music : Windhand -  Black Candles : Windhand (2012)

it has been a while friends, and i am glad to report i am doing quite well. it is almost 300 days since i last used marijuana or drank alcohol, and while the latter was never an issue, the former caused me a lot of dismay. i spent a while pretty distraught and worried about the state of my mental health.. my binge eating and purging skyrocketed to an all time high, and i became more neurotic and anxiety-ridden than i ever had been. it was truly horrid. but then something beautiful happened… the lows turned into a great big pile of self-discovery, and i started to put the pieces back together and this time they are much stronger. my quality of life has improved, my focus has been regained, and i am glad to say that the mental health issues i have dealt with have gone to the background of my mind. it is exciting indeed. i would be lying if i didn’t say i still struggled with eating issues, but they seem more able to be reasoned and dealt with than ever before. i have a stronger relationship with myself, and in turn am more comfortable with the distance that has grown between my friends and i, both literally and figuratively. 

on december 11 my charges get dropped by the state of florida, and i am free to do whatever i please. i am planning a move back up to the northeast in january, and from there my life will be enjoyed to the fullest, touring constantly and enjoying the company of those i cherish most. i cannot say for sure i will stay sober forever, but i know that my habits will never rule my life, nor dictate my mental health status… that i am certain of.

thank you all for the support and messages i have gotten over the months i have been absent from this blog, i meant what i said before… while i am comfortable not using this to hold myself accountable, it has absolutely helped me gain sturdier footing. i plan on updating again once i have finished everything, possible with a picture and a name attached. who knows? the world is big, beautiful, and has left every possibility open to me … who am i to not take that shit and run with it?

much love,
msy 

i over exert myself, or maybe i just get too excited on things. i make up my mind, rush into something, and a few months later get bored and move on to my next hair brained idea. i do have good follow through on certain things, but those tend to be the more major projects in my life. the smaller ones, like blogs, zines, recordings, etc. fall by the wayside. like this one.

the turth is that i am okay. drug court is absurd, and i am in a holding pattern until december of this year. but there is nothing to update. i still struggle with food daily, still find myself looking at my calendar and seeing repetition week after week. i am in a state of flux, a stalemate.

and truthfully, this is a project i am comfortable putting to the side to focus on my major projects. it was exciting and idealistic of me to hope to update this blog daily, but it became mundane and repetitious, and i hate repeating myself. i will post an update at the end of the year, but i am going to keep my struggles and triumphs to myself. i will use my pen and paper as an outlet, and the few close friends i have as crutches if i need them.

thank you all for reading. i hope you are well, not that you wouldnt, but rest easy knowing in the end i will be, and am, well too.

cheers.

Helms Alee: 8 / 16 : Weatherhead (2011)

i have not abandoned this, i have simply chosen not to repeat myself, which is all that would happen if i frequented tumblr. truthfully, i have found much solace off of the computer. facebook gone, internet persona completely diminished, this is my last vestige of expression on the world wide web, and i am comfortable just using it when i need to. books, exercise, and just generally being away from a screen and keyboard has been doing wonders for me.

things are quite the same as they have been, still sober, still struggling with food, but trying to be the best me i can be despite all of it. 

every time i think of Black Flag, the only image i get in my head is of the band the title character put together in the old cartoon Doug.

music : lucero - slow dancing : tennessee (2002)

i keep going down to the office-room that was built into my garage before we moved into this house over a decade ago. i plug in my pedal board, which i spent painstaking hours working on, acquiring the right pieces to get the exact sound i wanted. i roll my quite large speaker cabinet and quite powerful amplifier into the centre of the room and plug it in, the familiar crackle bringin a slight smile and a nod of recognition. i’ve always wanted an amplifier that could handle the loud, heavy music i’ve wanted to play. i grab my guitar, a reissued 1972 fender telecaster with an f-hole and two sparkling humbucker pickups in its body to give a thick, warm tone to the classic telecaster sound. all of the parts connect, all the powers turned on, and i play…

and after about five minutes, i realize i am not at all connected to the instrument i had considered a surrogate appendage for so long. in the last year i have grown so distant from the six strings that helped me express so many emotions, it feels foreign in my grasp, and i feel in-genuine when i try to put my thoughts into chords, or add lyrics to riffs long-since written. i spent a little of my time before my arrest working with a friend on songs, but they stopped being involved in my life and i stopped trying to get them to be. since sobriety my interest in the creation of my own music has become a distant memory, though it wouldn’t be prudent to use sobriety as a scapegoat, as the seeds of discontent were planted long before.

i return the guitar to its corner, the pedal board to its section of the room, and the amplifier/speaker so it is out of the way. chords unplugged, power off, and left to collect dust until my next try. funny how when you get everything you could ever want, you don’t want it anymore. the problems of being human. 

