l'appel du vide. (The call of the void)

Have you ever been driving down the highway and just for a second the thought crosses your mind to grab the wheel and wrench it to the left and slam right into the retaining wall and flip the car end over end?

You're not going to do it but that thought, that moment that feeling... that's l'appel du vide, the call of the Void.

 I love this expression not just because it's French, or a painfully accurate description of my emotional state of late... but rather because of the poetic density of its meaning.  A meaning you can't really achieve succinctly in English.

It describes the state of being inexorably pulled, drawn, called toward self destruction, the inexplicable desire to jump from a high place, the uncontroable urge to do some dangerous, reckless, life-threatening thing.

Those French have a word for everything!

I felt the call of the void deep in my soul not too long ago.  It kept at me, it wouldn't go away.  Like a ringing in my ears... spiritual tinnitus.  The singing earworm of doom... but no not "doom" it became a comfort, it became a way out. Once the plan had formed fully in my mind it was my golden parachute, albeit without a parachute.

Yes I was seriously planning to kill myself.  I was miserably depressed I didn't see a way out so I created an elaborate, very real plan.

Of course it had to be dramatic if I was going to answer l'appel du vide. The void was going to give me my 15 minutes even if it was posthumously.

Now you armchair Suicide Hotline volunteers relax.  I confided all this and more in the healthcare professionals at the Veterans Administration.  This was  10 months ago  I was hospitalized briefly  more on that later.   I'm not in any danger now. I am only sharing all this with you to get it out of my head.

Blogging is like journaling but for bi polars with narcissistic traits and tendencies.

I don't want to die now but the plan was really fucking good.... I'm kinda proud of it as sick and morbid as that is.
Here's the background so you can really get how cool it was going to be.  And yes I hear how fucked up that sounds.

There is a ghost story most of the tour guides in New Orleans tell about a young man named Zach a Gulf War 1 veteran who in 2006 committed suicide by jumping off the Omni hotel's roof.  Before he jumped he killed his girlfriend.  A suicide note in a ziplock bag in Zack's pocket led police to their apartment.  He had strangled her in their bed and then slept next to the body every night for the next 10 nights.  He then cut her up and cooked her in pots on the stove and in the oven.   He is said to haunt the rooftop pool and bar of the Omni Hotel in New Orleans.   There's even a Lifetime movie about it.

My plan was simple.... Double Down on the Zack story; leap of the Omni hotel roof.   But there was a lot more to it than that.  First of course there's  blame to be assigned, guilt from the grave to be doled out.  I would have to write the mother of all guilt dripping suicide notes blaming people I don't like for my demise.  But it turns out I have been writing, editing and perfecting suicide notes in my head since I was 12 years old so that part will be easy. Then the fun part a big shout out to a select few, somewhat sympathetic friends in the tour guide biz asking if they would please remember me the way I was not the way I ended up and think of me on their nightly tour.  ask them to tell my story... the lonely and depressed tour guide (Army Vet like Zack btw) who talked to ghosts every night and finally decided to join them.

Remember me and I will give you and the people on your tour ;-) a special gift from Beyond.  All you have to do is whisper.    "Monsieur Guidry l'appel du vide" three times... if you do this small kindness I promise to cover your group with good vibrations and protection for the entirety of their stay in New Orleans.

But those who fail to tell my story and those cynics who refuse to whisper my name will meet with grave misfortune.

I would send the note as a press release and a mass email to every tour company in New Orleans and every media Outlet.  Then turn on the camera and jump off the building from the exact spot where Zack did.  LIVE streaming the jump.

Come on....are you kidding me? That's a fucking exit.... Instant legend! Right?

With the high place/void selected I visited often, listening for the sirens' call... writing drafts of the note, in my head.

This is the view Zack saw before he jumped.  I sat in the spot where I think he sat more than once, no girlfriend cooking in a pot on the stove back home but still
...   the void did call me but not strongly enough.

In the end I didn't want to die... I've seen suicide up close and it's a mess. It destroys those Left Behind. I didn't want that. What I wanted was peace.

This was October of last year. But the feelings had been building up for the better part of a year. Crippling depression barely able to function and when I got too close to the edge I realized I didn't want to die.  I asked for help.  I'm lucky, I'm a veteran, I have Healthcare so I have options.

I spent a week in-patient and then transitioned to a halfway house but I never really followed up with the therapy and medication I needed.   I threw myself back into work and pretended everything was fine.   And it seemed like that was all I needed.

And I might have been okay, I was working, I love my job I'm a tour guide I'm good at it I make people happy.   I was putting everything back together  I met a woman, funny, smart, a tour guide and comedian like me.... everything is roses and lollipops.

