I've always depended on the kindness of strangers

 Tennessee Williams famous line from  Streetcar Named Desire is in my thinking somewhat of an oxymoron.

.

As previously discussed in a post standing-room-only I like words...  "kind" is one of them.   from the German word "kind" which means child... it's where we get the word kindergarten

Think about our use of the word "kind" it means two things 1:  generosity, gentle concern and care and 2: of a similar type.

Strangers can't give "kind"ness because it  requires consideration in kind.  To extend kindness is, in one way of thinking, to extend sameness.  I would only treat someone with generosity concern and care if they were of my kind.

Blanche Debris. Always depended on the strangeness of Kinder's

The ultimate "kind"ness of course would be to treat someone as I would treat myself... to love my neighbor as myself.

The problem with that is I don't love myself very much and in fact if I treated other people the way I've treated myself over the last few years... I would go to jail.

I am not very kind to myself at all.

Just the diet I force on myself could be considered a hate crime if I forced someone else to eat it.

If I were responsible for the diet of a population that couldn't complain.   People who would just have to eat whatever I gave them; children let's say or mentally challenged adults...  if word got out what I shoved into the pieholes of these helpless people... I would be the subject of a Tribunal at The Hague.

Like the time I ordered a large pizza from every place that would deliver to my address and over the next week that was all I ate.  Breakfast lunch and dinner pepperoni pizza.

This gastronomic atrocity of course included    repurposing the curved bits of crust dried up and left over in the boxes.   I steamed them wrapped in damp paper towels in the microwave and  transformed them into what I refer to as pizza ribs.  These reconstituted recycled bits of dough were then greedily consumed, smeared with cream cheese or dipped in reheated week old garlic dipping sauce...or both.  That was the week of the pizza orgy.

I think that's what my heart actually looks like...

You try explaining that it was delicious AND not even remotely the worst thing you've ever eaten.   While under oath before the oversight committee for the treatment of handicapped adults.

I have no specific unaided recollection...

But again I digress back to kindness...

I see myself as an outcast a lot of the time. Unworthy of generosity, care and concern.  I treat myself badly and distrust anyone who doesn't.

I discount the actions of those who extend kindness to me as being foolish.  Which of course allows me to take advantage of them without feeling any remorse.

I have lately been the recipient of some overt kindness and it is difficult to bear.   It's hard to feel worthy.   I've also been showing myself some kindness....eating better, exercising, meditating, reading for spiritual growth.

It's all uncomfortable.  I don't feel like the kind of person who deserves this kindness.

I'm much more comfortable when people hate me then when people love me.   When they see me as something to be shunned rather than someone to be embraced.   I prefer they see me as not of the same kind so no kindness is required.

That's me on the left

Another hard thing to swallow in all this is the concept that I'm not a bad person becoming good but a sick person becoming well.

If that's really the case then it can happen to anyone.   And while it is my responsibility to get well it is not my fault I got sick.

Maybe I can be of the same "kind" as people I admire.  The good people. Addiction and depression are not character judgments but rather a medical diagnosis.

The doctor didn't walk into the room pick up my chart and say "Mr. Guidry, we ran all the tests and it turns out you're a piece of shit"

The tests say I'm depressed that I self-medicate and the self medication left me addicted, and the addiction feeds into the depression and back and forth the round and round until here we are.

When you're sick you have a responsibility to fight to get well to rehabilitate.
Just like someone who's had a major brain injury has to fight to learn how to talk and how to walk again.

So I'm a sick person getting well not a bad person getting good.

 I deserve kindness because I'm a human being.  I'm not worthless. I'm actually a good guy.  I care about other people.  I deserve better than I've given myself.

So as I try my best to demonstrate self love and to minimize self-loathing self-doubt and self-abuse I will take solace in the fact that today I did nothing to put more shame on the pile.

I'll do something to make myself feel a little a little bit more worthy.  I will seeking out others for whom to do kindnesses.  Today I will be kind to myself.

I'm still going to have another pizza orgy someday cuz that was awesome.

Pizza Ribs, great with cream cheese

Jesus is just a guy who cuts my lawn....or is he?

The only thing my father ever taught me on purpose was that anyone who believes in God... is an idiot.