music : balance and composure - kaleidoscope : split w/ tigers jaw (2010)

i think the hardest feeling of this process is being caged within the borders of a place i have hated since childhood. legally i cannot leave the tri-county area without the permission of not only my counselor, but my probation officer AND a judge. i have spent the last 4 years traveling at will, hopping into my car at the drop of a hat and costing down america’s intricate highway system, being more at home filling up my gas tank than filling my stomach from my fridge. more comfortable with my thumb and forefinger wrapped around the bottom of my steering wheel, full records playing start to finish as the night air converges around me than lying in my own bed. 

i feel like me when i am free.

—

i started attending overeaters anonymous, which is a lot like narcotics anonymous except, obviously, for compulsive eaters. the largest side effect of me going sober has been replacing those escapes with ones i thought i had done a good job of ridding myself of, namely humongous portions of horrendous food. i used to weight 330lbs, i got down to 180lbs and in the last 7 weeks have gotten back up to around 200lbs. that is unacceptable. i have a very hard time controlling how much i eat, and when i have decided to give in and binge, there is no stopping me. cartons of ice cream, double digit amounts of burritos, and all regurgitated back up to make room for more. i cannot physically stop.

i wonder if i should consider myself sober if i am addicted to food?

my first OA meeting had me going to a Presbyterian church, and the room was populated with about 20 people, none of whom were under the age of 30, and most of whom were over the age of 60. i felt a bit odd, but when everyone started talking i just felt like i was in a place where i knew these familiar struggles. i got the introductory information packet, and the reassurance from everyone that while 12-step programs are inherently religious, this one had the least emphasis on “god” of all of them, that made me feel better. i am going to try to go to a few a week, and i am hoping it keeps me motivated to stay at the gym, and to eat healthy portions of food. 

i want to get to 160lbs, and then get toned, so i can get my ribs tattoo’d… is that so much to ask?

music : the Get Up Kids - Action & Action : Something To Write Home About (1999)

i haven’t been here because life has been a bit hectic. i did a lot of driving and perspective getting over the christmas and new years week, found a few ounces of love in my heart, and exploited them. i am quite happy about that right now.

as of yesterday i moved from phase 1 to phase 2, which means less meetings, no more narcotics anonymous meetings, and the beginning of actual counseling as opposed to sitting in a rowdy group of people who just want to cause problems. it was like being in the internal-suspension class in high school, where they couldn’t trust the kids to stay at home so they forced them to sit in a room with an unsuspecting temp who felt their full wrath. friday is my last time in that room, and also the day when i find out my new schedule.

my panic attacks have lessened, i do not crave nicotine at all anymore, caffeine is a distant memory, and i have been in situations near marijuana and been quite okay not smoking it. i am starting to find some semblance of self in this whole mess of emotion and sobriety. i got a job tending a hockey bar, which has been fun and really pushed my mental abilities as far as multitasking is concerned. i really love it, and the tips don’t hurt! 

i will try to update more regularly now that things have calmed down, but tonight a dear, dear friend comes into town for three days so i am going to be a bit occupied, but in a good way, i promise.

thanks everyone.

music : the hold steady - ask her for adderall : Boys and Girls in America (2006)

i felt caged and domesticated, so i decided to rebel last night. i had to do something illegal or i was going to flip out. i couldn’t do drugs, and never  thought of it … so i left the county. i got in my car, pointed her north, and kept on going. 

it was the most liberating thing i have done in years, and i felt so fucking alive. something as simple as driving past an imaginary line lit a spark inside of me. i didn’t sleep last night, i drove. i saw an old friend in the process somewhere far up north and the time we spent together was really wonderful. i didn’t sleep. then i drove home. i still haven’t slept.

rehab has been weird. the first phase meets three days a week for an hour, and where there should be positive reinforcement, order, and education instead is chaos, confusion, and a short dense jamaican man who is more ranch handler than councelor. each hour is spent with him calling out members of the group, who are constantly rotating, for not doing one of the many parts that add up to moving from Phase 1 to  Phase 2. all he does is move people from the phases, there is no help and he does not understand addiction. once a week he has a  ”hot seat” where new people have to sit infront of everyone else and go through being berated and cat called while they talk about why they were arrested, how long they used, and a multitude of other topics that never get touched on because the room breaks down into loud arguments between 15 different groups of people debating anything from why pot heads don’t understand what its liek to “pop xanny bars like tic-tacs” to how to pass a drug test to how to cheat doing community service, until the councelor stands in the middle of the room staring at his watch and everyone realized they wasted fifteen minutes and he is going to keep them that much longer. it is this three times a week.

