my fifth step

[honeydumplin]

Man, I'm really glad that post is over.

Its important for me to realize prior to a fifth step, that I may
not cover everything at one time, and that I may not do it
exactly right. I'm not reinventing the wheel, but taking what
I have hopefully learned in step four, and using it to shine the
light on five, in looking at it the way that it really happened,
as opposed to how my early sobriety wants to see it.

There is step ten for daily inventories, and if one desires,
another step five. The most important thing for me was
to start foremost with what was eating at me continually,
which were sex, self righteous anger, politics, and a serious
case of being anti-social, almost to the point of not wanting
to be around anybody.

Problems were something that I ran away from. Wrongs were
swept under the rug. Whatever damage may have been done
to anyone was soon forgotten. As my wife left one afternoon,
as the house sold divided, as the bankruptcy happened, and as
cars were repossessed, all I wanted to do was escape from it all;
wanting to drink, get high, and get the heck out of this place.

So at 27, I enlisted in the navy, not because of patriotism, but for
those neat looking cracker jack blue uniforms, and for thirty days
worth of vacation. What I needed, instead of crawling around in a ditch,
was an easy desk job, somewhere far, far away.

While waiting for boot camp, I moved into the deep southern Alabama
of my early upbringing. During those few months waiting to enlist,
I worked graveyard shift. An afternoon cocktail and a joint before work
were not unusual. I practically stayed high. I went to work stoned,
and usually had one rolled for later. It was the way of coping and
just getting through the day.

The night before I was sworn in, I paced back and forth
in front of a motel in Beckley, WV. I had cold feet, sorta like
the day I got married. But I decided to try. To make the best of
whatever was ahead.

I had been off the dope for 30 days, and had no idea that I would be
tested for anything else. After taking the oath and getting a plane,
I got settled in for the last few hours of freedom for the next eight
weeks. They were used to numb myself up as much as possible.

First there were the two beers on route to Charlotte, and a three hour
layover in the lounge. The flight to O'hare was another hour. After
landing there, and having some dinner there was more time for a few
more. So there were several hours of non-stop drinking.

Then I was informed that a breath test was something in my immediate
future. I waited as long as possible, which did nothing but increase
the anxiety, because sobering up at the point was basically out of the
question. I got on a late leaving van and proceeded to pop a whole
roll of certs during the ride in hopes of somehow hiding the smell, like
that might help. Yeah right. I reeked of alcohol. That unmistakable
smell of booze disguised vaguely with breath mints.
Not to mention that I was simply drunk, and had slight problems
every now and then with something called composure.

We were greeted on base by a group of navy guys screaming at
us, and demanding we stand at attention. I kept as best I could
a low profile, but knew that the inevitable would occur. It did.

After being taken into a classroom with these other recruits,
I saw several of the machines located in the back. Eventually
my name was called. I exhaled a small amount, hoping that
I could somehow cheat the results. Not long after the reading
came through, more of these white-clad men began to
appear out of the woodwork, or in this case, the bulkheads.

Then I started hearing words like, "Wow", and, "You gotta
be kiddin'".

No one ever mentioned a word to me directly. They kept us
up all night, yelling at us, and later running us through these
cold showers. As dawn started to eventually come into
focus, we were processed and given the standard sweats,
some flip flops, and the head shave.

There seemed like so many of us. And yet everyone was
given an adequate opportunity to prove ourselves to be
fit for special companies. If we could march, or sing well,
we could qualify to be a part of the more elite units, that
would travel around, and do different things.

That morning a company commander came up and stood eye
to eye with me, and after giving me the once over, asked
me how tall I was. I was so caught off guard, nothing
at all would come to mind.

"Man you don't even know how tall you are?" he asked again.

The try-out for the glee company was even worse, when
I made a feeble attempt to match a simple note struck
on the keyboard of a piano. The sound was so hideous.
I tried to talk them into a do-over.

"No, we're NOT doing it again!" was the reply.

