The ego check of accepting charity

 How can I learn to accept that self-reliance is a value but depending on others is a strength

Growth isn’t about behaving more in according to one’s values. To me, it’s about challenging those beliefs and values on a regular basis, and being prepared to keep or modify them as the evidence necessitates. I mean, I could find simple stability by embracing my values but then I’d have the exact same mindset throughout my life, assuming that I was correct at all times and I simply won’t be. 

I’ve taken care of myself, and my mother, for decades especially in her later years. Even when I was stuck taking disability ten years ago, I still took care of her. But now I am having to focus on taking care of myself and am finding that I am unable to do so without accepting more help than I am comfortable accepting. Specifically, I am having to use the food bank to keep healthy, balanced meals on the table and it has been a demoralizing blow to my ego. I’ve stocked my pantry with staples but protein and vegetables will pose an issue in the coming weeks as I work my way through what’s in my fridge and freezer. 

As a result I have had to make some tough realizations about myself and my life, not the least of which is that I am no longer completely self reliant. When I first went on disability I had to accept the help but could also say that I had paid into the system since I was twenty five and the help I was receiving was simply me getting back a portion of what I had put into it. Now, I’m having to ask for charity aid from strangers, at least for the time being and I’m having a difficult time with it. These people are not only willing to help me, they are actively volunteering their time to organize the food bank and staff it when it is open. I want to volunteer too, albeit for a different charity, in the coming months. I want to help those people who need it. How can I make the people I help in that situation feel better about getting the help they need and deserve?

Ah yes, relationship limbo.

 July 1st

So, because we didn’t get to talk before you got checked into the hospital, I’ve decided to write this running blog of my thoughts. Not because I’m obsessing but because I just need a place to open up my mind and let my thoughts spill out. Maybe I’ll share this with you one day, in part or as a whole. I honestly don’t know right now. I just know that my mind is messing with me and if I don’t let it all out I’m going to implode.

I know the specific reason for this. It’s because you didn’t call me before you went in and my mind is telling me what are probably untruths, that you are secretly hiding from me and don’t want me to ever contact you again. Like I said, it’s my mind playing tricks on me but my self esteem is not very good and you said that you tend to isolate and push away from people you care about. 

All I know is that when you get out, communication is going to be the key to us getting along in whatever manner that turns out to be because not communicating is dangerous for both of us. 

So I just finished watering my friend’s gardens and potted plants. The sprayer nozzle at the garden is broken and sprays everywhere other than the place you want the water to actually go so I am soaked from head to toe while sitting in an air conditioned Starbucks writing this. I’m finding that I wish you shared your face on the videos you ‘ve uploaded to tiktok because I’ve gotten used to seeing your face every couple of days. Ya, I know. That’s a little pathetic. I’m well aware that I have the worry of over smothering you due to your trust issues. I’m trying to back off so I don’t scare you away.

I’m just worried about you and I wish you had your phone so I could get a message from you saying you’re not crying yourself to sleep each night or that if you are, it’s gonna be ok.

My latest chapter in my book has turned into an essay on the combination of shame and struggling to put my welfare first. I don’t mean the relatively simple things like shaving my beard or going for a couple km walk every few days. I mean the deep down stuff that you’re probably delving into as well. 

I guess with all I’m trying to say is that I miss you and would have liked to tell you that in person rather than here. 🙁

~~~~~~

Damn. I just saw that you were active two hours ago on Tiktok, so now I don’t know why you haven’t replied but the thoughts that come into my head are definitely negative. If you don’t want to talk to me, just tell me. I can take it. If you need space, just say it. I’d rather exist in the reality of rejection than the limbo you just put me into. 

Random ramblings, memories and fears

 Triggers.