   

But that's when the world usually decides to take a giant shit on you.  And that's when... if you're not doing the work.... not taking your medication, not in therapy.   If you haven't built your safety net... you find yourself uniquely illequipped to deal with the world of shit in which you find yourself.

A little fuzzy on this whole world of shit thing?  Need a few examples of what that might look like? sure I'm talking about shit like ....
a crazy ex-wife who's afraid that your child is going to want to be with you more than her so she takes the opportunity of your depression and precarious housing status to sue you for custody and revoke your parental rights.  And since you're at your worst fresh from the psych ward and you don't have any money and you can't afford to defend against her outrageous perjury and lible you lose your parental rights.

 Then maybe some shit like...

you have a hernia that pops out of your stomach  like an outtake from Alien

 But because you're been to the hospital previously and admitted your drug use they see you as a drug seeker and don't want to give you pain medication so you spend hours in the emergency room waiting to be seen in agonizing pain.

You finally get the surgery for your hernia but your new girlfriend loses her shit on you in a wild black out drunken rage while you're recovering from your surgery.  It's so violent and crazy the police are called and she gets dragged off and charged with domestic battery

you get evicted from her apartment because you're not on the lease you end up homeless scrambling to put a roof over your head... so you end up in a rent by the week Hotel in the middle of Cracktown.

Now the depression really sets in.  You really should have started therapy months before but hadn't....you're  still holding on to your job at this point you don't know how....staving off the depression with heart-stopping quantities of narcotic stimulants and while you really didn't want to jump off the roof of the Omni Hotel.... it is starting to seem more and more like a good idea.

 Imagine being covered with a lead blanket that reeks of urine and body odor, and someone is beating on it with a baseball bat while telling you what a piece of shit you are ... Occasionally interrupted by a fat toothless hooker knocking on your door asking if you have any crack to spare.  WINNING!

I spent about 6 weeks like this making the decision every day not to kill myself and everyday it was a close call until...

The drugs stopped working even if they hadn't.   I couldn't pull it together enough to make money any more.

So I found myself "winning" in a crack motel in a part of New Orleans so shity no one will deliver food there because it's too dangerous. Bankrupt in every sense of the word.

I gave up and lay in bed I pulled the lead blanket up over my head  and let em go to town with the bats ...two days... hoping my heart would stop. I didn't even have enough money to get to the Omni Hotel I even fucked that up.

When you think it can't get worse  a hand reaches into your chest starts to twist your heart.  The chest pain would not stop.

At first I was cheering for it; "come on and just fucking do it."   Then I realized I didn't really want to die.  I want to see my son grow up. I want to make sure I do everything I can so this doesn't happen to him.

 I called my sister who found out it's hard to call an ambulance in another state.  So she called the guy at the front desk of Cumdump Inns and Suites.   Now I'm  waiting for the ambulance clutching my chest and all of a sudden I felt the weight lift.....  because I knew where I was..... I looked around and I was there... I was at the end of the road....

If you're in recovery and you're reading this you know the place.   It's the most important place you can be, it's the Tipping Point the darkest moment before the dawn, the last straw....

The reason I didn't recognize it before is because every time you go back out the end of the road moves.  It gets further away, it gets darker...

But because I've been there before I recognized the feeling.  And once I knew where I was  I knew what to do.

I have heard the following read literally thousands of times and I was able to recite it verbatim while being loaded into the ambulance.    It's from the basic text of Narcotics Anonymous: We do recover:

When at the end of the road we find that we can no longer function as a human being, either with or without drugs, we all face the same dilemma. What is there left to do? There seems to be this alternative: either go on as best we can to the bitter ends—jails, institutions or death—or find a new way to live.  In years gone by, very few addicts ever had this last choice. Those who are addicted today are more fortunate. For the first
time in man’s entire history, a simple way has been proving itself in the lives of many addicts. It is available to us all. This is a simple spiritual—not religious—program, known as Narcotics Anonymous.

I don't want Adonis DNA and tiger blood I'll take cockroach DNA all day long and twice on Sunday! How am I alive I have no idea but I'll tell you this...

Skip G. is  back... 25 days and counting.  Pas plus l'appel du vide.... toujours plus laissez les bon temp rouler!

Less than zero ... accountability

Jay Leno said his model for work was "show up, tell joke, get check, repeat."

I like that, I aspired to that.   Recently I was able to organize my life to pretty much that simple formula.  With one addition. 

My life became "show up, give tour, get paid, get loaded, repeat."

I had organized the rest of my life so no one expected anything of me.  I had no real friends or family left.. no acquaintances even. 