Later on that same week, I was summoned to the office
of psychologist where an interview took place. I was
given a chance to opt out altogether,
or stay and stick it out. Since I had done such a terrible
job of finishing what I started in the past, I chose to
endure, and after some extra duty, and some more
yelling, I was in. For what, I was still unsure.

[honeydumplin]

A common theme without a doubt, was this feeling that somewhere
over the horizon, happiness awaited, chasing the very thing that
I never wanted to catch. The concept of success was an illusion lacking
the desire to be achieved. Failure became a comfortable venue for
playing the role of the victim, even though the search for pity
was as vacant as my commitment to finding a state of genuine
contentment.

Moments of contentment were reserved for some cynically regarded,
high-class rich dude, pondering a sunset aboard his yacht, or for
people who were frozen in time, on a movie screen or in a book,
never prepared for tomorrow. This twisted, limited attitude was that
I didn't make enough money to enjoy the day as much as the next guy.

I did little to prepare for anything. A whole approach oblivious
to the moment, oriented around the appearance of actually enjoying it.
It didn't matter what kind of torment I carried around inside, as
long as I came across as being capable of having a good time. And
as it turned out, I didn't want that responsibility that came with having
much money. All I wanted was to look like I might be that guy
standing on the yacht, looking at the sunset, with a drink in his hand.

I have had, what my dear mother called golden opportunities, pass
right in front of me, and would be too afraid, and/or too blind to see them.
Even when things took a turn for the better during the darker times,
I had become so accustomed to self-sabotage that I was
fully convinced that something would happened to mess it up,
pushing the the envelope further to see if I could get by with
a more and more of the antics, that I'd gotten by with before.

When I left A-school, my test scores allowed the benefit
of choosing one of the top five billets. I chose VF-45 in Key West,
and arrived there in October of '93. It was common knowledge
that the squadron was in the process of decommissioning, but
that did nothing to stop most from wanting to go there.

Beautiful girls. Tropical breezes. Paradise. It sounded like
a happening place. Besides, it might just be what would
allow me to get back on track once and for all, and prove to
all those people how wrong they were about my never
amounting to anything.

Well I got down there, and after a few trips up and down
Duval, and few more drinks, I went back to the motel
for a decent night's rest. My hopes of starting a new
chapter were just around the corner.

The next morning, a young sailor girl driving a
duty van came to pick me up, but if no one knew any
better, they would have thought that I was headed
to Guantanamo. My happy and joyful spirits from
the previous night had begun to fade away. It was as if
someone had given me their ice cream cone to hold,
while it melted.

Here I was, in my late twenties with this whole beautiful world
at my fingertips, and no capability at all to enjoy it.
No way to cope. No where left to run. No joy at all.
Just sadness, and melancholy.

This song by REM came on the radio called, "Everybody Hurts",
and boy did I get caught in the those lyrics. I got homesick,
depressed, and big old tears started creeping out of the
corners of my eyes.

The girl driving picking up on this, asked if I was okay. I said
I was fine—the line that I so often used to avoid
anything beneath the surface.

[honeydumplin]

My idea of a geographical cure for my ills merely
accelerated my drinking. An anonymous feeling
of no one recognizing me, was intoxicating. I felt
I could do anything I could get by with, and no one
would be the wiser. Manipulation of this was something
used for more than the next two decades. My actions were
based on who I was around and what I could get, whether
it be drugs, booze, sex, a promotion, or an escape to another
place again.

I used a girl from back home. We got married, and I finally
got out of the barracks. We drank a lot, fought a lot, and tolerated
the very worst of one another.

I got beat up in a drug deal one night and begged the guy
that beat me up for one hit of the crack he'd just stolen.
I lied to everyone, telling them that I'd been robbed
so they'd feel sorry for my measly thirteen stitches.