It’s a word that’s used in everyday parlance these days but to those of us with an addiction, the word is more than simple things which upset us. Triggers bring up a myriad of emotions which we are seldom prepared to deal with. For me, they bring up shame, regret, pain, and denial among others I can’t even specify right now. I’m working on one right now, the worry about being judged by others which is a constant for me. I’m sitting in the Starbucks near Anthony’s house. I am wearing shorts and have psoriasis breakouts on my shin. The other people sitting at the communal table with me aren’t staring at me or anything but I have my headphones in and can’t hear what they’re talking about. Who am I fooling? Even if I could hear what they were saying it wouldn't matter. I feel like I know what they’re thinking. 

Mind reading is a big problem for me. It has ruined friendships, old and new, but I have an incredibly difficult time taking people at their word especially when they have been shown to be anything less than totally honest with me in the past. I am currently working on this problem with a friend right now and it’s bothering me a great deal. She is telling me to believe her whole at the same time admitting that in the past she’s had difficulty being honest with me. Even now, in her last message, she admits this, saying “I value our friendship but I get those actions don't reflect that, unfortunately I'm not able to give my best self to people right now”. 

Right now. There’s a whole episode of How I Met Your Mother about this phenomena the characters called being on her hook. I fully admit this is a woman I wanted more than friendship from and was very honest about that fact. When she said she didn’t feel the same way I was totally prepared to just be friends but she gives me reasons to not believe the things she tells me quite often. I simply don’t know, at this point, if walking away is the correct thing to do or should I show more patience and empathy for her. I’m torn and I suppose that there’s no real way to know if the decision I make is the correct one in hindsight let alone right now as I make it. She struggles with mental illness as much as I do and is going through a great deal of strife at the moment. Having said that, she has decided to shut me out rather than be open or even honest with what’s going on in her life. She calls me fascinating but treats me as an afterthought. Another good friend has told me that I deserve better and I wish I could accept that but I’m having a difficult time with the idea that I deserve to be not unhealthy let alone happy. 

And to say that all of this emotional bullshit has me torn and triggered is an enormous understatement. It’s a good thing I am self excluded from the majority of my online gambling websites I used to use. That said, I know my Pokerstars exclusion has run out. I purposefully deleted it’s password from my manager and in the past ten and half months I have (thankfully) forgotten my PIN used to sign into my account. But today of all days, while I’m stone sober and simply sitting in a coffee shop, something inside is urging me to log in and access the slots once again. I am sweaty and breathing hard. Not quite an anxiety attack but a bout of general nervousness from being in a public place with forty or so people I don’t know. 

Instead, I have just sent Pokerstars a request to self exclude for two years. I need this. I accessed my account and found out my last self exclusion expired on January fourteenth of this year and I could gamble if I chose to. I wish they would email me back, 

In the meantime I am doing a remembrance of different times, specifically my days hanging out in the swing music scene. Times when I drank too much, danced too little and took life a little less seriously. I miss the music, the venues, the people and being able to walk up to any woman and ask her to dance without her thinking it was a prelude to a sexual advance. I do wish that, during the years the scene was happening, that I’d lived in Vancouver rather than the outskirts because I’d have been able to immerse myself even more. I miss the dances, the concerts, searching for vinyl at Krazy Bob’s Records and just riding in Gord’s car listening to the new swing compilation CD one of us had picked up from My Generation records and tapes in the Willowbrook mall. I guess we all have memories we yearn for and that we all think our memories are better than everyone else’s but in my case, they are.

I got my confirmation of self exclusion from Pokerstars for two years, to expire on March 30 of 2025. That’s a relief. I was able to distract myself long enough to get through the stress I was feeling until it came through. It’s hard to describe the feeling, the craving, the urge to log in and put ten dollars down on a few spins of the slots that the site has added. I don’t even want to know which ones they’ve added since May of last year because I’m sure that one or two would be favorites from when I was going to the casino. I feel as though I’ve experienced something that psychotic dictator Shan Yu wrote:

“He said "live with a man 40 years,

share his house, his meals, speak on

every subject. Then tie him up and

hold him over the volcano's edge.