I briefly dated a blackout drunk but that ended when she attacked me post hernia surgery and she got arrested for domestic battery and resisting arrest about which she remembers nothing..... humph maybe alcohol would be a better choice of drug, no memory of your misdeeds ... but I digress.

It was as close to zero accountability as I could get.  All I had to do was show up five or six nights a week;  "work" 3 to 5 hours and make a really good living for what was basically part time work. 

To be completely honest  this "work" was very easy for me.   I occasionally rolled in having been up for 2 days without sleep and still got 5 Star reviews and made great money in tips.  Sometimes I made more those days than I made on days when I was fresh as a daisy. 

Even at 40%, I told myself over and over again, I'm still better than most of the people out there when they're at 100%.

Honestly I'm a good tour guide. But I'm also a professional stand-up comedian who majored in history and political science  who as a teenager trained as an actor at the Folger Shakespeare theater and later ran an advertising agency and was a professional corporate trainer and a radio personality all before turning to stand up.

That's a lot of overkill for telling ghost stories to drunk tourists in the French Quarter.

I do have many skills, many abilities.  I have a great deal of knowledge and experience and expertise... and what do I choose to do with this vast reservoir of talent..  this huge storehouse of potential?

As little as fucking possible.

I give great tours. I'm one of the best in the the city at what I do but to put that in perspective that's like saying I graduated from The Culinary Institute of America,  worked my way up thru the ranks at an Emeril Lagasse restaurant both back and front of the house worked front of house as captain and Maitre d at several restaurants of three and four stars and now I am I'm one of the best Lucky Dog vendors in New Orleans.....the bar is not that high.

I've been thinking that my job choice is a cop-out that I should do more I should reach for more of my potential.  

But now I'm thinking work is not the area where I need to be pushing the limits of my accountability. 

Perhaps I should start with the simple.  Making a homegroup once a week and 90 meetings in 90 days. making a phone call once a day to a few people in recovery.

Reconnecting with friends from the past they're still out there.  There used to be a dozen men who told me they love me every day and I said the same to them and we all meant it.

I think my level of accountability needs to come up in all the other areas of my life. 

I'm very lucky I have found a job I do well that is fulfilling.  I enjoy it. I make really good money at it.  I can work pretty much when I want and it leaves me lots of time to pursue recovery.  And the time to engage in rewarding outside activities;  time to rebuild my relationships.

Instead of seeing it as underachieving and failure to reach my "potential".  Maybe this is a great opportunity to keep it simple....  To appreciate the amazing gift New Orleans has given me ... a job and one I'm good at, one that's in season year-round and that earns me a good living.

I just need to change the Jay Leno model a little bit to something like this maybe:

Show up, give tour, get paid, go to a meeting, go to the gym, go out to dinner with friends

show up, give tour, get paid, go to a meeting, go to the New Orleans Museum of Modern Art,

show up, give tour, get paid, go to a meeting, Go grab some cool kids in recovery and check out the Parliament Funkadelic at Tipitina's on December 30th (who's down for the P.Funk?)

show up, give tour, get paid, go to a meeting, go to a Saints game AND OR boycott a Pelicans game cuz it's the stupidest name in professional sports  I'm a "pelican't"

You get the idea.

And I'm not trying to minimize how absolutely fucked-up I was and am.

At the end there I couldn't even show up, give tour and get paid because the place I was working with started to make changes and I couldn't handle changes...not any changes the slightest little change and it rocked my sad precariously balanced pathetic world.  Everything was falling apart and I was barely holding on.

They had  just cancelled my contract two days before the chest pain started. 

But like everything else it all works to make it better if it doesn't kill you.  Not only did it not kill me it made everything better.

It made me stop and get help.

So I will keep moving forward getting better everyday.  Heart problem behind me at the moment don't need another stent working everyday to reconnect to the strong recovery family I've had for years.  New Orleans is my town I'm going to make it my recovery bitch.

I only have one lucky dog joke here it is:

What did the Dalai Lama say to the lucky dog vendor?  

Make me one with everything.....

Oh Lord it hard to be Grateful when you're entitled in every way!

So I think I found a Home Group here. I went to a CA meeting parentheses Cocaine Anonymous close parentheses really talk to text you're going to make me type it okay I'll leave it in for now anyway....

The CA meeting was irreverent and fun much like the NA meetings I enjoyed most when I first got clean. There were a few actual authentic moments. It felt good and I really needed that because I dreaded the  meetings of the other Fellowship.

