was drinking. I hadn't cried about the terrible things people had done to me. I hadn't begun to honestly allow myself the dignity of showing the world (the whole world, not just my recovery friends) that I was sad. It all came up and out.

About six weeks later I found myself on a weekend getaway in Portland, Oregon and I had a few days to think things over. The conclusion I came to was that I had a right to be upset and I wasn't going to get over anything until I admitted that I was struggling to accept myself for feeling this way. The healing sincerely began that day.

It's true that my relationship ending the way it did was a big bummer. But today there isn't an ounce of resentment or guilt. I rarely relive those final days and those terminating emotions like hopelessness, anger and frustration and the fears of abandonment and betrayal. I have put a tremendous amount of effort into dealing with that experience and I'm so grateful that I have the people around me that I do. I've learned to let go and I've moved on. It's been wonderful. That is one of Derek's legacies to me. He gave me permission to heal and showed me that I'm human for feeling disappointed, angry or sad. He helped me begin to understand that I'm perfect just the way I am. That I'm valuable and beautiful. That emotional guys are strong guys too. That I don't have to be some caricature of masculinity to be a man. That I can love myself. That's okay.

I really do miss him a lot. But thankfully, I'm allowing him to be gone and I'm living my life the way he would want me to. In the last year I've gone back to school and have the sincere motivation to go to graduate school. I've quit smoking. I've gained weight and lost it. I'm healthier than I've ever been both physically and spiritually. I'm learning to trust God again and love people too. I've learned to appreciate the friends who are still here and I've learned that addiction is a chronic, fatal disease and it's something to take seriously.

I choose to think about the happy parts of Derek's life. I only knew him for 18 months, but he was a friend that had 18 years of influence on me. I thank him for that.

Thanks for reading my blog. I love you.

It's a hard job being the Master of the Universe.

I know it's been a long time since I've written anything for this blog (Taking myself too seriously, the most important blog on the internet), but I've been exceptionally busy dying and tweezing my eyebrows. They look fantastic, thanks for asking.

Really, I've been gallivanting around the state with a pretty girl. We've been driving out to oceans and tumbling through forests; eating sushi in quaint alleyway sushi restaurants and generally having lots of genuine good, clean fun. I'm blessed, she's stellar!

Occasionally, I can muster a funny perspective on alcoholism that lets me see the disease as a form of superpower. I have inhuman, alcoholic abilities. I can spot a lie better than most people. Sometimes I can tell if something's a lie before it even comes out of my mouth. I can get inside the mind of an alcoholic and figure out what his next move will be. When I'm bartending, I can sometimes get a drunk customer out the front door without him realizing he's being cut off and 86'd. I'm like the horse whisperer for drunks.

But the greatest power of all is the power to turn any situation into a problem. I'm at a state in my life where things are going pretty well. I have a good job that pays me well, I am a hard working student earning A's in challenging classes, I'm dating somebody that I'm truly excited about, the rent's paid, the car starts when I want it to, gas is in the tank, food is in the fridge.... hell, even my little foot "situation" has cleared up.

But that doesn't mean I'm happy. Oh, no...

You see, I'm very comfortable with discomfort. In fact, for many years I kind of thrived on it. There was always some sort of mini-crisis fueling my drinking binges. Break ups, lay offs, traffic tickets, whatever... I capitalized on the faintest notion of tragedy and suckered free drinks out of sucker, newbie bartenders all over town. A few years ago an acquaintance I had known ten years prior passed away suddenly. I don't recall ever being friends with him and I'm not certain I actually ever even liked the guy when I knew him, but when I heard via Facebook that he had died, I sprung into action. I skipped out of work for the day and was drunk in his honor by noon. How noble of me. (In case you're wondering: yes, I feel terrible about that. And yes, I take death far more seriously now.)

So when I reach periods like this when things are going well, I hardly know how to handle it. I'm always sort of waiting for the other shoe to drop and if the shoe doesn't actually drop (stupid shoe) I'll drop it my own damn self. For instance, I managed to break an ugly habit of biting my nails about two years ago. Although I have managed to stop biting them as a regular means of grooming, sometimes I will bite them off in my fucking sleep! Yes, I wake up in the morning with this neat little pile of nails by my pillow and raw, sore fingertips. I subconsciously do the same with anything in my life.

I will take every good situation in my life and turn it inside out. If I'm lucky I can catch myself or somebody I trust will gently tell me that I'm being a brat. A few weeks ago it took a few somebodies to help me gain some perspective on my classy-ass problems.

But nothing helps shake that punk perspective like seeing some people I care about go through some actual shit. Enter exhibits A, B and C. In the last three days A) a person I know's wife died B) another person I know's girlfriend was arrested for "felony evading of a police officer" and C) another friend's fucking house burned to the ground. Jesus.

I'd like to give all of these people the privacy they deserve and not put their business here on my blog (with it's millions of daily readers), but I would also like to extrapolate a little more from these examples. All of these people are excellent folks. The widower and his wife have been sober for a combined total of nearly 100 years. My friend whose lady is in jail is in a profoundly hard situation and he's handling it far better than I could. My friend who lost her house is a dedicated small business owner and all-around fantastic woman. Not all of these people are recovering alcoholics, but nonetheless, not one of these people has gotten drunk over their situations.

I need these people in my life for two reasons. First, they help me see that my problems are hardly problems at all. They are challenges, roadblocks or obstacles but not problems. Second, these friends set very good examples for me. They show me that life can get hard, but we don't have to give up. Ever.

I don't spend a lot of time cursing myself for having a poor attitude. My poor attitude is part of my charm, right? RIGHT?!? I just do my damnedest to be a good example for the next punk I meet who wants to turn his white privilege into some kind of philosophical, metaphorical liability. Anyways, I'm really grateful to my friends for being such awesome people and putting up with me when I act like a baby. Thanks for reading my blog. I love you.

The runaway, flaming garbage truck that was my life.

In the last two-and-a-half years I haven't felt like taking a drink more than a few times. I can't say that I've never wanted a drink, but I can say that I've always wanted sobriety more than I've wanted drunkenness. More so, I've always been willing to do whatever I think is necessary to keep me sober. In the beginning, those things were obvious. As my new friends told me "Kevin, you need to change your playgrounds, your playmates and your playthings." That held true for several months and I skipped a lot of birthdays, holiday parties and barbecues. Today I am incredibly grateful for my sobriety.