And on that day you will finally meet

the man”

I was just over the volcano’s edge and my thoughts went to a better time in my life, full of friendship dancing, music, and joy. Does that mean my current life is that bad or the life I had back then was so much better? I often hear people say that their lives get better the longer they live but I honestly don’t feel like that. I have a better, more honest connection with my friends and those family members who have stuck by me, as few as they are but I have so little control over what I’m doing each day and how I’m surviving. I am literally living at the whim of my government and the charity of friends. Strange that my thoughts would turn to that time in my life though because it is full of so many regrets. As I say that, Sledgehammer by Peter Gabriel just came on my spotify, remembering the innocence of late high school for me, my first crushes and thinking I knew so much about the world when I really knew so little. Maybe ignorance truly is happiness…

It feels like I’m letting spotify write this journal entry for me. Lavay Smith just came on, swinging away and I’m reminded of my trip to San Francisco to see my friend Cory, who hasn’t spoken to me since I told him that I have an addiction to gambling and that I stole fifteen thousand dollars from my mother. I found it ironic that he reacted the way he did because he’s dealt with mental illness and addictions of his own. Maybe that’s why. Perhaps he was made uncomfortable by my actions or perhaps it was the compulsion itself that he couldn’t handle. One way or another, we’re not friends on facebook any more and, as often as I see his profile suggested to me, I haven’t had the guts to send the friend request in an effort to rekindle the friendship. He once accused me of being too proud to accept his help when he wanted me to be part of his hockey pool and he had offered to pay my way in. I told him I wasn’t too proud but couldn’t bring myself to admit it was actually shame that stopped me. Now, I guess it’s fear that’s stopping me because if he refuses my request I’d be shattered.

Over the last twenty years I’ve seen friends come and go. Some I’d known for decades while others I’d known for months but losing friends due to my gambling feels different. I spent the majority of my life building a wall of lies because I was terrified of letting people see who I truly was and being rejected for it. Every time I embrace another level of honesty I am making myself more vulnerable and I am being forced to accept that some who I have truly respected have chosen not to, or are unable to, reply with the same level of respect. Maybe it’s learning to respect myself that is the only path to happiness. If that’s the truth then I’m in serious trouble because I don’t even know where the path to that respect is let alone how to navigate it. Every time I have tried to get help with that goal, especially recently, I have been thwarted by something and as Randy Pausch once said, some brick walls are made out of flesh. He said that the brick walls were there to give us the chance to prove how badly we want something. My issue isn’t with that concept, it's with the very concept of self empathy and without that how can I be expected to find a direction. I feel like I need to borrow someone else’s compass to at least begin with a direction to go. 

Did you ever play those text based adventure computer games from the early days of the computer era? They were like a Dungeons and Dragons game style but no map was given to the players so they’d have to either draw their own as they played or would have to memorize where everything was as they played. But at the very least, when playing those games if you said something like “go east” you could know that you were facing east and were headed in the intended direction. I’m hoping I’m on the path and am facing the correct way but I have little evidence to support my decisions. I haven’t gambled in over ten months but I’m not even sure if that’s a direction. All I know is that I’m not currently going backwards but, again, that isn’t an arrow I can follow and it’s likely that, were I to step backwards, I wouldn’t know of it until it’s too late. 

I have a short amount of time to decide if I want to take the neuropsychological assessment that the counseling team wants me to submit to. There are two possibilities, I suppose. They’re either going to find something or they’re not. If they find something, maybe that will help and maybe it won’t. Ironically, I don’t think I’m afraid of what they may find. I’m more worried that they may find nothing and find out this crap my mind is feeding me is all in my head once again rather than having a rational reason. I trust my mind so little already. I don’t want to find out that every fear of delusional thinking is well founded because my brain is simply messed up and there’s nothing which can be done about it. I mean, I think I’d rather be schizophrenic than have what I have because there are medications which can help and the idea of taking pills to help my mind has never bothered me. What bothers me is a doctor telling me there’s nothing that can be done to help me and that I’m destined to be like this for the rest of my life. 