The other Fellowship is what we call AA. Sometimes AA can be great but when you're going to AA in a treatment facility and it's the same people sharing the same stories over and over again... it's.... Gastly.  Somber serious glum passionless except when  hijacked by people who are frustrated storefront preachers expecting applause when they finish.  Shout-sharing their bumper-sticker sermons. Never sharing anything real just play-acting,  recovery karaoke parroting things they've heard others say.  It's Kabuki. Nobody's getting any help it's a pantomime they're dead people walking. I read a book, text friends, play with my phone, I do anything to get through that hour of misery, seething with resentment watching the clock, waiting for them to sign my form so I can leave.

Speaking of frustrated storefront preachers.... this reminds me of Paul writing to the Romans, the end of chapter 1 beginning of chapter 2.... I'll give you the cliff notes:

Paul goes on and on about how bad the Romans are all the bad stuff they're doing, a laundry list of sins misdeeds, horrors and then chapter 2 verse 1 he flips it on them, it was a setup.  He gets them feeling all righteous and indignant and then he pulls the rug out.....

Who the fuck are you to judge them?

Granted I have the New Urban translation.  But that's the sentiment. 

here's the actual verse the English Standard Version
"Therefore you have no excuse, O man, every one of you who judges. For in passing judgment on another you condemn yourself, because you, the judge, practice the very same things."

Who the fuck am I to judge these men and their meeting?  All they did was show up in a room just to stay sober for an hour and my elitist entitled ass doesn't like how they do it.

These men didn't invite me to the fucking meeting. But you know what they did do?  They welcomed me.  Why? Because I said I wanted help. 

I had nothing and now I have a roof over my head, food in the fridge, access to free healthcare, therapy, psychiatrists, medication (free), classes on addiction..... and 7 days a week, a short walk from my free housing, a room full of men join together for 60 Minutes and do their best to get better and help each other find a new way to live.  And I'm welcome to join them if I'd like.  They don't even ask me to put down by fucking book and show them some fucking respect.

And it gets worse several nights there is a choice of a different room full of men so if I don't like one of them I can go to the other.

Is Tony Robbins the guest speaker every night, No.

Is every meeting here an epiphany? A bright blinding light of insight into my own psyche leading me on the path to new understanding of my addiction? No.

Do I need to shut the fuck up and be grateful every minute I'm here and not in an condemned house with no running water and no electricity that smells of shit and urine and body odor and the rotting smell of a dead animal underneath waiting for someone to come back, maybe with the drugs I'd given them money for....so I can get maybe 30 minutes of reprieve from the miserable existence I put myself in?  YES!

It's hard to keep it real when you're comfy and safe.

What's the word in German for entitled douchebag? oh yeah "schweinhund"

But on the bright side the CA meeting was really cool last night. 

I'll keep coming back.

A little fun for those of you reading this blog click on the link of the word "Gastly" above for my favorite use of that word ever.  And I think the first instance of white people problems ever depicted in the movie 1958 Auntie Mame.

God wont let me die and the devil wont let me live

I just left a 12 step recovery meeting.  It was mandatory as I'm in a treatment facility for veterans in New Orleans Louisiana. I'm struggling.  In-house treatment meetings are notoriously painful.  Without fresh blood, fresh stories, fresh insight, fresh air even... it can seem like a waste of time. However you do stay sober for 60 minutes so that's something.  

The same people sharing the same bullshit over and over again. It's like a worn-out laugh-track of a bad 70's sitcom; Recovery karaoke... 12 step Greatest Hits...there is rarely an authentic moment.  Sometimes it feels like my own personal "No exit"   directed by John Waters.

When this happens I try to focus on the topic and or the readings out of the various text associated with AA or NA.

Tonight the topic seemed to be "I know if I go out there and use again I will die".   

My problem is kind of the opposite if I thought I would die if I used again.....that would be a reason to go use again.

My problem is I won't die. I'm a Cockroach of the Apocalypse nothing seems to be able to kill me.  My greatest fear is I'll use and I will live.

The best-case scenario is death...  I will probably have a stroke and drag my foot around for the rest of my life drooling out of the corner of my mouth unable to speak.

If i use and live and I can hurt everybody I love again and again. Cut even deeper.  I'll makes things even worse for the few left that care about me.

But it gets worse.

I could easily end up killing someone and going to jail for the rest of my life.  I could bring violence home to the people I love.

Hurting people in my family even worse than I've hurt them already putting more guilt shame on the pile.

There are already such sins at my back it would kill me to turn around.

I can hardly bear the weight of the guilt and shame I have mined so far.  It is crushing me. The idea of digging more is terrifying.

So for me using is not an option not because I will die if I use because if I use I will live and that's the scariest thing of all.  That and clowns...