When I was about 12 I was hanging out at the Mall food court near my house and a man who ran a kiosk there befriended me and invited me to his church, I checked with mom, who said yes, because it was the seventies and you just let your 12 year old son go off alone with a grown man you didn't know, in a car someplace you've never been and for which you didn't have a phone number.  This was sumner 1976.  The same summer  Dazed and Confused was set, it was totally like this...

but as usual I digress...

The church was fun it had cool stuff for kids to do
But the really cool stuff the really super duper cool stuff, movie nights, field trips, amusement parks... that stuff was for church members only ... I wanted to do the cool stuff so I needed to join, to join I needed to be baptized and for that I needed two things:  To be "saved" (whatever that meant) and parental consent.

If I had just gone to my parents and said "I want to do cool stuff with this church and to do that you have to join and get baptized.  Is it okay if I play along so I can go to Kings Dominion for free?"  If I had just told the truth about my wanting to scam these church people I would have been in like Flynn.

How could I admit I wanted to scam this church? That would be wrong... right?  So I went to my parents and I told them the lie.  The lie I thought I was supposed to believe, namely  that I needed to be saved and baptized so I wouldn't burn in hell... and thats when my father lost his shit.

It was fun to watch my father lose his shit, especially when it wasn't about me.  This loss of shit was epic.   If I'd known this God thing was going to make him blow his top I'd have brought it up years before.

But a strange and miraculous thing happened.  He paid attention for the first time in a non negative way.  It was like the Sun was shining for the first time.   I listened to every word he said like it was from a burning bush.

 He explained to me there was no such thing as God it was a construct used to control weak-minded people.   A fantasy used on the foolish to explain things they couldn't understand. That it was silliness, a mass delusion in which no intelligent, thinking person he'd ever met had ever believed.

He explained to me the hypocracy of politicians and world leaders and captains of industry who had to pretend to believe so the people that work and vote for them wouldn't revolt. Smart people don't believe in religion and creation. God is fiction. The Bible is no more real than The Hobbit.

Here endeth the lesson.

Not to be immodest but I am considered by many of my friends and many people I know to be among the smartest people they know... my father is the smartest person I know.

When I was 12, he was a big deal, my dad.  He was a big time newspaper reporter, a White House correspondent for the Washington Star.  He wrote articles that appeared on the front page of a major newspaper at least once a week. He had an office in the White House and flew on Air Force One. He walked with and questioned presidents and kings. My father has STANDING.

If my father said a thing was true, that thing was true.

And my father said God was dead and so He was.

And thus, an Evangelical atheist was born.

For the next 30 plus years I was dismissive and abusive to anyone who had the audacity to admit to me they believed in God well... specifically to admit to the belief in silly religious doctrine and creation but in a pinch just the belief in God would do

As an angry teenager I carried forth with the gospel of Vernon,Jr. (I'm the 3rd).  I and my fellow atheist and best friend John, could often be found reducing clueless christians, hapless Jehovah's Witnesses and throughly misguided Mormons to tears.  Deftly wielding the blunt instruments of  logic and reason in our gladiator pit of debate, the corner booth at Denny's in Gaithersburg MD.

As a young entrepreneur running my first business I sought advice from an employment attorney wondering if could I deny employment solely on the grounds that the aplicant admitted to a belief in God. As that would disqualify them as being delusional and an idiot.  The lawyer thought not, I wondered secretly if he believed in God.

Evangelical Christianity itself was a big help in my anti-belief crusade... suffering scandal after scandal, Billy Graham demanding money or he's going to be to be killed by God.  Pat Robertson actually requested live on TV that God assassinate Hugo Chavez.  Gay basher Ted Haggard in the Denny's bathroom with a male prostitute.  Of course Jimmy Swaggart, Jim Bakker.

Then the marketers got ahold of Christianity and created what I have coined "no money down salvation" just say you accept Jesus and you're in Forever.

This new breed of Christian doesn't need to change anything about their life.

They don't need to be good people.  It costs them nothing to join.  All the righteous indignation and moral authority to judge others without the pesky integrity, and requirements of character.

I think being a Christian should take effort.   But requiring character ain't how you fill the Compaq Center in Houston Texas... 8 times a week.

I'm sorry it's no longer The Compaq Center that's Lakewood Church where Joel Osteen preaches eight shows a week.