Neena's Homework

 

Is my victimhood a comfort response? 

I’m having a great deal of difficulty with this concept; victimhood. 

Definition:the condition of having been hurt, damaged, or made to suffer, especially when you want people to feel sorry for you because of this or use it as an excuse for something

I have barely, in my life, begun to accept that my brain doesn’t work the same as most people’s and now I have to potentially ignore my diagnoses and just pretend like I'm neuro-typical again. I told myself that lie for years while I was lying to others. My BPD tells me that I deserve to be left by others, especially when I care about and trust them. My anxiety tells me I don’t deserve to be happy. My depression tells me I don’t deserve to live. 

And if it’s a comfort response then I don’t deserve to be on disability because I could work, despite barely being able to function most days.

Do I not want to accept my responsibility to myself and others? 

I accepted my responsibility when I was 15 years old and I had to start working full time so I would have clothes on my back, while my mother was having panic attacks in the local grocery store. I accepted my responsibility when I began to care for my mom when she stopped cooking and cleaning for herself. 

The premise of the question implies that my worst fear is true; that I am a leech on society and on my friends. I am a burden to those I care about and the world would be better off with me either getting off my ass or killing myself. This feels an awful lot like those people who told me to suck it up and just get on with my life.

“Get busy living or get busy dying”

I’m desperately trying to find reasons to keep trying and my counselor is basically telling me two things: I am my own worst enemy, which I already knew, and I don’t do enough to deserve to live.

So I write, trying to figure out which is true while attempting to put my thoughts and feelings into words that make sense to myself and, hopefully, others. But is expressing my thoughts to others simply another version of victimhood and am I unworthy of having my thoughts and feelings validated? Do I want to be understood or pitied?

What I asked Neena to do was help me understand why I don’t feel like I deserve to be happy and she basically implied that I’m a failure and none of it is due to my illnesses. To say that her response seems to be unhelpful is an enormous understatement.

She wants me to identify a concrete goal for me. I feel like I gave her one and she told me I was wrong and that feeling like I deserve to be better is the path, not the goal.

Why am I getting in my own way?

Another implication that my illnesses are my fault. I keep comparing what Neena has said to me as if she had said it to a cancer patient and I’m pretty sure she comes off looking like an ass in the process. I admit that my thoughts and emotions are what is holding me back but I’ve always been told that they are uncontrollable. I can challenge them. I can ignore them. But how the fuck do I change or silence them. 

I’m sitting in Starbucks in a Rick Rypien jersey because it comforts me, a reminder that even from the depths of the worst life can deal us, good can come. Wanting it gave me hope for years. Owning it gives me strength to get through the day. Wearing it makes me feel like I belong in the world. Sitting here, with my headphones in as I type with a movie playing doesn’t mean that I want sympathy or pity from others. It means that I am more comfortable with the sounds of a coffee shop in the background when I want to write rather than the silence of a home or even my friend’s basement. 

What am I afraid of? 

I am afraid of almost everything. I am afraid to live. I’m afraid to fail. I’m afraid to love and care, especially for myself. I’m afraid of others' words and actions towards me. I’m afraid of judgment. I’m afraid of smelling bad on the bus. I’m afraid of suffering a stroke and becoming even more dependent on others. I’m afraid of getting up and getting a refill on my coffee for fear that the redhead across the Starbucks will see me and judge me for my size. 

But I’m not afraid of death. 

Death and nothingness feels like a release from everything this world has cursed me with. That’s what I crave. I crave not feeling anymore. That’s what I felt while I was gambling. I felt nothing, whether I won or lost it didn’t matter. I could feel nothing and I loved it. It’s why I drank when I was using alcohol to self medicate and why I still crave it all too often, both the alcohol and the gambling. 