I spend a lot of time thinking about how many things had to happen just right for me to gain some traction in recovery. When I got sober I had just moved into a nice, quiet house. I had a car. I had health insurance and a job. My family was ready to help. Mostly, I had this brief period of time- the first time in my life- when I actually thought it was possible to stop drinking. For many, many years I hadn't known it was possible and, frankly, I didn't want to be sober anyways.

The first five years of my alcoholic drinking (from age 20-25) were really fun. Although I was a broke college student, I frequently ended up in stretch limousines with beautiful girls and expensive drugs going to exclusive clubs and hanging out in VIP lounges in Manhattan and Honolulu. I spent money like a guy who made four times my annual income. I was probably a lot of fun to be around too. I was funny, outgoing, intelligent and unafraid of the law. I talked myself out of all kinds of jams. I never seemed to pay a price for any of the outrageous capers I pulled. Hunter S. Thompson was (and still is) a great hero of mine.

At age 26 all of that changed. I still kept my spring break spirit, but physiologically and mentally my need for alcohol had changed. I had always suffered from pretty severe withdrawal symptoms, but now they were getting worse. I shook uncontrollably until I got a drink in me. I wouldn't experience any ease until I arrived at my favorite bar and got my ass in my favorite stool and ordered my favorite round (double shot of Jameson and a pint of Old Seattle Lager). I would lift the shot glass with two hands because if I held it with one then my shaking would spill it. I would sort of suck the first shot into my mouth and swallow hard and feel this tranquility settle down my arms and the shaking would stop. This looseness would relax into my limbs and I would begin to forget about who I was and how empty and vacant my life had become.

By 27 I had been arrested for my first DUI and admitted to the hospital twice. The first time was because I had a seizure during withdrawal. I made a brief attempt at recovery, but I hated Alcoholics Anonymous. The literature seemed antiquated and boring. The meetings were stodgy and weird. I thought all the members were a bunch of liars and hypocrites. Besides, I still thought there was a chance I would be getting back into one of those limousines again.

I hadn't yet lost my vagabond spirit. One night I was leaving a bachelor party at a gentleman's club and I had lost track of the other gentleman that were gently manning the club with me. I had spent $200 on...ummm.... well, never mind. I was stumbling home and I accidentally pissed myself. I laughed and thought to myself "man, this is the life." There I was: penniless, wearing a suit, covered in piss. I weighed 140 pounds, had a serious drinking problem, some drug issues and an absolute inability to be honest with myself. Aside from the occasional visit to my parents house outside of Seattle, in the year 2009 I never left Seattle. Specifically, I never left downtown Seattle. This occurred to me one day when I was in a car headed up to Everett. I realized it was the furthest out of the city I had been in over a year.

My addiction to alcohol had become physical. I needed it in order to not feel sick. My stomach was in constant disarray. Twice I had the beginnings of ulcers. My liver was beginning to show signs of scarring. Psychologically, drinking had become a need to quiet my own self-hatred. Sober, I hated Kevin Toth. Drunk, he was tolerable.

In the last months of drinking some even worse changes happened. For several years I had been plagued with blackouts. They began in my early twenties but by the time I was 27 they happened every time I drank. By the last year of drinking, it took only a couple of drinks before I blacked out. I would wake up someplace unusual without the faintest idea how I had gotten there. One morning I awoke covered in blood with a knee the size of a cantaloupe. All I could remember was falling down in front of oncoming traffic and bashing my knee on a curb.

These are the things I think about when a drink sounds good. These are the things I remember when an old friend who didn't know me in those last five years says "I miss the Kevin that drank." These are the stories that had me begging God for help. These are the reasons I celebrated when I got 30 days sober.

On the night my nephew was born, I was sitting in my squalid apartment snorting cocaine and drinking alone. I vomited all over myself and listened to the same songs on repeat as I frequently did. I knew that I wasn't going to know my nephew and that by the time he was old enough to understand that his uncle was a drunk it would too late for me to explain myself. I wrote him a letter that night. A letter that "explained" that I hadn't always been this way. It was super fucking depressing. I have it saved on some old laptop somewhere. Today I got to play with my nephew. During the last week that he's been visiting I've been thinking about how happy I am to know him. I'm so happy today.

There's a common misconception about addicts that is far more antiquated and outdated than any current treatment program out there. That misconception is that we're all morally corrupt people who can't adequately moderate or control their addiction. Well, yeah. If I could control or moderate my drinking I wouldn't be a fucking addict, would I? Who the hell would choose this?!? The truth that's known to millions of us is that moderation was no longer an option. We are incapable of controlling our substance use. When I get started, I'm a fucking maniac. I like hard liquor, strong fucking drugs, loud music and I like breaking laws. Which is exactly how my drinking ended. Drunk off my ass with Mad Rad at top volume while I skidded around a corner at high speed. A modern Duke of Hazard.

Since I've gotten sober I haven't ridden in any limousines, but I haven't ridden in any police cars either. Mostly, I'm surrounded by people who love me and support me in my journey and every now and then I'm lucky enough to get to help someone else with their drinking problem. My life isn't glamorous, but god I love it. I love you too. Thanks for reading my blog.

My Awesome Mouth.

27 months into sobriety I'm still having a lot of "firsts". Today was my first trip to the dentist in a very, very long time. As could be expected, after 10 years of neglecting my overall health, the news was not great. I had anticipated some of the costs, but I expected that I would leave with a rosier picture than I did. The overall scenario amounts to a couple thousand dollars in proposed dental care- I haven't actually received the services yet.

While my teeth look pretty good from the outside, apparently they are like a nuclear waste site with lots of nefarious stuff happening below the surface. Judging from the stern talking to I just got from Dr. Sally (my childhood dentist), flossing should now be a higher priority than showering (which I also claim to do daily.)

I left the 8 AM morning exam a little dispirited because paying for this is not going to be easy. As a part -time student and part-time waiter I don't have $1,400 to spend on my teeth. But I really like my mouth. It's been a good mouth and it deserves better than it's gotten. So I will be committing to the dental work in the next few months and splitting the payments into three month installments.