This is my bible I don't have to read it, Joel tell me what it says I am and what it says I have. I will be happy  and I will give generously

Christianity no longer requires you to be a good person you just have to accept Jesus as your personal savior do the best you can and show up on Sunday.

It's all taken care of Jesus died for your sins. Once saved, always saved.

Well that's a good thing because I'm already saved I got saved 41 years ago on Kindly Court in Gaithersburg summer of 1976

My "saving" happened in a 1970 ford pinto.  The guy that ran the food court kiosk and had asked me to church was upset that I couldn't join but understood I had to obey my parents... but he wanted me to be saved.  So  he asked me if I would like to live forever and not burn in hell?  I said yes.  Would I accept the Lord Jesus Christ as my personal Savior?  I said yes and that was pretty much it.   I was saved forever.  I wouldn't go to hell..... it's a get out of hell free pass, good forever...
so I got that going for me which is nice.

But back to no money down salvation.

Joel Osteen sells out the Compaq Center Eight shows a week every week.

Joel Osteen was not ordained his degree is in television production his father was a great preacher and Joel inherited his father's Church.

Joel Osteen is beloved by millions and has a hundred-million-dollar a year business that does not pay taxes.  Maybe my father was wrong after all... cuz that Joel Osteen... is one smart mother fucker.

Cui Bono...who benefits?

Religion was invented by man...to control others.  To give power and authority to the smart and the strong over the weak and the stupid. Or the smart and weak over the strong and stupid .. check out Patton Oswalt's great bit "sky cake"

I am in a quandry, I'm an atheist stuck in a system that demands I choose a higher power.  I'm in rehab for addiction  and I'm required to follow 12-step recovery protocol.  I'm supposed to pray to turn my will and my life over to the care of God as I understand him.

My quandary is I basically understand God to not exist.

 ... so you see the problem.... but maybe it's not a problem...maybe it's an opportunity.

I've read the Bible studied it quite a bit actually, under the "know your enemy" doctrine. And I must admit I'm impressed, hell of a book.  Have you read the second half of the book about the guy the religion is named after? Jesus Christ?
If one just did what he says to do...it would be a really cool world.

Honestly  I dig Jesus.  He's my kind of dirty hippie, commie rabel rouser, chilling out with the hookers and the tax collectors.  Jesus was cool like the other side of the pillow.

Jesus is just alright with me!

 I know more about the Bible than the average Christian.  According to a test I took on Facebook I'm a damn biblical scholar.

I spent most of my adult life in marketing and advertising so I know how to sell ideas.

And I am a stand up comedian so I can work a crowd....

But I'm not much of a joiner or a follower I'm more of a leader.  And if I'm going to follow the Prince of Peace I'm going to do it from the front of the line.

So.....brace yourself sports fans, .....

Vernon A. Guidry, III is now an ordained minister.

20 minutes and $40 online with American Marriage Ministries and I can legally perform marriages, funerals and baptisms in all 50 states.  I can conduct services and collect offerings.

yes it's real....scary huh?

The right reverend pastor brother Skippy's full schedule of services will be announced shortly.

Baptisms in the Mississippi anointings with oil in Jackson Square the chorus of buskers crying out to the heavens.... And remember brothers and sisters dig deep the lord loves a cheerful Giver.  Amen.  Sky cake for everyone Hallelujah. Who knows maybe in ten years the Superdome will be for sale.... or at least the Smoothie King Arena.

Standing room only

My roommate, the one who made the comment "you know for a White Guy you make pretty good Kool-Aid". (I'm reminding you that he's black without saying my black roommate) 

I asked him if it offended him that one of the White counselors sometimes lapsed into ebonics durring our classes.

It struck me as condesending and offensive but I don't really have standing to make that call.  So I asked my black roomie, my buddy, my bru-tha if he found it offensive.

His responce put me in my place immediately.  He said "Does it bother me? No more so than when you do it."

Oh snap!  Hoe lee shit.  See here it was I thought I had standing, that I was cool and was some how authorized to speak "jive" but the truth was I was not.  My occasional dipping into the ebonics pool could absolutely come across as condescending and offensive. 

Even though I'm not in an authority position like the counselor it is still offensive because I don't have standing.   I'm not trying to mitigate my culpability by differentiating our relative  positions namely that I'm a roommate and peer and the other guy's a counselor.  I was wrong.  I'm a middle aged white guy from the suburbs, I do not have standing to talk in ghetto slang... I do not have standing, Period.