I am reminded of when I ended up in CRESST. The night before, I had a panic attack but as I lay in bed, with my heart pounding and unable to breathe, I couldn’t rule out a heart attack. It was then that I realized I didn't care if I lived through the night. I wasn’t any better than I was four years earlier when I planned to take my life, I just hadn’t made any effort to do it. That’s how I feel these days and I find myself only surviving, and not living. 

I tried to tell this to Neena, to explain it to her but she dismissed what I was telling her. She told me I was doing more than simply surviving because I was shaving my beard and dressing and showering every couple of days. She doesn’t get it and I’m doubting now that she ever will based on what she’s asking of me. I told her I wanted to make my life mean something by helping others but she doesn’t understand that either. I just want to mean something to someone and if it isn’t me I want it to be someone else and I don’t understand why that’s so hard for her to comprehend.

1211 random words and random thoughts

So here I am: single again. It’s not planned on and I’m definitely not pleased about it but I’m also not surprised. CJ had been growing more and more distant over the last six weeks or so and her ending things was just the expected culmination of that space between us. I reached out multiple times and not shunned over and over again, her saying that she was going through too much and couldn’t deal with it. That much is definitely true. She’s had a rough time of things lately but try as I might, I fail to see the logic behind pushing away the only person who was supporting her at every moment about everything she shared. But then again, she struggled with multiple undiagnosed mental illnesses and had severe trust issues so maybe she was doing what I used to do; push people away before they had the chance to hurt me. I wish that over the eighteen months we knew each other I could have made her trust that I wasn’t going to do that. I know everyone else in her life was either using her or treating her like garbage, or in the case of her parents both, but I wanted to be there for everything. 

I took a real hit to my self esteem when she left me and it’s been a tough time for me but friends have been there and Instagram acquaintances have really stepped up. Well, some of them have and some have just sat back quietly and watched me break down. I will not forget those who reached out and were there for me. One Instagram friend has really been a rock for me, listened to everything I’ve been thinking, the good and the bad. I won’t mention her by name because her handle seems like her real name but being able to share the truth with someone in a world of people who would rather just have the polite version of events has been, if you’ll forgive the phrase, a god-send.

I’ve also made a new friend who lives in Turkey. She’s in school for psychology with the goal of becoming a police officer.(I wonder how those two things would go together. Perhaps all police officers should have to have a degree in psychology…) But she’s young and pretty and dark and interesting and the last thing I need right now is a crush on another young beautiful woman who seems to find me interesting. Sure, a rebound relationship isn’t always a bad thing but she lives even further away than CJ does and is far more confident in herself and I can’t figure out for the life of me why she finds me interesting at all. I’d be more than happy to push aside that crush and just be friends with her and I hope she isn’t interested in more than just friendship. I only have so much self control.

I’m sitting in the coffee shop (It’s called Cuatro Coffee and on my mind it reminds me of the Castro district in San Francisco, and Harvey Milk) around the corner from where my counsellor is, knowing that an hour from now I’m likely to be in tears exploring the darkest recesses of my psyche. My anxiety was spiked on the bus on the way here, as it usually does, and was worse than usual due to the fact that summer school had just let out so there were scores of kids packed onto it this time. Not helping the situation was the realisation that I’d forgotten my Ativan so I was functioning at a low level without my needed medication. Even worse, was the fact that I slept through my evening pill time last night and missed my evening medications so I’m working with no anti-anxiety meds in my system right now. This is a dangerous mental place for me to be in, with counselling coming up and my gamblers anonymous meeting coming up later tonight. If I had to guess, and my anxiety makes me guess, I’m not going to do well today. Under normal circumstances I’d skip the meeting but I haven’t been to one in three weeks and I feel like I need to go. 