There was one fight that my wife and I had in which
the MP's was called. They showed up at my door
with a German shepherd. A glass astray had been
shattered. I was taken away in cuffs, but my wife
came and got me. Oh the joys of drunken marital bliss.

It was insisted that I attend an alcoholic evaluation.
I had to lie as best I could on some questions.
A guy concluded that I may not be an alcoholic,
but there was definitely a propensity to abuse it.
In my nutty way, I left that man's office an illusion
of a free man.

Now I could tell others, including myself, that since petty
officer so-and-so told me that I wasn't an alcoholic, I must
not be one. What a startling revelation for an alcoholic
to be told that he isn't an alcoholic. It granted the permission
I so desperately craved to drink as much as I could.
And that I did.

It also seemed to provide me with this sense of self-
entitlement to do what I felt was the right thing to do,
for the wrong reason, no matter who happened to be
hurt along the way. I can remember refusing to accept
simple gestures of kindness because not only would that
have been an admission that I needed help in any way,
but it would also mean that somehow I would owe the
charitable person a returned favor later on down the road.
Keeping an invisible, running scorecard in my head, I
wanted to owe nothing to others, and in turn didn't want
them to feel like they owed me anything either.

If people were too nice, I was skeptical of their motives,
and if they weren't, I despised them. This kept personal
interaction with other human beings at a bare minimum.
The first Thanksgiving in Florida was no more than a bunch
of regret, and resentment against society.

There was no relationship with God. No reason to be thankful
for the very things that were right in front of me. Two jobs,
excellent benefits, and a nice place to live right on the water,
and I was miserable. Nothing was ever enough.

That Thanksgiving, I went out for lunch and out of cash
asked the manager of the restaurant if they took checks. He declined
but if told me if we'd like, he'd serve us for free. I don't remember what
I said, but it was probably not very nice. I stormed out in a huff,
not wanting to accept anyone's "hand-out".

I went down the street and ate a bowl of soup. So much
contempt and hatred in my heart toward this guy, who
was simply trying as best he could to extend a hand of good-
will to someone he did not even have sense enough to recognize it.
There I was, stewing over it, and wasn't even thankful for the food.
What an awful way to spend Thanksgiving.

In the spring of the following year I sent a letter up through the
chain of command, requesting what was referred to as an
"early-out". The navy did not see it the same way. I had
signed on for four years, and fulfilled only about a quarter
of that obligation.


I was still trying to escape the various choices that were made.
Not even in midstream yet. I was so full of rebellion. Deep
down was this feeling of being caught by a random urinalysis,
which occurred often enough. I knew that if I got nailed on
one, it would be the end, and I really did not care if that
happened. So I drank, smoked pot, and did crack, and
continued to go from day to day on borrowed time.

The next billet came through. Brunswick, Maine was
the destination. My wife moved up there a month ahead
of the transfer, during which I cheated on her with several
so called friends that I had met in bars. I relieved
what little guilt that I felt about it all, by mailing her
quarter bags of pot that were wrapped up in plastic
bags, and concealed in souvenir styled t-shirts with
no return address.

I had nothing but utter contempt for most all of my
superiors. I'd go out of my way to avoid the protocol
of salute toward an officer because of my lack of respect
for them, which had no substantial justification whatever.
I judged my wife as a free loader, my boss as a drunk,
and my family as not giving a **** what happened.
What I hadn't noticed, is that I had become all three.

So it should have come as no surprise that on the night
prior to my transfer, when I decided to take the duty
van out for one last night drinking and getting high
out on the town, I got exactly what was coming to me.

I parked the van in the usual inconspicuous location,
and sometime during the course of the evening, the van
became inoperable. The engine wouldn't even turn over.
And what's really revealing is that somehow in my stupor,
I thought that if I could just get a taxi back to the base
and pick up my orders, I could possibly scoot out of there
unscathed.

Those plans were quickly changed upon my arrival to the base.

An officer on duty told me that I wouldn't be going anywhere,
and that I was to attend an XO mass at 0900 the following morning.