Standing is one of my favorite words.  Not to be upright in position... "standing"...rather:

Standing: noun - Authority, position, status, rank or reputation, credibility.

"their standing in the community"

2. remaining in force,  perpetual, everlasting,
continuing, abiding,
 indefinite

"he has a standing invitation to visit them"
I really like the word "stand" too as in endure,  "built to stand the test of time"

But I digress, more variations on the "stand" theme later... back to... standing which is a personal thing to me.  Very few people have standing in my life to give me advice or more pointedly... on one hand can be counted those whose opinion about which I could give two shits.

Standing can be a big thing or can be a little thing.  Situational, contextual  standing is something that is ever changing and happens every day.  People who take my tour for example have standing to critique my performance.  In fact that's their job and my job was to provide an enjoyable experience,  only they have standing to judge whether or not I have achieved that.

Jerry Seinfeld nailed it perfectly in his documentary Comedian.  Jerry is by any measure insanely successful as a comic... ironicly even he doesn't get to decide what is funny... 50 drunks in a New York basement at 1:30a.m. decide what's funny.  If Jerry Seinfeld says something and those people don't laugh, what Jerry Seinfeld said is not funny.  By definition it is not funny...they have standing to decide what's funny.    In that context, by their visceral reaction only... not as a thinking, debating jury but laugh/don't  pass/fail those people are a better barometer of funny than Jerry Seinfeld.  Outside of that narrow context the audience has no comedy judgement standing at all.  And individual members of the group never have standing.

Recovery from addiction is an area with some very strong situational context. That's one of the reasons 12-step programs work, because the therapeutic value of one addict helping another is without parallel.  Addiction survivors/recoverers have standing with each other.   Their hard won experience gives them credibility.

Even so I  personally find it hard to recognize the standing of most people when it comes to me.   A malady in recovery known as " terminal uniqueness".

Standing is earned, won, and achieved.  It can't be bought It can't be borrowed.  

Finding people with personal standing in recovery is basically life and death.  If you don't have trust and faith that the people who are guiding you are capable and confident all is lost.

So I seek out others who have the qualities that indicate they are capable and competent.  I'm looking for those with whom I can make a stand.

Another great word that goes along with stand and standing... is

"understanding"

It is as if to say that if you and I have credibility, status and authority recognizable in each other we can come to an agreement through which we can endure, bear, put up with, tolerate, abide, support, or countenance pretty much anything.

Another way to say all that is if we have standing we can find understanding and stand together and there by withstand anything.

So I'm going to try to understand rather than demand to be understood earn standing with those around me by

 not assuming I have standing already.  Remember I'm just an addict and not special... well maybe a little special.  But most of all I will drop the ghetto slang

 talk less someone break they foot off in my ass.

Mexican Americans like education so they go to night school and take Spanish and get a "B"

I want full credit for the stuff that comes to me as easy as breathing. 

I was born on third base and I want credit for the tripple.  I'm what my Scottish friends would call a "clever cunt".  Too slick for my own good.

Nothing that I'm good at took any effort, practice or hard work.  I've been skating by on raw talent, intellectual horsepower and innate ability my entire life.

I tell myself "better" is the enemy of  "good enough" but that's just because I've never had to work hard to be good enough.  And really who wants to work hard?

I've been getting by on good enough all my life, made money, got to do interesting things.  My life has been, overall, a pretty good life.

w/ my nephews who both are now over six feet tall and tower over me

Interviewing Dave Underwood sitting at Dave Letterman's desk

there is no substitute

Pretty much I have done whatever I wanted to do. All without major effort, practice, study, or following the rules.  Almost always figuring it out on the fly assiduously avoiding anything that was hard or difficult.

The problem now is I have a life-threatening illness that is going to require me to develop and maintain a set of skills that demands maintenance and application over time.

Steadfast and dogged practice.  Day in and day out, no excuses, stick-to-itiveness, fucking intestinal fortitude whatever the fuck that is.

It's Sisyphian, the rock up the hill guy.  Or Promethian, the guy who gets his liver eaten every night by the eagle... basically it's  mythological torture.