But writing here is helping me. It’s enabling me to work out some of my thoughts and process my stressors better than simply throwing it all against the wall and hoping that something will stick, that a part of my mind will decide to make sense. Writing to no one in particular is like letting the entire world see what I’m thinking and yet knowing that it’s likely that I’m the only person who will ever see or read these words. I know this may end up in the book but again, as much as I’d like to see people read it and get something from it, that book is for me. Everyone needs a goal, dreams to pursue. Mine came out of nowhere a few years ago and only came into focus sixty days ago when I first went to a gamblers anonymous meeting. CJ gave me a shot that love would be a goal too but that obviously isn’t going to happen. Before I decided to turn my writing into a book the only goals I had were to stay alive and take care of my mom. Those aren’t exactly the most fulfilling goals the world has ever seen and my life showed it. Goals can be forced upon us by others, such as in the case of a project and deadline provided by an employer, or they can be purely self motivated and designed. I tend to think that the ones we create for ourselves are more long lasting and gratifying. 

Gratefulness. Now there’s a concept that is challenging to me and not in a good way. When I look at my life I have an exceptionally difficult time recognizing that which I am grateful for. It’s a level of self knowledge which I struggle with greatly and although I better understand why as I age it isn’t making the skill any easier to do. Even when I work on it I find myself struggling to truly recognize and appreciate the things which make my life possible and bearable. I have a roof over my head, a mother who loves me, and I live in a country that isn’t actively trying to kill me due to my multiple health challenges. These are things which many people, as basic as they seem to be to us, struggle to have. I’m also a cis white male in a western cultured country. I’m not just a citizen, I’m a privileged one. This makes me feel, everyday, that I shouldn’t be having such a difficult time with my life and the guilt is strong on a regular basis. 

And on that, self pitying note I have to leave this behind and go to my counsellor. I hope I can do ok in it, not that I’m being graded or anything. In fact I’m the one who grades my counsellor at the end of each session, something which I am terribly uncomfortable doing. 

Suck it up, Scott. You have to go adult now.

Goals and dreams

 In order to explain how hard it is to understand what mental illness does to you, I often use the analogy of a cancer patient. No one can understand what it’s like to go through a cancer diagnosis and it’s treatment without getting the diagnosis themselves. Yesterday, at my first appointment with my new counsellor, I had an exceedingly difficult time accepting that I deserved the help and hearing her say positive things about me. Even now, nearly a day later, just considering the possibility of getting better brings up emotions I am wholly unprepared for and the tears begin to well in my eyes. She wants me to spend this week focusing on my goals so I am trying to balance that prospect with my emotional stability.

I don’t know exactly where this comes from other than to say that I know my self esteem is extremely low and has been for many years. It may be a function of my BDP and the lack of sense of self that comes with it. It may be the lack of positive reinforcement I received throughout my life. It may be the bullying I’ve faced throughout my life due to my obesity. I honestly don’t know but I’m going to explore each possibility here. It is a core belief and I don’t expect it to change in the short term no matter what I do but it would be nice to at least have relief from time to time of the lies my emotions are telling me

Borderline personality disorder often leaves its wounded victims with a complete lack of a sense of self. This often manifests itself by removing any knowledge of what a person should do for a living or future goals (although, as I re-read this, my use of the word “should” is a sign that I need to rethink that perspective). This is my issue. I was asked by my counsellor what goals I have for the future, as it pertained to my treatment, and the only answer I had was to survive until tomorrow. That’s how I’ve been living for so long now that I don’t really have a healthy answer to the question. I know, in my mind, that I deserve to have something to shoot for but my emotions are constantly sabotaging me and nearly always drown out the logical thoughts. Does a lack of self mean I am inevitably destined to have a lack of goals and dreams or is it possible to have them. Maybe having them will help give me the sense of self I have been missing throughout my life.

