End of the Map

Wednesday, 5.30.18 8:52pm 36 years old 189 pounds Denver, CO I suppose the truest mark of my progress is that to mark the third anniversary of my freedom from alcohol is that I didn't feel compelled to mark the occasion at all. Thinking back on the events of a late May day three years ago fills me with a lot of shame, and a lot of sadness, and a lot of dark thoughts about who I used to be, who I might still become if I'm not careful, what I've put my family through.... It's important to feel those emotions sometimes to their fullest extent for the purpose of growth and because it is what a responsible, emotionally healthy adult should do. It's also important not to live in that space for too long. You have never seen thread unravel so fast as when a former addict starts tugging at the frayed end of their self-confidence. Marking the occasion is important for the purpose of marking progress. I will not argue with that. One thousand and ninety-five days have pa...

Imagine that your parents constantly told you that you were a ploy to keep one of them in a relationship they hated. Imagine that the ploy failed anyway, and you were told that you were the reason why. Imagine if someone who married into your family was allowed to slag and belittle and demean your mother whenever they felt like it without penalty or consequence. Imagine being told over and over again that you were not strong enough, physically or emotionally or mentally. Imagine being born with a borderline photographic memory and autism that went undiagnosed for years, and trying to forget all of these things. Imagine being told that now that the divorce was finalized, you and your brother were the family unit and that you were the two who truly mattered, and then imagine getting guilt-tripped any time you and your brother did things together that excluded the rest of your "family." Imagine that whenever you screwed up, your parents wrote you a letter about it instead ...

Thursday, 5.3.18 11:19am 36 years old 188 pounds Denver, CO This weekend: Boston. Seafood. Brother. Mom. Home. Heart. Happy. Portland, Maine. New work orientation. Seeing the headquarters. Meeting my team. Networking. Plugging in to the mother-ship. So the montage of your life is going to cut itself together in your head, playing itself like film in those moments of mental quiet that are fewer and farther between. The more time we experience, the faster it seems to move, and all of a sudden, those moments that still feel so fresh are three and four years ago, and you're knocking out years at a clip unprecedented. Periods of a few months, a hard labor jail sentence as a child, are nothing to you as an adult. Six months? Be over before you know it. Two years? Pfffft, do it standing on my head. There were a few things about myself that I had to learn by leaving Boston. The author will not bore you, reader, with what those lessons were - those are private intellectual prope...