First draft 11/19/01

Copied from journal

The Looser

Its been an interesting year, I got sober, got divorced, lost my job, sold a house, bought a house, and had three relationships. Somewhere in between there I started to ask myself allot of deep questions. This kind of life tends to do that to you. I guess it started when I got sober. I knew that I was about to loose it all. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to die but I didn’t know how to live. I found myself in a recovery home, surrounded by a bunch of ex-cons, telling me that I better get god or I would be fucked. So I cheated and I took Taoism, it was kind of funny these ex-cons didn’t really know what to do with a guy who sat in the lotus position for a half hour twice a day, and started reading a lot of strange Chinese books. It got me sober and I guess that’s what counts. After I got out of there I found myself being more attracted to Buddhism, I began to hang out with them, to talk, and to socialize with them. In the meantime an already strained marriage finally snapped when my wife asked me if I could start drinking again and would I please stop going to those AA meetings. We didn’t get married out of love. I think we got married more out of fear, loneliness, and a good dose out of having sicknesses that were a match made in heaven. One was getting better and the split was becoming inevitable. I moved into my mom’s house and found myself 30 getting a divorce and living with mom. After the house sold I was able to buy a new one and I moved in with the dogs. Sometime in between this I managed to meet a real winner. A singer with a beautiful voice and wildness I was not used to after being in a 1950’s catholic life. The only problem was that she was also mean, self centered, pretentious, psychotic, and a hypocrite. Somehow I managed to overlook that and just concentrate on the really great sex. That fell apart after she read my journal and started sleeping with a friend we had in common. Along the line I found myself loosing a car and then buying another one. The loss of a relationship that I never really had to begin with devastated me. I found myself pinning over someone that I couldn’t have and wanting an illusion that I had made after the fact. Depression can be a wonderful thing; maybe that’s why art managers hate Zoloft. The funny thing about pain and loss is that it can really make you look inside and see what you really have. I threw myself even more into Buddhism and writing, I looked even deeper into my soul because I could really feel it at the time. I found creativity, joy, pain, companionship, fear, and strength. But I must have looked pretty pathetic trying to get the psycho singer back. She became the devil. Just when I had really gotten into working on myself and making progress, she would call and I would plunge back into apathy and wanting for her. At one time I found myself thinking that if I wanted to talk to her all I really had to do was start working on myself. Funny but it actually worked. This continued for a while I would reach a high and then be knocked down to a low but they didn’t seem to be as low as where I started.

I managed to keep my job after going to the recovery home, though all of the things I went through I still managed to go to work and fulfill my duties. Something happened. I'm not really sure what but I began to hate my job. I began to find that last three hours of work to go on like an infinity. I think that my attitude began to permeate my life and the inevitable setup occurred. I was fired on Halloween, trick or treat I thought. Even though I hated it. Everything I was everything I thought about myself was tied up into that job. I got my self-esteem from it; I achieved my validation from it I got my everything from it. I felt as if my life as I knew it was over, and I think that it was probably true. I held on to her, and that which I had become through my job. Depression struck me and I found that when your taking Zoloft it’s easier to keep on stuffing your life and your emotions with ought getting too down. Sitting at home in a house that I wasn’t sure how I would pay for. Driving a car that I was sure that was going to get repossessed. I applied for one hundred jobs and I got two Luke warm responses, I don’t know when but some how I realized that I could no longer continue until I finally gave up what was already lost. The words came to me from a book that I once read, “ fear arises out of thinking that we are going to loose something that we think we have, or not getting something that we think we should”. You cannot live on something you no longer have I said to myself. Part of life is loosing part of spirituality is letting go. I have always hated those lotus eating, Garden of Eden squatting hippies. To me spirituality has always been dirty in the weeds, base, and not linear. But I had to accept the idea that you cannot get anything new until you’ve let go of what you think you have. I still pine over the singer every once in awhile, and I still don’t have a job. You could say that I’ve lost it all but I think I'm getting ready for something new.