Perhaps the funniest part of this new expense is the sacrifice I will make in the form of a dining room table. For about six months I have been shopping for the perfect new table for my house. As it is, I eat everything at a counter, a coffee table or outside if the weather is nice enough. I really enjoy cooking and I occasionally have somebody over for dinner and it's always a little awkward to bring a dinner date to the couch to eat something I just spent three hours cooking.

So, because my house is small, I searched high and low online for a perfectly shaped table with a drop-leaf that will fit nicely into the only area I have available for it. First, I found a lovely little three piece set for $250. I periodically checked in on it on Amazon and re-measured the space behind the couch where I plan on putting it to make sure it would fit. I was ready to pull the trigger when I went to Amazon and discovered it was no longer available. Amazon gave me a notice that read something like: THIS ITEM IS GONE, ASSHOLE. YOU SHOULD HAVE BOUGHT IT 3 MONTHS AGO. YOU WILL NEVER FIND ANOTHER TABLE LIKE IT. It was like losing the girl of my dreams. Okay, that's a little dramatic, but it was a drag.

Then I found a new table. It's less ideal than the first one, but it's also cheaper. I have been watching my budget and paying for some other, unforeseen expenses and I was planning on buying it next month. Now I'm paying for my mouth repairs so this will need to be put off again. I can hear you suggesting that I buy one at a thrift store and trust me, I've thought about it and I have my reasons for buying one new.

After I left the exam I ran into some friends and I chuckled about this whole scenario. One friend said "maybe you're just not meant to buy this table," which is a pretty standard, healthy attitude that you find in recovery circles. I certainly agree with the sentiment, but I'm really confused why God would rather have me eating off my lap in front of the television. Maybe God just wants me to continue eating dinner like the average American slob.

But my experience has shown me that when I take good care of myself, good things come along. The best indicator that a guy takes care of himself is the quality of his smile. Perhaps the lesson here is to pay the long, overdue dentist bill and forego the silly table for a few more months.

Okay, it's time for me to wrap this up and get back to Dr. Sally's office for some fillings. Hopefully she'll give me a cool toy if I sit real still and don't cry like I used to. If you need me later I'll be here on the couch eating a microwave dinner and watching Jerry Springer.

That is why I do the things I do.

Sometimes I find it hard to figure out which aspect of my personality is getting me into trouble. Did I tell that lie because I'm an alcoholic? Is that my co-dependence? Or does everyone lie about "loving" kombucha?

It reminds me of a joke that Dave Chappelle told about watching Tiger Woods with his Thai wife and arguing with her about which half of Woods' heritage was swinging the golf club. I look at a situation or conflict I'm facing (likely one that I've created) and try to figure out what my motives were, which of my screwed up mental illnesses caused it and then plug the scenario it into the appropriate program of recovery (Al Anon, AA or Scientology) to find the best solution.

It's not always very easy.

Alcoholism is a complicated illness. When I was deep in it I didn't understand how thoroughly woven into the fabric of my life it was. As far as I knew, it was a disease that only encompassed my inability to stop drinking. Now I see it's fingerprints on all sorts of crimes. Alcoholism is a disease that convinced me to pay bills only under threat of discontinued service, be honest with employers as rarely as possible, throw half-empty bottles of booze in the recycling bin at work so you can steal them when you get outside, and admit to having a drinking problem when it might lessen the punishment. Mostly, it is a disease that operates with a singular motive. To get you drunk and ultimately kill you.

For example, and this may come as a shock, I used to have a little problem with honesty. I would reflexively find creative ways to steal to get drunk. I went through a period of about two years when I didn't have a bank account, but I still had the inactive debit cards which had a valid expiration date on them. I would use these cards to open up a tab at a bar and.... well, you get the idea. I would leave without closing the tab and when the bartender would run the card it would be declined. A few days later when I had the cash to cover my previous tab I would go back to the bar, apologize for "forgetting" to close my tab out, pay them with cash (plus a nice tip) and retrieve the inactive card. At that time I didn't really see anything wrong with what I was doing. The bartenders were getting paid, the house was getting what they were owed... no problem.

Except, well...BIG problem. Like, felony problem. About a year after I got sober, I remembered this little scam. I thought to myself "that sounds quite a bit like fraud."

Often I'm just projecting, but I tend to look at examples of other people making a mess of their lives and assume that they're mixed up with pills or coke or something. Last Sunday I saw a car overturned in the ravine by my house and I naturally assumed it was a DUI accident. It turns out I was wrong. In fairness, who the fuck does that on a Saturday night sober? There's a drink in that story somewhere, I'm sure of it.

But my point is: I tend to see everything through the lens of addiction. I'm totally fine with that. Honestly, I think about alcoholism all day long. Wherever I am, I'm thinking about my disease and what I'm doing that day to keep it at bay. You would think that would be exhausting. Sometimes it is. Sometimes I just want to watch a mindless television show like an average American slob without deciding if the main characters are drinking too much. Alcoholism is often called an "allergy". That sounds agreeable enough, but I doubt that people with a peanut allergy go to baseball games and count how many peanuts the guy sitting next to them has eaten. So yeah, I would like to forget about recovery sometimes.

Mostly I'm thrilled to be so immersed and focused on alcoholism and I'll tell you why: Now I know why I do the things I do. I used to think I was a miserable failure. It turns out I was just a drunk. When I stopped drinking, guess what? Life got better. One of the gifts of sobriety is having an answer to that riddle.

So when I do something stupid like scream at an old man in a parking lot, tell a fib or behave badly I can look for the reasons why I did it and try not to do it again. Then I can crack open a pint of ice cream, look the world in the eye and laugh it off.

Come on, get happy! (and by "happy" I do not mean "stoned")

I am a lucky guy. Mostly, I keep that frame of mind, but occasionally I can slip into deep depths of self-pity. The kind of self-pity that gothic teenagers wish they could experience. The kind of self-pity that writers of terrible poetry aspire to. The kind of self-pity that used to justify walking two miles in the rain down a busy highway to spend my last twenty bucks on beer.

Life is a mixed bag. I have good days, bad days and pretty good bad days. A single day can provide me with a full-spectrum of Technicolor emotions. I've almost mastered the art of experiencing two contrary emotions at the same time. I yawn and fall asleep while energetically doing jumping jacks. I cry during orgasm. I'm sorry for the visual, I know it's unpleasant to visualize me doing jumping jacks.