That's what the requirements of recovery feel like, a lifetime of torture and torment, boredom and drudgery spanning from now into infiniti.  Okay that's a little melodramatic but it doesn't sound like rainbows and lollipops.

I can do it for a little while when the pressure's on... when the guns at my head. But when the immediate crisis blows over it's almost impossible for me to generate an attitude that will motivate me to do what's necessary to maintain vigilance.

Every time I've relapsed I've ended up in the gutter eventually.  The last 3 or 4 times closer and closer to death.

What does it take? Why is there a hole in my logic?

Why can't I just phone this in like I've done everything else? I know how to share great in meetings, I'm pretty sure I can fake the humble sincerity crap... that should be worth a C+/ B- right?

Addiction, it seems won't be charmed, conned, manipulated or pitched.  In fact just the opposite addiction does the charming.

The last 10 years have been a study in how to keep me sick. Dogged practice on how to keep me away from what's good for me.  Advanced exercises and homework in isolating me from those who would help me stay the course and recover.

So it's going to be a fight,  a battle.   I sure didn't think of it that way previously.   A fight to the death for which I'm uniquely illprepared.

A middle-aged adolescent. A dilettante, pampered and glib and unscarred.  All the hardship I've seen as been self-inflicted but I guess hardship is hardship and it's time to suit up and fight or lay down and die.

Addiction and Recovery is pass-fail, life or death.  I can't schmooze the teaching assistant and pull a "C".

It's not a sprint it's a marathon. It's not one skirmish, it's not one battle it's a war.  One that I will fight for the rest of my life and for war... you need generals.

Mexican Americans love General Zapata who said:

Evidently they also love spring time, and flowers and white girls named Debbie too... but who doesn't?

You sending the wolf? Sheeet negro that's all you had to say!

Smart resourceful people don't give their respect, submission, loyalty and allegiance lightly.  That's what recovery requires...basically absolute surrender.  Turning your will and your life over.   And that's shit that's hard to do for guys like me who have been on their own and on the run from themselves all their lives.

It's a recent revelation that I'm not really a loner.  I  am actually, at my core, a pack animal.  And while I'm okay on my own for the most part when shit gets real I want to be part of the pack.  I do better in a group and I don't want to lead it... I want somebody much better than me to lead it.  I want to tuck in behind somebody insanely confident and competent... I want King Leonidas.  

 I want  Gunnery Sergeant Hartman. 

I want the Wolf who should be there directly.

The leader of the pack... 

That's how I stayed clean before.  Just dumb luck I found someone I could follow, someone I could trust someone who had what I wanted and had STANDING.   Someone who was walking the walk everyday.  

This was his license plate it was mine for a few years too I worked for him and inherited his car as my company car I surrendered to the program because I believed in him.  RIP Kevin A.

I had to believe in this guy really believe in him.  And that's not an easy thing for me. But I did it.  And I stayed clean for nearly seven years.

I think the reason it's so hard for me to trust is I had a destructive role model growing up.  The "leader" of my pack, my father, let me know he thought I was a worthless piece of shit from the time I was a toddler.

So I had no trust of authority I never believed anyone had my best interest at heart.  Every adult was going to turn on me.  So I just found ways to avoid criticism or I fought back whenever I realized I was smarter than the person that was criticizing me, which was often.

 My friends in junior high and high school used to say "Skip... make someone cry" and I could so I did.  Hurt people, hurt people.

So I was hard to teach, hard to coach.  But I was smart so I didn't need a lot of teaching or a lot of coaching to get by.

Mostly I could just show up and get by in almost any situation.  I was outsmarting and talking circles around my teachers from about second grade on.  They learned pretty quickly just to leave me alone... it wasn't worth it to poke the bear.

So when things got real and I needed help.... I needed to trust somebody, needed someone to show me what to do, I was fucked.

 I hadn't learned how to accept help or follow someone's instructions or follow the rules.   Hell I'd been making my own rules since the time I was about 7 years old.

Thank God Drill sergeants are absolutely Larger than Life.   They eat lightning and crap thunder they are awesome sauce personified.  I trusted them implicitly instantly.  And they never steered me wrong.  They are without a doubt the only reason I got through the army with an honorable discharge.   It would have been a disaster if there had been some half-assed non commissioned officers running the show.  Thank you sergeant first class Bledsoe Wherever You Are  oooh rah!