When I was a young boy, I was playing defence in a game of hockey. We were killing a penalty but had control of the puck. It came back to me but I couldn’t hold the blueline, to keep the play onside, so I quickly turned and skated the puck backwards into our own zone so we could regroup. Once there, I wheeled around and fired the puck down the ice to give our team a chance to change the lineup and get some fresh legs on the ice. When I got to the bench, the coach came over and patted me on the back, saying “Good job.” That is only one of the two times from my childhood, that I remember, when I was praised for doing something well and neither of those moments came from my parents. In fact, neither of my parents ever told me that they were proud of me. My teachers were always critical of me, as school was tediously boring for the most part and I seldom applied myself, so school life was a constant exercise in not getting myself in trouble. As an adult, my employers and customers became the first people in my life to, on a regular basis, thank me for doing a good job. I became my job and my bosses became surrogate father figures for me. But even from them, positive feedback was such a foreign thing to me that it made me feel extremely uncomfortable, doubting the motives of the person giving it to me, and always questioning whether it was true or not. I simply didn’t feel that I deserved compliments and, to this day, they are distressing. 

Not all of my interactions with employers were positive. One of my former bosses knew that my coworkers were bullying me and did nothing to stop it. When I informed him, it was the first time in my life that I took it upon myself to try and end the torment that another person was putting me through. His response was that I needed to toughen up. I had been bullied all through school, from about grade four all the way to grade twelve. In high school there was a group of five or six boys who took it upon themselves to try and beat me up on a regular basis. I never asked for help from any of my teachers or either of my parents. Back then, you just didn’t do that sort of thing, especially in my family. As far as I was concerned, the correct action was to suck it up, accept that it was going to happen and try to move on. I was perpetually the victim in my peer groups, from school to sports to work. Maybe that’s another part of the reason I needed to be in a management position in each place I worked. It’s difficult to bully your boss and get away with it. 

It’s difficult to believe one deserves to be happy when they are constantly being shown to be less than normal by their peers and then not receiving positive feedback in other areas of their lives. For me, I eventually just got to believe that making others happy, making others like me by whatever means, was the main goal of my life. I tried to make my restaurant patrons happy for twenty five years. As I type this, I am reminded of a couple who used to come into the last restaurant I worked at. If I apologised for anything, keeping them waiting for me or a problem with their meal, they would admonish me for doing so. They said that apologising made me weak and that I should stop. Their point of view made no sense to me at the time but looking back, I can see a curtain logic to what they were saying. I was constantly putting the happiness of others ahead of my own and eventually it got to the point where my own mental state was irrelevant. I was stuffing my dissatisfaction with my life down inside where it wouldn’t be anything I’d have to deal with. The longer I worked in restaurants, the easier it became to believe my own wellbeing was irrelevant to my life, and that’s a lesson I am desperately trying to unlearn to this day. 

And having written and thought about all of that I feel like I’m no closer to the answer to the question and it has raised another question. What comes first, the goals and dreams or the sense of self? If I don’t have a sense of self, can I even identify what my goals for the future are and, more frighteningly, does it even matter? Without a sense of self, will the goals I set be nothing more than arbitrary marks upon a timeline that may or may not even belong to me. Maybe wanting to find a sense of self can be a goal in and of itself. I have so many questions and so few answers and although I know that asking difficult questions is the path to wisdom, I am not feeling very wise today.

Casino Regrets

 Nearly a year ago, in July of 2021 I was drinking and frustrated and broke after blowing a few hundred dollars at the slot machines. Rather than going home, I went to sit at the bar and blow my last few dollars on a couple of beers. At this point I was already stealing money from my mother and yet in complete denial about my gambling compulsion. This was as close as I would come to realising how far gone I was until I hit rock bottom and began my road to recovery. As the piece goes on, my increasing inebriation becomes more and more apparent. I remember this night but looking back at what I wrote, the level of honesty I could muster at the time is a little shocking.

I don’t want to be sitting here but I had to do it. I’m typing this at the bar in the local casino, having wasted $300 and drinking away my problems. Well, drinking so that they feel a little less painful for a while. I used to drink like I was trying to punish myself but now I drink to just survive the day. I don’t drink a lot by most people’s standards. I’m only working on my third beer in four hours but I’m out of practice, so this small amount is enough to get the creative juices flowing, I hope. 