But, I am a lucky guy. I get to spend my days doing fun things. By sheer virtue of not being an actively drinking alcoholic my life has gotten better in spite of myself. Because the drinking and driving days are pretty far in the rear view I no longer have much wreckage to clear away from what I have come to call Mr. Toth's Wild Ride. Today I can tell light-hearted jokes about the night I nearly totaled my very nice car only two months after I got it. I can smile and wave at the police officer who was dressed in civilian clothes and driving his own family vehicle when he found me on the side of the road and told me he was calling a tow truck- a tow truck that arrived with blue and red lights and no towing mechanism to speak of. I can drive by the spot where I was arrested and I can still picture myself falling off balance, unable to recite the alphabet (without "singing or in a sing-songy voice," as the officer requested), and I can drive by that spot without even thinking about the thousands of dollars the DUI cost me or the countless hours I spent in treatment, or dozens of days spent in court. I can drive by that spot and not for a single second think about the months of anguish I felt about the state of my life. I can drive by that spot- as I do at least twice a day, because it's only a mile from my house- and be grateful that I'm sober and not endangering the lives of my neighbors or myself.

I certainly haven't always been grateful. I had to be shown how. Truthfully, I have had more good first chances to succeed in life than most people get. I don't have alcoholic parents, I didn't want for much growing up. I have some good talents and intelligence. I have a handsome face and a really cute butt. When I was drinking I knew I was good-looking but I used my cute butt for evil instead of good. I never appreciated how fortunate I was to have loving parents who were doing their best and whose best was pretty fucking amazing.

Eventually the luck I was born with was squandered in the service of alcoholism. I would use my natural abilities and gifts of communication to tell lies and deceive. The likability that I have would be used against employers and law enforcement to get me off the hook for things I rightfully should have been punished for. After I had sufficiently destroyed all good will towards me and burned everyone that had the decency to call me a friend, alcoholism really sunk it's teeth in and ruined my life.

In those last final days I truly was losing the things I had to be grateful for. I still had things to appreciate in life, but they were quickly vanishing. When I got my last DUI, life became very complicated for a while. I spent three months in "intensive" outpatient treatment. I would work in Seattle all day, rush down to the ferry terminal, drive out to neighboring Poulsbo for two hours of treatment, drive back to Bainbridge for an AA meeting and be home at 9:30 without ever sitting down for a meal for the entire day. I had begun the process of rebuilding my life, but before I could do that there was a bill to be paid. I began taking phone calls that I had ignored for years and trying to settle with the collections agencies that were eager to take advantage of my newly found honesty and my reacquired integrity.

For about a year I was in intensive outpatient treatment. At first I had three sessions a week and after three months I was only required to go once a week. Last week I completed the two-year outpatient program and have successfully "deferred" the prosecution of my DUI! Yay! Somewhere during that first year of sobriety the gratitude I experienced in meetings began to rub off on me and despite being broke and busier than hell I began to act like the kind of person who's had the lucky breaks that I've had. I began to behave like a guy who grew up on a beautiful island with a median household income of $90,000. I stopped acting like such a shit-on little shit and instead tried to give back a little.

I'm not writing this blog post to brag about how grateful and sun-shiny and wonderful I am. This blog is not called The Wellness Report it is called Taking Myself Too Seriously because that is what I do. Somewhere between my alternating beliefs that I am at once the greatest and worst person in the world lies the truth. I'm an average-to-great person who is doing the best I can with some extraordinary opportunities that the universe has provided me with.

Last night I saw somebody ruin a good opportunity that she was given in the form of a good job. I bristled at the drama because I remember feeling like good things were a fact of life and good jobs were easy to find. I had to learn the hard way that good opportunities aren't easy to come by and the older and drunker you get the harder it is to maintain that level of good-fortune.

On the way home, less than half a mile from the endpoint of my last drunk drive, I saw a person who was having an even worse day than my former coworker.

Not a Happy Mother's Day

I don't know for certain that the accident was due to drunk driving but when it happens at 11:30 on a Saturday night...well...odds are good. The car is still there this morning, there was nothing on the news so I'll assume nobody was killed. 

I certainly don't have all good days and I don't wake up farting gratitude either. But I've gotten what I want out of life which is sobriety and as a result of that I've gotten rid of some other things like DUI accidents. Someone I know refers to recovery as "addition by subtraction." We are removed of some terrible alcohol-related behaviors, but we are also removed of some more loosely related personality traits. I'm not perfect, but I lie less, steal less, cheat less and I don't drink and drive at all.

But at the end of the day, the more quantifiable and easily recognized differences in my life are seen in my wallet and my car. There are fewer dents in the bank account and the fenders. For that I am grateful. 

Seriously, can anyone explain why they put the booze next to the fucking bread in Safeway?

Frequently, I feel like saying "fuck this shit, let's get a beer."

I don't really mean it. In the last two years I've had a few really hard days, but mostly my protestations are the last gasps of a dying obsession to drink. Getting through a day can be tedious. I often feel like I'm "playing at" being sober- like it's some kind of game that I don't really understand. A common nightmare I have (once a week, at least) is that I'm not actually sober and this whole thing is just a big sham. In these dreams I'm always plainly, visibly shitfaced and denying it to everyone. I'll stumble out of my bedroom and see my house is littered with empty cans. Once I dreamed that every surface in my house was covered with syringes. In the corner was my ex-girlfriend, dead from an overdose. I've never used anything intravenously, but I am frequently dramatic so that dream isn't too surprising. These dreams seem to represent my greatest waking fear: that I am falling back into a drink and I don't even know it.

A simple walk through the grocery store can be hellish with the bottles of booze and wine oddly mixed in with the food. When Washington relaxed it's liquor laws last June and began selling hard liquor in the major grocery store chains it took a while for me to adjust. Honestly, it would have been nice if they at least had a separate room for the stuff. Stock it next to the condoms and Mylanta and you'd just have a whole aisle of shit I don't need anymore.

Usually I feel fine, but once in a while I have a day that feels like I have a thousand thorns in my palms. Every thing I touch makes my hands sting. It's as if there is no right move for me to make. Each decision seems to end in minor catastrophe. I pull into traffic too quickly and narrowly avoid accidents,   I miss buses, burn pieces of toast and forget people's birthdays. For me, these things can be major events. I'm learning to recognize these days early on and ask for help from above.