But I haven't found a Sergeant Hartman, King Leonidas or a Mr Wolf here in New Orleans to take charge of my pack and lead me.  All I found so far is a bunch of whining recovery karaoke singers regurgitating what they've heard someone else say in a meeting.  But to be fair I haven't looked very hard.

So if I want to survive the rest of my life, put an end to my suffering, be a father to my son and live happy joyous and free I have to find my pack.  I have to find my Mr Wolf.  My leader.   Maybe someday I can be Mr Wolf but not today.

On a personal note I think I found my leader for now.   He is a big swinging dick of recovery.  That is to say if his recovery were his dick his dick would have a blue ox named Babe.

He lives a little far away but we both have a phone and Spirit Airlines flies round trip for $109.

Did I mention he has a big recovery dick?  His recovery dick is so big when he flies his recovery dick has to take the train.

I could literally go on for 20 pages with the big recovery dick jokes....

But as he ( my temporary sponsor with the huge recovery dick) today pointed out I don't need to look further for the leader of my pack then the 12 Steps hanging on the wall in every meeting.  They have standing, they're tried and battle tested. After all it's the program that leads us.  And NA's recovery dick is so big...

Note to frequent readers:  I know I promised a Cheech and Chong song and it's coming this just came out first.  When it comes up it's got to come out.  SG

The 47 Shigaretto

Its 2015, I'm sweating haven't bathed in days disheveled, drawn, scruffy beard, pale and sickly, flabby looking every minute and more of my 51 years (as I'm fond of saying it's not just the years it's the mileage)

A murder* of Cardiology residents is arranged at the foot of my Hospital bed.

The alpha dog in the bunch, like something out of Central Casting, willowy, piercing green eyes, red hair, beautiful beyond belief and the absolute epitome of confidence and professionalism currently a third year fellow at Boston University Medical Center  breaking hearts and cracking chests, that's my VA doctor thank you very much.  How much love did her mother withhold to construct that overachiever?

Julianne Moore can play her in the movie of my life

"Mr. Guidry" she says Consulting her clipboard "you've just had a heart attack, you have significant blockage in several of your coronary arteries. We've put a stent in one, corrected another with angioplasty.  You have 60% blockage in another will have to keep an eye on but the overall prognosis is good if you make some changes.
let's see...

You are over 50
you are overweight
you smoke
and you use cocaine

Mr. Guidry you need to pick one."
"Pick one?" I ask
"Yes....one."

I weakly and hesitantly I reply "over 50?"

That's the correct answer.  Basically if I want to continue to be over 50 I have to stop smoking using drugs and lose weight it ain't rocket surgery but then again I'm hard-headed a drug addict and I'm a cockroach apocalypse so I needed some more convincing.

Died at 33 cocaine overdose

Died at 33 heart attack exacerbated by cocaine and heroin use

But it's not like I didn't know.

1998 my first trip to rehab father Martin's Ashley the room I slept in had been the room Chris Farley had stayed in he was dead a few months later 

Talk about the Ghost of Christmas future his fucking name is "Farley" for God's sake  but I couldn't see the writing on the wall then almost 20 years later  I'm still making the same bad choices.

It took two more significant cardiac events just shy of a heart attack over the next two and a half years.  For me to even consider it.  I'm again a miserable mess back in rehab lucky to be alive.

Something has to change and that something is everything.

So I'm announcing today I have 47 cigarettes.

They're the last 47 cigarettes I will ever smoke.

I'm going to announce it in every meeting I go to; let the people in my house/community know.  I'll also let the people I work with know but I should be fully quit and well indoctrinated in the I don't smoke anymore mindset by the time I get back to work in a few weeks.

Don't give me a cigarette and for real for real don't ask me for a cigarette....

I'm going to smoke every one of these 47 cigarettes I'm going to enjoy them I may actually number them and blog about them individually.

However when they're done that'll be the end of it.  I want to live and that means taking care of myself this is one step in that direction.

So that's it a quick short post.  I'm working on a complicated, deeply thought provoking post that starts with a YouTube video of a Cheech and Chong song so there's that to look forward to....updates as they occur stay tuned for traffic and weather on the eights

*They're a "murder" because they are "residents".  If they were already surgeons they be a "pride" eh... may be a "wake" as that's what a group of vultures is called.

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!