There is so little of it left in me. I used to write for fun, sober. The idea of writing without a beer in my hand is now completely alien to me. As is writing in private, now needing some sort of hustle and bustle around me to get the job done. I think about the great writers of the world sitting in their quiet cabins and producing true pieces of art. I am not like them at all, where sombre sobriety leaves me alone and overwhelmed with my thoughts and emotions.

I long for the days from my past, where life was so much easier. When I could ignore my problems, go to work, get a buzz afterwards then go home to pass out for the night. Now I have to face them and it is not going well. My mental problems overwhelm me on a daily basis and I can no longer get through the day without an anxiety attack. It’s extremely difficult just to get out of the house and participate in society without a drink in my hand. Years ago, on my days off, I used to hang out at a local Starbucks and the sound of my computer keyboard could be heard through the coffee shop. Today, it’s the sound of drunk people and slot machines which drown out the sound of my fingers upon the keys. My creativity, as lacklustre as it has become, is only part of a cacophony of lost hope and money changing hands, from the poor to the wealthy.

Now I ramble on my computer, without a belief that anyone will ever want to read this. Beside me sits an older man banging on the bar to get some service. Obviously a regular, he now does what I used to do each day, the after work drinks are his reward for a day of labour. The bar is filling up now that happy hour has hit (this was a lie and I don’t know why I wrote it. The casino has no happy hour) and I’m seriously regretting sitting here rather than finding myself a quiet corner in which I could write. The old man has his drinks, not settling for only a beer but adding a shot of whiskey as well, but his drumming on the bar has increased in its percussiveness as he pretends to be the drummer in the band whose music is competing with the ringing of slot machines around me.

I am the odd man out here. Each of these men come in often based on their camaraderie. Many people would accuse me of wanting to be a part of this friendliness because I sat at the bar but the truth is far from that. It is simply a matter of comfort for me to plop my ass upon a stool and take a seat at the bar. This is where I have sat for years, the bartender always being the person I could relate to after eight hours of serving customers at my own job. Well, this is where I did sit for years but it still feels far more comfortable than sitting at a table in the corner, no matter just how desperately I want to be left alone. At least, so far, they have taken the hint to leave me alone. My laptop open and an earpiece slapped on the side of my head have kept their inquisitiveness at bay but I don't expect it to last forever. Sooner or later, one of them will accuse me of working when I shouldn’t be or they will simply ask me what it is that I’m doing. My solace is a short lived one as their increasing inebriation will eventually break open their box of questions and someone will disturb me. At least for the time being, their attention is more focused on the legs of the waitresses walking past us than on me, which is fine.

Perhaps it is the beer I am imbibing but those legs are beginning to attract my attention as well. 

The drumming from the end of the bar wouldn’t be bothering me so much if it were in time with the music but it is way off. It reminds me of an ex-friend of mine who once said that he hated when people would harmonise with whatever music was playing because, to him, you could sing any notes and they would work. Years of choir and music composition back in the day taught me about harmony and creativity and the friend was talking out of his ass but he was too ignorant to know it. That’s how the guy at the end of the bar reminds me of that friend from so many years ago. He is so ignorant of music that he thinks his drumming is somehow in time. It is becoming distracting as he becomes more forceful and is becoming like a jackhammer in my mind.

I hate that this is the place I am comfortable. Unlike these men, I have no woman to go home to after their drinks. I have only my ailing mother and her sore ankles which I will once again be rubbing down with ointment later tonight. I used to sit in this place to forget that I had no one. Now it is only a reminder. 

The other men at the bar have begun to sing along with the music. I have bad drumming at one side of me and off tune singing at the other. Soon I will be forced to put away this computer and resort to gambling again to occupy my mind. I can only ignore this for so long.

The bartender is trying to prepare for the evening shift, stocking the bar and filling the ice wells, which is far more interesting than the conversations which have broken out on either side of me. Their blandness is at least cancelling themselves out.

Eight hours to the east, my girlfriend has picked up her cell phone and has decided that midnight is the best time to tell me about her day. Now I have an actual excuse to put away my computer and focus on something important, far more important than I.