The help always comes when I ask for it, but never in the form that I expect. Last January, I woke up feeling kind of glum and lonely. I meditated on my loneliness for a little while and asked to be relieved of it. Of course, there's a fine line between "lonely" and "horny." I specifically asked for help with loneliness. I ventured out for breakfast and when I got to the cafe I found four fellow recovering alcoholics happened to be there too. All of them are in their 80's. This was not quite what I had in mind for companionship, but it was a wonderful breakfast.

I'm never sure what it is that's going to pull me back into the game, but if I keep making choices meant to move me away from a drink I know that help will always appear. Monday it was an hour spent washing my car with my dad, Tuesday it was a chance meeting with my sponsor, today it was a thank you card from a local non-profit I volunteer for. All of them were the perfect reminders of why I stay sober. None of them were the tall, chesty blonde that I've been asking for. That's probably for the best. I wouldn't know what to do with one of those if I got one.

That's another thing: I've become embarrassingly tongue tied around girls lately. I did manage to ask a cute barista "how is your day going?" and she didn't smirk at me or spit in my coffee so I guess that's progress. Seeing as I never seem to get what I ask for I think I'll start praying for a sandwich and see if I get a girlfriend instead. In the meantime I'll just be over here, avoiding the liquor aisle at the grocery store.

I am the smartest, most attractive, funniest and worldliest sad sack of dirty assholes you've ever met.

I have been lying to you. You played right into my hands. It was too easy.

I've spent most of my life feeling like the worlds most cunning, master criminal. At some point in my life I began to feel intense levels of shame. Long before I was a fully accredited alcohol with nary a DUI to my name, I felt as if I had sold the world an idea of who I was that was dishonest and downright fraudulent.

One of the first times I remember feeling this way was when I got a job working at a local car wash when I was a teenager. A friend of mine had recently been fired for stealing credit card information from customers. I realized that there was now a job opening and I applied for his old job. Of course I didn't let on that I was best friends with the kid who had been robbing them blind for months. I never intended to steal a dime from them (and I never did), but when I got the job I felt like I had pulled one over on the owners. "If they knew who I really am they would never hire me."

This persistent notion that I am somebody other than the person I present to the world is with me today. Throughout the years, every time I got a new job I felt as if I had again hoodwinked the person who hired me. Many times I had. I would come to the job interview freshly shaved and wearing a collared shirt. After two weeks I would show up for work looking like a carny and smelling like actual human shit.

Relationships began under the same pretense. I dated a really nice girl once. I met her at a gathering to watch an NCAA basketball game. She was my coworker's sister. At the party (which was on a Monday) I vomited several times in the bathroom. I came back to the couch where we were talking, and using my alcoholic super powers, carried on a conversation with perfect diction as if I were a normal, non-drunk person. I started dating her and knew that I would never be able to be the companion she deserved. For months I put her through the nightmare that only a person who cares about an alcoholic can experience.

I also have a tendency towards grandiosity. I am convinced that I am everything or I am nothing. I attach myself to the idea that I am the scummiest scumbag around and every time somebody pays me a compliment I refuse to believe it and instead deepen my conviction that I am a total and complete fraud.

Honestly, I never was the worst person in the world. I stayed out of physical fights. I never committed any major crimes. I never killed anybody. Nobody has presented me with orders for a paternity test. So I've resigned myself to the idea that I might be overblown in my shame and remorse. Being an active alcoholic through my twenties certainly doesn't qualify me for sainthood, but I'm not on any most wanted lists either. Perhaps I wasn't public enemy number one, but actually just public enemy number 10,040,617.

Looking at it another way, maybe I'll never be the greatest guy in the world either. Is it just possible that I'm not supposed to be? Would it be crazy to think that maybe God just wants me to be a decent human being and pay my bills on time? Do we all have to cure cancer for our lives to be successes?

So here I sit today, in my little one bedroom house that is fairly tidy and pretty clean. My bills are mostly paid, homework is almost done and there are a few dishes in the sink. My life is painfully average, but these are the happiest years of my life. I'm not living up to anyone's expectations except my own and I'm not paying restitution for crimes I didn't commit. I've gone to bed sober every night for over two years and I've cultivated a few very meaningful friendships.

Life is good between the margins. I invite you to join me and live in the world of adequacy.

The Days Are Just Packed

My recovery sometimes feels like a machine with lots of moving parts. Considering I was born in 1980, I'll use the analogy that my recovery is like a super-sweet car made in 1980. Considering there were no super-sweet cars made in 1980, I'll use the analogy that my recovery is like a 1980 Ford Pinto.

My bad ass recovery

In order for the Pinto to run at it's maximum maximum-ness it requires fuel. I, too, require good fuel. I need to eat a healthy diet. All the aspects of my recovery are necessary to the Pinto running smoothly. I need some magic number of meetings every week, sponsors, proper rest, exercise, socializing, school, work, counseling, time with my family, time alone... All these things contribute to my overall well-being and allow me to function in a not-crazy way. They are the transmission, wheels, pistons and the other parts I can't remember. Like the Pinto, I also have an exhaust. Because I am gassy. 

Anyways, I need all of these things to be in proper working order for me to get through a week without becoming horribly depressed, irritable, bratty or (worst of all) drunk. These days I feel much more solid in my recovery than ever before and worry less about falling into a drink and think more about just being sane and kind to people around me. Giving each one of my needed parts it's due share of time is a delicate balancing act. Considering I need a certain amount of sleep each week, I have a finite number of hours to divide my time among some demanding chores. I work about 30 hours a week, spend 20 hours at school, 7 hours in meetings... I'm terrible at math so you can figure out the rest if you care to. The point is: I have a tough time fitting it all in. 

I frequently don't get the mix right. I devote too much time to one area and not enough to another. Lately I've been fortunate to do more socializing than usual. There have been dinners, breakfasts, lunches, more breakfasts and baseball games where I ate tacos. Usually food is involved. It's weird. But I gave too much time to my social life and suddenly found myself getting fatter than I want to be because every social thing I do involves me stuffing myself with fried things. Also, I forgot to study and that was stupid. 

