12:53 PM: I did well last night in deliberately choosing happiness and preventing rather than mitigating regret and jealously. It would sound odd to most that I endeavored this while at a local show with friends, but most would underestimate my capability and capacity to ruin any good thing. While going to see local bands will probably never be my first choice of things to do (I cannot hear the people I run into who wish to catch up and even the bands I like tend to go on longer than I’d like), I must admit that I salvaged more than a modicum of enjoyment from the evening. Deliberately. Over and over again.
The first choice was just before we left when intimate relations were offered as pre-game option. I nearly declined out of some twisted sense of self-sacrificing martyrdom and spite driven desire to establish ammunition for a later guilt trip or argument. I did not do this and did ‘it’ instead. The lesson learned really shouldn’t need to be explicitly deliberated or stated, but it is to always, always choose sex. Every time. The night would have unfolded quite differently I am certain had I allowed the self-defeating tendencies their way.
Also, yesterday was the anniversary of the death of Fat Mike. The day I slayed my deamon. I do wish I’d made a commemorative entry yesterday, but I was busy making money, getting grappling training and rounds in, lifting, napping, bangin, hanging out with friends and making Suzi happy, and gorging myself sick on pizza.
I am definitely in a different place than a year ago. A year ago yesterday, I laid in bed, in and out of consciousness for over 24 hours. I had my last drink of vodka around seven am on the 28th. I pulled a pint of vodka out from under the bed and polished it off immediately after Suzi had thrown open the door and started screaming, “WHY?!” I started yelling “why” back at her, completely out of sorts. She was screaming at me after finding a discarded pint of vodka in the couch downstairs. I remember thinking, “fuck it.”
I remember opening my eyes every so often before slipping back into a semi-coma and I saw that the sun had went down. When I opened my eyes again and saw that the sun had come back up, I felt more sick. I remember every so often I’d hear the door open and shut. Suzi was checking to make sure I hadn’t died in my sleep.
It was surreal when yesterday I took a nap after jiujitsu and lifting and I laid there, semi-consious, fading in and out after waking up to pee, making a sincere effort to force more nap in, and the fading sun turned to twilight just as it had a year ago. I even heard Suzi come in to check on me after she’d gotten home from work. I heard the door open and shut, just as I had a year before. I laid there for some time and contemplated where and who I used to be.
