It's been a while. Here's some writing.

(Skip down if you just want to read some prose)

I haven't posted here in a while. Things aren't perfect, but I'm doing pretty alright. it will be 6 months in a week. I'm still seriously damaged from the weight of the events that led to me getting sober, but I've started interacting with the world in a meaningful way again and I can honestly say I'm pleased with the man I am when I look in the mirror. I've lost 50lbs, I make better decisions, I have admiration and respect from the people that matter. Still waiting on the big career move, but that's what happens when you're a big facet of a small operation becoming a big operation. Life isn't bad. I have my complaints, but I'm happy to wake up sober every day, not hungover, not regretting things I said or did or money wasted on killing myself. We can work with this.

Anyway, I posted some of my writings here in the past, and I'm not sure if I've posted this here already, but I've been, well, ruminating and rereading some of what I wrote at different stages of my ordeal. So for anyone that needs to know it gets better, here's Rumination

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Rumination

I've ground down my molars to perfectly flat white plateaus chewing on the intangibility of "maybe" and "why." My once starry-eyed gaze is now deadlocked and fixated on a curling trail of smoke from the endless burning of tobacco. The stillness of my figure belies the flurry of activity happening behind my eyes as an endless recount of events carousels round and round and round (oh what fun!) to the forefront of my mind. The cover of night breaks way to dawn and then day to dusk once over and still I do not move.

Something gnaws at the pit of my gut, or, more accurately, nothing does. It rolls around like jagged shards of glass, each one a word you spoke that cut through me and never really left. I carry it with me in penance for a lifetime of regret and failure.

Acceptance of a fate I feel I deserve. The weight of my sins dragging me along a rocky path in the shadow of your loss where I'm swept away like rapids. A current pulls the corpse of me along and I let it. You let it. At least, that's how things were.

I'm snapped back to the present, still in the same position, still in contemplation. Those moments feel so long ago, despite what little time has passed. But time is irrelevant and the only valid measurement is a comparison of one's self to the self of yesterday. By that metric a millennia has passed. Tides have ebbed and flowed, moons have risen and set in number beyond count. And as this particular moon sets and the night changes to day, so am I changed.

The waking sun dispels the shadow of doubt from the dark recesses of my face, carved by a lifetime of being dealt bad hands and playing them out. Innumerable counts of calling at "all in" and losing the pot. But no more. No more kowtowing to the cruel. No more making excuses for those seeking to project their own cowardice onto me. No more eating the blame like the mindless livestock that accept whatever circumstance is thrust on them. "It is what it is." It is not. It is what I make it to be. That empty stare is gone. Still deadlocked, but filled with steel resolve and determination. A jaw set like stone.

I was built to overcome the trials of a harsh world, My framework constructed from the very bones of the earth, unyielding as bedrock and forceful as the infinite depths. I succeed not because I have control, but because I can take the punishment handed out by the careless whims of fate. I will take the hit, stand back up and trek ever onward, stronger, tougher, and kinder. I will be strong but will not let the roughness of the world drive me to dishing the same cruelty to others as was dealt to me.

So, in the end, it never really hurt me. It made me better. I fixed the things I wanted to fix. I amputated the infected parts of myself. The parts plagued by weakness and fear. Fear of failure. Fear of losing people who embody all the failings of our species and act only in self interest. Fear of myself. I am not a new me. I am the same me, learning from my failure. A me that has learned to love himself and maybe trusts a bit more slowly. And that's a me that I can live with.