That's how I found myself this morning. Stressed, tired, unprepared for my demanding classes and malnourished because I didn't eat any vegetables for two days. I shook my angry fist at the sky as I hurried out the door, late for my ferry. I groaned through a quiz and found things to hate about every one of my classmates (in this order: poor grammar, swears too much, know-it-all, too smirky, always late). I was being a total shithead and I knew it. But I don't just take out my bad mood on others. I reserve the worst of it for myself. I look at myself in the mirror and despise what I see. I mock the little pouch of weight I gained over the winter. I say the most vile and defeatist things about myself. 

Fortunately, I have some tricks up my sleeve. The first trick was: shut my mouth. Just be nice. keep my ugly opinions to myself. The next trick was to get some exercise. I took a yoga class. At the beginning of the class I couldn't even look myself in the mirror without boiling with anger at the Kevin that I saw. But I worked hard at the yoga class (only my third in sobriety) and started to talk myself down. "You're doing the best you can. You've come so far. You're perfect the way you are." 

When I couldn't handle looking at myself, I allowed myself to think positive thoughts about the others in the class. The young instructor is friendly and pretty. The other students are trying hard too. We are all succeeding together. By the end of the class I liked what I was seeing in the mirror. Our instructor had us lay on our mats at the end and close our eyes. She came around and rubbed her oil-scented hands in the air above my nose and gently rubbed my shoulders once. Namaste. 

I felt restored. I left the class lighter than I entered it. I met a classmate at a nearby restaurant where we studied for another quiz we have on Wednesday and I ate a kale and farro salad. I bounded down the hill to my ferry home with time to spare. I did some homework, laughed at a funny television show and went to a meeting. 

All of these tools have been given to me by my friends in recovery. I owe them my life. I hope that some of my readers (be you an alcoholic or not) will get something out of what I write. I would like nothing more than to share these solutions with somebody who could use them. Can you imagine what this world would be like if we all took a few hours every week to do some yoga, eat some fresh vegetables and get together in groups to talk about topics like "tolerance" or "patience"? Would people still bomb athletic events? Probably. But I'm sure not as often. 

I'm not saying I'm perfect. For God's sake, I'm a 1980 Ford Pinto. But I'm the best fucking Pinto I can be. Thanks for reading my blog. I love you.

No, YOU do the dishes!

Right now (like, right this second), I'm supposed to be cleaning, studying, running or doing several other things that end with -ing. Instead, I am here. It's well known that this is The Most Important Blog on the Internet so I guess I can take it easy on myself for blowing off life and spending some time here. I mean, writing this blog is important!

I frequently make choices that are contrary to my general well being. For instance, I successfully quit smoking last July, but here I sit contemplating a cigarette. I contemplated a couple of finger nails off in the process. I don't want to be a smoker again and I know that's exactly what I'll be if I drive to the store and shell out for a pack. There's no such thing as "just one," my friend reminds me I'm "only a puff away from a pack a day."

In the eight months since I quit, I smell better, I breath better, I save money better... But positive results aren't always enough to keep me on the straight and narrow. I like things messy and complicated. A cursory look at some of the relationships I've had will confirm that. The trick is to ignore my screwy instincts and do the damn dishes, fold the damn laundry, eat the damn vegetables and date the damn girl that has her life together.

As I write this I'm reminded of some other powerful lessons that apply to me and my life. First, there's the "take it easy, Kevin" lesson. This is the lesson that reminds me to relax a little bit and allow myself the occasional unproductive day. This week I've been to the city for school twice, worked two shifts, been to 4 meetings, made several meals, worked out twice, done the dishes three times... Tomorrow will have plenty of hours in it too. My life is more organized and tidy than it's ever been. So what if I don't do the chores today? I'm the only one that has to live in the very minor clutter. Frankly, this is 100 times cleaner than my living quarters were at this time last year.

The next lesson is the "stop trying to be perfect, Kevin" lesson. Here I am reminded that, sadly, I am imperfect. Don't tell anyone. I define "perfectionism" as a fixation on the idea that I have to be perfect. Not that I do things perfectly, but that Kevin be perfect. I have myself pretty convinced that I'll be single for the rest of my life because I have a complicated life, complicated past, blah blah blah. The truth is I'm an excruciatingly simple bloke. No kids, no ex-wives, no felony convictions... Just alcoholism. Lot's of guys have that. The difference is I don't drink.

So, come what may. I'll be right here... on the couch... thinking about tobacco. Maybe I'll get off my adorable, lazy ass and do some dishes. Probably not. I'm going to order a pizza now. Goodbye.

This post is DIRTY!

What a great day. This quarter I've been taking an early morning ferry to school. I'm only in class on Mondays and Wednesdays, but I wake up at 5:30 to catch a 7:05 boat into Seattle. The early morning commuters are a special kind of worker. I take some mild pleasure in being the Wild Card in the morning deck by sitting in somebody else's regular seat or making loud, mildly inappropriate jokes at 7 AM with people I run into. I greatly amuse myself. My ego knows no bounds. My ego permeates every corner of the world. If you traveled to the Grand Canyon and hiked to the bottom, you would still hear me laughing at my own penis humor. Fortunately, with Facebook woven into the modern American quilt, I can ask you to pull my finger from thousands of miles away.

But I digress. Let's start again.

What a great day. I stepped off the early ferry boat and bounded up the hill to the community college for my 8:30 AM class. We were getting New York rain today. Torrential, drenching, filling rain. As corny as it sounds, I smiled. Because today I have the choice to walk to school in the rain. Three years ago I woke up several times to find myself caked in mud. I had fallen down the wet driveway in the rain the night before. (Go ahead, laugh. It's okay, I don't mind.) The house I was living in had a steep driveway with an even steeper embankment on the side. In the dark, I would drunkenly fall down the hill and roll into the ditch. Sometimes it would happen a few times before I made it to the top. I would stroll inside, mortify my roommates with my muddy and drunk appearance, slink into bed soaking wet and pass out. In those days, I had long hair and it would hang in front of my eyes and give me a maniacal look.

Today I don't have to live that way. Today I get haircuts regularly (thanks, Tara!), today I am a student, today I don't drink. At All. Ever.

