Dogs, sleeping. And me.

When I was drunk, I sometimes forgot about the things worth fighting for. The further I descended into my dark, alcoholic mental wasteland, the more I lost sight of anything tangible and good. It happened slowly, over the course of many long, shitty months, so I didn't notice. Like boiling a frog, by the time I realized anything was wrong, it was way too late: I was screwed (I've never boiled a frog, not really my kind of snack, but they just swim around all happy-like until they're cooked. Weird, right?).

In a crap mental space to begin with, I started to see everything, EVERYTHING as should'a been, can't have, no point, lost cause, don't deserve to be happy anyway, etc. I woke up one day and realized--drunk or sober--I was depressed practically out of my mind. I had been destroying my life like a narcissistic time bomb from Super Mario Bros. blindly running around and wrecking everything good with almost surprising success. Chasing and detonating madly until all I had left was myself for company and in that state, I was no fun to be around. Seriously, when you really, really hate who you are, who you've become, usually you're the only one left around to hang out with. I was so sad-sick and confused that I couldn't see what was happening, had no idea that I was an alcoholic, and certainly had no idea that I was an asshole. It's sort of funny, I always thought that it was easy to tell if you're an asshole, because assholes are so easy to pick out of a crowd. I have a knack for it, actually. But, especially under cover of alcoholic denial, I was the last to know. My fucked up brain kept me pretty much in the dark about it, which is a little slice of crazy that I never want to see again. With a startling, white clarity of purpose, I knew that everything hurt too much to go on, that drinking made it hurt less and that it never really hurt less, in the end. What I didn't know was how to stop. And no, it really never, ever occurred to me to try and quit drinking. Like I said: crazy.

So when I see my two dogs asleep on the couch (yea, I let 'em sleep on the couch) and the whole fucking world just makes sense, that's when I know I'm doing OK.

Two Years

730 days ago I woke up sober. I have managed to stay sober since then. That makes today my birthday. There will be cake, preferably chocolate. With cream cheese frosting.

Exactly two years ago -- and for a long time before then -- my life was in absolute tatters. Desperation, depression, panic and quiet denial were all I knew. Hope was at best a distant memory. I generally regarded solitude, comfort and serenity as oblique and beautiful ideas as far removed from reality as really poorly written science fiction. Inner peace, I fathomed, was something you could only achieve in death and maybe not even then.

There are no echoes of that lost-empty outlook now. These days, the world seems a brilliant place to be. Sure, its occasionally shitty for everyone. People are still just people and, people are often assholes. And bad things continue to happen to people who cannot possibly deserve the wrath of man or nature or god or whatever. All that is exactly the same and perhaps it always will be. It's my outlook that has changed. I no longer rail endlessly over the raw injustice of the world, content to sit miserably on my ass as though my self-righteous rage might somehow forgive my own sins. I like to think, instead, about what I can change. I like to think that when I'm lucky enough to wake up in the morning, I may have the opportunity to help someone in some small way. And sometimes that opportunity does come, even if all I can do is smile. Because sometimes, someone will smile back, and while -- in the scale of the universe -- a stranger's smile is tiny and inconsequential, I was there to witness it. And that is good enough for me.

Today has been a good day, and as its now 11:20pm I think its safe to say I'll make it to 731 days sober. Which is only two days away from a prime number. So I got that going for me, which is nice.

The Rebirth of a Student

I've suffered as a sub-par student for much of my academic career. Poor organizational habits were a contributing factor, as was a frankly bad attitude towards education that was caused by a sort of aimless life-view. The principal cause of my absentee education, however, was the inevitable lack of motivation and skewed outlook that accompany the denial and depression inclusive to my hard-drinking lifestyle.

The last time I attempted to return to college and finish my degree, I never even attended my first class. I registered, paid, picked up my student ID, signed up for two courses, one classroom and one on-line. Then, not-surprisingly, I didn't show up for the first, second or third day of class and so-on. I couldn't even manage to log in to my online course from the relative comfort of my own couch.

I remember -- with startling clarity, given the general fogginess surrounding the period -- sitting at the kitchen counter in the sunny, early afternoon. My small, white Mac open to the course login page. A very full tumbler of cheap gold-brown whiskey sat just to the right of the keyboard -- not the first of the day... At some point between adolescence and semi-adulthood, I had forgotten, probably intentionally, that one isn't supposed to fill a rocks glass to the rim, only stopping just shy of the lip, squeezing every last drop into what one's wounded psyche could qualify as a "serving." Sometimes I listed slightly as I poured, spilling whiskey, or gin or occasionally vodka across the counter. Sad, lonesome rivulets of wasted alcohol dribbling away like my future...

I was staring at the comics and magnets and photos stuck haphazardly to the refrigerator in front of me, sipping whiskey, oblivious to the notion that most people, normal people, happy people, might think twice about drinking straight whiskey before eleven AM. Something snapped or popped, or rather, shifted back into its broken home and I decided either that there was no point in even trying to study, or that I might as well wait a few hours (probably a little of both) and I gave up before I even began. I shut the computer and wandered from the sunny kitchen into the dark, closed-in basement to empty what remained of a bottle of Canadian Mist in front of a glowing TV. Not your model student.

That echoes my original college experience as a student at DU through some unlikely miracle of GPA sleight-of-hand, luck and forsaken kismet. Attending class only sporadically, very occasionally completing homework on time, and failing fantastically to note any correlation between brazen alcohol abuse and grade-killing apathy. I made it two years -- sort of. The clarity and focus I’ve gained through a rigorous personal inventory and active participation in A.A. and other sober activities has helped me to cement my goals in my mind. Where I previously floundered, I now have a clear perspective. Before I didn’t know what I wanted, now I am sure that I want to graduate from college. I am plainly and intensely motivated.

I have to admit how incredibly surprised I was when I recently entered my third week of classes at Regis University, to find that I'm actually a college student. I'm reading, doing my homework, writing papers, paying attention to deadlines. Its shocking, but I'm actually STUDYING. Thank God for third chances.

The Mexican

I knew a man, once, who walked almost joyously along the line that separates a blissful, grateful, childlike goof from an unqualified asshole.

He often wore jeans and a pressed white shirt with broad blue pinstripes. He smiled -- a lot. Typically to himself and for no good reason. A sort of sly, satisfied grin. Casey was plainly happy to be alive. Everyday.

Not terribly sentimental, he usually found a way to lighten the bleakest mood -- cracking jokes at his own expense, or at someone else's, in his crisp, gruff voice. When I met Casey nearly two years ago, I was struck by his cheerful-kinetic attitude and his ability to seamlessly weave expletives into ANY sentence.

His self-deprecating, often biting humor led him to posit that as a sober Mexican in Boulder, he must have been a tiny-tiny minority: practically one-of-a-kind. Thirty-three years of sobriety, and survival of a vicious pancreatic cancer, actually did put him in rare company.

Casey was struck by a car while riding his bicycle in Boulder this Sunday; he died shortly after. I imagine that he was grinning his sly grin as he rode, grateful in that moment to be alive and doing something he enjoyed.

I woke early today, to spend an hour with my friends and Casey's friends at an early morning meeting. It's clearly fall in Colorado now, the steel-grey clouds and icy drizzle echoing my mood. I'll go for a ride later, and Casey, whether you FUCKING like it or not, I'll be thinking about you.