on top of this i am required to “drop” urine, or take a drug test, every monday. any other day of the week i can get a call to go in and drop as well, it is all up to the counselor’s discretion.

my first urine test came up clean, my second was dirty. i was flabbergasted when, infront of the entire group, he called me out for coming up for Creatinine. The body produces this when you have too much fluids inside you, or when you are taking something to mask the drugs you have taken. the simple fact is that i drink so much water my urine was diluted and too hydrated for them to tell if i had done anything, so they considered it a dirty urine test. luckily after staying an extra two hours to wait and have a conversation with the councelor, he understood and didn’t give me any supplemental discipline… the last thing i need is to have to go to MORE narcotics anonymous meetings (i already attend 5 a week) or have to take extra counceling sessions on relapse prevention.

life has been challenging, and this Phase will last for another few weeks. i am hoping to push things along and be into the less intense but more positively focused Phase 2 for January 13… but with this many people and this dense of a staff, i have no idea if that will happen.

one day at a time friends.

music : converge - axe to fall : axe to fall (2010)

the largest upside to the stinging feeling of rejection for me is the immediate spike in spirit and poise on wanting to get back into the swing of things. a catalyst to turn up the heat and bring the water to boil faster. a spark in self-betterment after taking a look inside to see what it is within that is wrong, or that i have done wrong, and what more can i do to work on it. that happens before the bitterness and resentment, and all those two emotions do is fuel the machine that is already fast in motion to make things more positive.

thank you holidays. i don’t celebrate a single one of you, nor care about your existence, but it is that same existence that led to the events of me writing here and now, so cheers to you.

i will be back later with more of a concrete update on the last few weird weeks, but for now there is so much to be done.

one of these days i am going to sit down and have the inspiration to do a more fluid update. i feel like i have to much to say but no real way to type them out right now. i had my first NA meeting tonight, it was wholly weird, but they gave me keychains to mark my first visit and my first 30 sober days, so that’s fun.

sorry, this will get more interesting soon. for now i am taking life one day at a time.

music : this is hell - permanence : sundowning (2006)

tuesday was orientation and wednesday i met my probation officer for the first time. both were uneventful and a bit daunting. today was my first day of actual counselling, and truthfully the group i am in is 30 abrasive individuals who all seemed to have been convicted of much harsher drug offenses. i had to go up to the front of the class and introduce my name, what i got arrested for, when i started, and when the last time i used. when i said it was for marijuana a bunch of people clapped and cat called. when i told them how much i had their jaws dropped. when i told them why i used, they laughed and didn’t understand.

i am in phase 1, which lasts up to a month. i will be attending these meetings three days a week, as well as 5 Narcotics Anonymous meetings a week until i enter phase 2. 

i had to pee in a cup infront of someone for the first time today. it was exactly as fun as it sounded.

i would be more eloquent and descriptive but truthfully i just want to go lie down and be alone. some other time.

music : sleater-kinney - jumpers : the woods (2005)

music : ramesses - iron crow : take the curse (2010)

i have spent the last 5 days in utter nirvana. stepping away from my hot, sweaty prison and basking in the wintery air has left a positive twist on my attitude. the question is how long will it last, and the truth is i have no idea. i step onto the plane at 3:45pm today and arrive back home at 7pm. in 24 hours from right now i will be walking into the first day of my court ordered drug counseling / rehab, which will last a minimum of a year and a maximum of eighteen months.  the year doesn’t start until i have pissed clean for a certain amount of time that i do not know yet (they test you nearly every day of the week.) i am hoping my 41 day jump start on sobriety means a sooner start to my year-in-purgatory-countdown … maybe i should start another twitter, eh?

i am really nervous, but i am going to do my best to propel that nervous energy into positivity. i am planning on a juice fast for a few days, or some other sort of cleanse to kind of detox my body from the intestinal sludge that has been this weekend in food. i plan to go more into detail later in the week about my upcoming dietary plans, and parlay that into using this blog to help keep me on track with my nutrition. it has truly helped me keep a handle on my addictions and struggles with being away from medications, so why not with dietary concerns as well?

—

i feel good things coming, they speak to me with every gust of cold wind that washes over my face. they say “hold steady, my friend, just beyond that beautiful horizon is an even more beautiful horizon.” their voices are soft and weightless, they carry me forward. 

music : alice in chains - rooster : dirt (1992)

i am going to be gone a few days. a much needed sabbatical. i fly out tomorrow early morning and get back monday mid-evening, only to start my drug rehab a mere 12 hours later on tuesday. i may update, but most likely not. fret not, i will stay on track and arrive back here 41 days sober.