It's hard to remember how all of this started. When I lived in that same house- which was appropriately on Moran Road (get it, like moron, but stupider)- I would take the bus to work. Often times during my morning walk to the bus stop I would have a little pep talk with myself. "Okay, rent is due this weekend. You're not going to drink today. You're going to save your money. Just go straight home after work." But inevitably I would end up sitting on the same bar stool, drinking away the rent. This is certainly not an indictment of the bar or it's tenders, many of whom I'm pleased to call friends today (Thanks, Dan!). But that was an ugly last year of drinking. My falls were getting worse. I woke up with a gigantic, swollen knee after I fell down in traffic one day. The shakes were getting worse. One day my best friend asked me "we're best friends, right? So, we can talk about anything, right?" I knew what was coming. He wanted to talk about my drinking. I was so used to this by now. I lined up all my excuses like loading a shotgun (I'm just blowing off steam, that break up was really hard on me, I'm sorry man), but he didn't say anything about my drinking. What he said was far more significant. It will be the greatest reminder of my life that year. "You smell terrible. You- and your bedroom- smell like B.O., stale booze and cigarettes. I'm sorry man. Other people are talking about it."

I died. Inside, I just wilted. This is what my life had become. I was smelly and the last good qualities I had were fading. I wasn't healthy and handsome anymore. I was stinky and gaunt. I weighed 140 pounds. I was penniless, barely holding onto a job I hated, pushing my oldest and greatest friend away.

In my Pharmacology class we're learning about the different "types" of alcoholics and the phases of addiction. I was every type of alcoholic from maintenance to binge drinker and my addiction had one phase- the pathetic phase. Yes, drinking was fun for a long time. But from my earliest years I've been disappointing, worrying and upsetting people. They were fearful with good reason too. I was up to no good from a young age and I drank like I was born to do it. In my line of work I see a lot of drinking. Last night I saw some really polite, nice people get together for dinner and wine. My drinking didn't look anything like that. I would try hard to disguise it as something "social", but the only thing social about drinking straight whisky from the bottle at 8:30 AM was that I was often logged onto Facebook while I did it. If I was a "social drinker", and I tried hard to convince people that I was, than I had the most active social life imaginable. It was a social life that happened in bathrooms at work, in brown bags on Greyhounds, in alleys outside of bars. I once distinguished myself from the other drunks drinking in the park alone at 1 o'clock because I had a job (a job I was about to show up for drunk). They were just homeless, unemployed bums. I was different.

Somebody from my not too distant past wrote me a letter from jail last week. She was always a poet and this letter is a gem. I might save it forever.

My relationship with drugs fulfilled the Old Testament like prophecy "jails, institutions or death." The first two, being God's tools, manifest in my life... God has intervened on my part in protecting me from homelessness, drug use & drug overdose.

Beautiful. I don't know what, where, why, when or how God intervenes or if this is God's intervention, but I know the sentiment. 30 months ago I hastily found a new place to live. It was amazing luck that I found a perfect one bedroom house for a really low price. I had recently acquired a vehicle too. I knew that I was fucked. It took less than two weeks before I started drinking and driving. One night I was driving home to my new rental in the woods and God intervened. I nearly totaled the car by putting it in a ditch. But the car high-centered on the way into the ditch before any damage was done to it. No damage. I stood by the car and tried to dig it out for hours. It was December 9, at 2 AM and it was pouring rain. I rolled in the muddy ditch and spun the wheels trying to back out until the police found me two hours later. I could have walked away before they show up, but something kept me there. When the police found me I was muddy, soaking and shivering. I was ready.

The rain never bothers me. Today I was given the choice to walk to school in the rain. What a great day. When I got home from school I was tired. I sank into the silence of the little house that I only lived in drunk for about two weeks. I have no drinking history here. It is my sober sanctuary. Today my life is quiet, peaceful and boring, but it is never cold, muddy or wet unless I want it to be. I frequently do.

Thanks for reading my blog. I love you.

A Source of Inspiration

If you're anything like me, and if you're lucky you're not, you spend a lot of time on Facebook. Those of you with actual lives might not be aware of a trend that emerged about a year or two ago involving inspirational quotes. Basically, people share quotes that they find meaningful with their groups of friends. Although this trend is a little too superficial for me, I will admit to being a fan of a good quote. Something about the pocket sized nature of the solid quote is really attractive to me. Quoting Nietzsche or Einstein is easier than actually reading Nietzsche or Einstein and putting their lessons into practice.

In the Facebook era nobody has time to sit down and read a book. I'm all about the easy way out anyways. Although I don't participate in the Facebook quote sharing game, I do read two, small daily books every morning published by recovery groups. They have lessons that are pertinent to my recovery and typically end each day's page with a thoughtful quote by a variety of philosophers and poets. From these books and from other walks of life I have compiled a mental list of quotes that are important to me. Here are a few of my favorites:

"When you're going through hell, it's important to remember to keep going." -Winston Churchill

"When it get's dark enough you can see the stars." -Lee Salk

"Fuck You." -Dick Cheney

I'm writing about this tonight because I find myself identifying with the above quotes. I like to face the fact that sometimes we need to walk through hell. I don't care much for unrealistic expectations anymore. I don't mean that I don't have them, I certainly do. But I don't have much use for them. I'm trying to abandon the idea that everything is going to be okay and get comfortable with the notion that everything is going to be exactly the way it should be.

When I walk through some emotional pain as I occasionally do, I look for the quickest fix I can find. That fix used to come in chemical form. For a while that worked. When I got sober I found I have a very low tolerance for pain. I remember calling a friend while I was in early sobriety and asking him to tell me what page to read in a specific book so I could learn the magical lesson that would make me feel better and remove the agony. A short two years later, I understand that there is no quick fix for me. Some of the pain I've felt in sobriety has taken months to heal. I spent March through May of last year in total misery. It was terrible. But I trudged through it and the journey was worth it. I learned some valuable lessons.

In the last two days some old pains have resurfaced and I'm revisiting the journey I took a year ago. It's not a pleasant walk but I know the way and I've got my boots laced up tight. I keep my Churchill and my Salk quotes handy to remind me to keep going and to look at the stars along the way. And I keep my Cheney quote with me too because you know, fuck you.

AND ANOTHER THING! Why's everyone drive so slow or so fast around here? And what's with those super-bright headlights? Fuck you!

That last post I wrote probably leads you to believe that I'm nothing but a sensitive, flower sniffing dandy who farts poetry and cries tears of sweet molasses. The truth is, I often greet each day with a scowl. I wake and shake my angry fist at the alarm clock. I yell obscenities at the morning news anchors and laugh at the poor female reporter that always seems to get stuck with the overly sentimental human interest pieces. I sip my expensive coffee and burn down my neighbors house in my imagination (in my mind, it's always a meth lab explosion) and I complain audibly in my shower to my otherwise empty house when Mayor Mike McGinn is interviewed on NPR. I say things like "If I still lived in Seattle, I'd vote that bike riding, lisp-y voiced elitist out of office!"

The passionate anger builds and builds within me, fueled by my own self-importance. My hissy fit reaches a powerful crescendo like some sort of old piece of German classical music by Wagner and I imagine the day ahead and wonder if this will be the day when I finally snap and call a stranger the thing I most want to call a stranger. I will say "you're an asshole" and I imagine that it will feel great and liberating.

To me, calling a stranger an asshole sounds like it would be this extremely cathartic experience. Does it feel like a long-sought bowel movement? When you look him in the eye and feel the words on your lips do you feel a little closer to Nirvana? In my fantasy I always accompany the "asshole" with a strong, forceful middle finger. I say "Hey buddy! This is for you asshole!" and I look that asshole right in the eye and he just withers and crumbles in front of me- a broken and wounded asshole. He cries softly and he never does again whatever asshole thing it is he did that made me call him an asshole.

Last September, after a lengthy and arduous shift serving lunch at the restaurant, I went through the grocery store and did some quick shopping. I had been going through some tough things over the previous month or so and my temper had reached a tipping point. I was pulling through the parking lot when a guy (about 75 years old) shook his fist as he crossed in front of me and yelled "slow down!"

I lost my shit.

Up went the bird.

He approached my car and I rolled down the window and we yelled at each other like a modern Dennis the Menace and Mr. Wilson. There I was, 32 years old, 19 months sober and screaming at some unknown AARP member in a fucking Safeway parking lot. I didn't ever call him an asshole but I did tell him to fuck off. I drove home in utter humiliation for acting like such an.... asshole. I called a couple of friends who have been sober longer than I and they both laughed. "Allow yourself some mistakes in life" was the crux of their arguments. Then I made plans to get out of town for a few days and do some much needed relaxing.

Some people call this behavior "looking for a fight," but I call it "shopping for a resentment." I go through my day looking for somebody to be angry with. I can shop for generic resentments, the cans with the plain labels that say "ex-girlfriend," or "politics". But I typically like the name-brand resentments, the cans that say "Michelle" or "Republicans."

But the expiration date on these cans has long past. Michelle and I broke up years ago and being angry at Republicans is like being angry at psychopaths. It's best just to stay far away from them, and if you go to one of their parties, hope you don't end up mounted on the wall next to an elk or caribou.

At the end of the argument, I never feel as good as I think I will. Resentment leaves me with this gaping hole in my soul that is quickly filled with self-doubt and deep self-hatred. Those are drinking emotions. As they say, "anger is the dubious luxury of normal drinkers" and when I finish my stay at the Luxury Anger Resort and check back in at the Reality Travelodge I realize that my fantasy would never play out like I want it to anyways. My whopping 160 pound frame just isn't very scary. Especially when I'm dressed like a waiter and driving a sedan. I've never been in a serious fight and that 75 year old guy probably could have kicked my ass.

So if you ever stroll in front of my car at Safeway and tell me to slow down, I will probably just say I'm sorry and look real sincere. But just know that in my mind I am stuffing you into your shopping cart, dousing you in gasoline and wheeling you to your family's doorstep completely engulfed in flames.

Good Morning

Derek used to call non-alcoholic people "the muggles." I understand that to be a term used in Harry Potter books to describe people without magical powers. I'm not sure I would classify the mental illness of alcoholism as a "magical power," but I certainly spent a lot of time trying to put curses and hexes on people. 

Every addict and alcoholic I've ever met- and many muggles too- grew up feeling somehow different from his peers. I'm always convinced that non-alcoholics have some secret rule book that I never got. I play a constant game of comparison where I pick complete strangers and decide if I'm more or less impressive/attractive/magical than them. I frequently feel like I was born in the wrong century or on the wrong continent. I know that I'm exactly where and when I'm supposed to be and have learned to accept that I'm not always happy with who I am.

As a person who lives alone, I frequently go several hours without interacting with other people. I have come to pay close attention to my first human contact of the day. I don't count texts, Facebook or email. The first contact has to be close enough to blow a kiss. Or flip the bird. 

About a year and a half ago, I had a girlfriend who lived with me for a few months. She had this amazing ability to take up a staggering percentage of the bed we shared. Her five foot, 100 pound frame would crowd me to the edge of the bed until I fell off. My first human interaction of the day was often a knee to the ribs or spine. Seven years ago I sleep walked (okay, I was probably drunk) out of a hotel room without my key at 4 AM. The first human interaction of that day occurred when the elevator doors opened and the front desk clerk saw me standing in my underwear. Nine years ago I woke up on a beach in Hawaii under a blazing hot sun. I looked to my right and saw a picnic bench teeming with empty bottles. I looked to my left and saw some very unhappy locals. 

Today I woke up bright and early at 5:30 to get ready for the first day of the new quarter. I drank some coffee, read some morning reminders, glanced at the weather and made my way into town. I parked my car and walked by my favorite breakfast spot. The Streamliner Diner might be the greatest place for breakfast in the entire history of the meal. The food is fantastic and so are the employees. Celine was dutifully setting up the restaurant, but she saw me walking by the window and gave me a warm wave and smile. I trudged on towards the ferry and as I began to approach a coffee stand I saw a guy behind  the window wearing a colorful beanie with a big, furry ball on top. As I passed, he flung open the door revealing himself to be Tim Tully, perhaps the friendliest man I've ever met, and exclaimed "Hi, Kevin! Have a good day!" 

I grinned so big I thought the tips of my smile would meet on the back of my head. "Good morning, Tim! It's nice to see you today." 

Neither of these people know that I'm an alcoholic who was born in 1432 on the planet Mars. Neither of them would care if they knew. These are good people who would generously share their copies of the rule book with me if I asked them to. The point is- the thing I want to share with you, the reason I'm writing this- is that when she waved through the window with the glare of the overcast sunlight mixing with the stenciled name of the restaurant, and when he burst through the door like a jack in the box and called me by name, I joined the human race for a few seconds.