For the entire course of my lifetime I have felt like I have been locked inside my head. I've never been able to get past the point of thinking about how thinking. I found this to be extremely troublesome when it came to maintaining relationships with those I cared about the most when I was younger, and especially when I was married. Anytime I got close enough to a person to the point where I felt I could disclose these feelings to them and did, only distance resulted between us. My ex-wife suggested many times I see a mental doctor, and I tried that avenue of "therapy" twice at her command, only to be more strung out on prescription drugs than I already was. The downside of self-medicating for upwards of twenty years is any formal method of treatment was considered too lightweight to have any sort of benefital effect on me. Doctors giving me anti-phsch meds to combat what they considered bi-polar disorder didn't really have a chance of effecting my mental state when I was already accustomed to putting 400mg of Adderall up my nose on a daily basis. How could it? The methods and approaches by doctors all seemed like half-thought ideas, there isn't documention in the medical arena to help dianose a person like me. I've been abusing drugs as long as I can remember but that all came to a screeching halt the day I became partially disabled. A simple sporting accident left the entire course of my life altered forever both in good and negative ways. It was benefitial in that it helped cement feelings that I had about my friends and family all during the course of my lifetime. I was dropped like a bad habit, swept under the rug, and otherwise forgotten about by my closest family after only a few months into my disablity. With the exception of my Mother, everybody in my family was a huge drug addict and functioning alcoholics. We all held jobs that didn't really mean much in the big picture of the world, food service or warehouse work for employers that didn't give two fucks about their employees. Just happy to be able to buy a bag of weed at the end of the payperiod and have enough of it until we got paid again. The eternal struggle of keeping drugs at the ready, while battling constant addiction. I had been doing drugs for so long and been under the influence for such prolonged periods of time that I didn't know how to function without being under their control and the very small handful of times that I was without drugs, that is when I turned to alcohol. The worst time in the world to turn to the worst drug of them all. While under the influence of drugs, whether it was simple stuff like marijuana or something more complex like ampethamines I always felt like I had a particular level of control over myself but that simply was not the case with alcohol. There are still things to this day that I find myself puzzled as to if events actually happened or it was my piss poor memory just playing tricks on me. After my marriage crumbled and I moved out of the city of which I resided in for the better part of the last decade, I found it difficult to obtain the high-quality drugs that I had become accustomed to for the last 15 years of my life. This was largely due in part that the majority of the drugs I got were from family or friends of the family. My family despised my ex-wife and in hinsight that is the reason I married her in the first place, so my ties to the inner-circle of my family dwindled over the years. They formed their own idea of what a family should really represent while I was off in the city trying to form my own idea of what a marriage was supposed to be. All very difficult tasks when you are under the influence of drugs all the time. So when I moved to a more country setting and tried to start anew, my family was already on a new chapter of their lives without an idea of a brother or son in the picture. My Mother being the only one who still genuininly cared, but she had suffered through over a decade of being married to my always-numb Father who didn't care about much beyond his after-work marijuana and television. I could always tell that she was in my corner rooting for her son to try and find a way out of the dark tunnel that she saw her ex-husband fall into and her only two children blindly follow him down the same path. So enveloped by drugs by the age of adulthood that by this time we already had no idea of any other way. Everything was fun to do "high" and it became such protocol that suddenly you find yourself fluffing yourself up to your friends about how many days you've smoked marijuana in a roll. Got to a point where it wasn't even necessary to brag to one another anymore because all you did was associate yourself with like-minded people who have similar long-term goals. It suddenly became a life-altering event if one us would go a single twenty-four hour period without indulging in some sort of influence that would alter our sobreity. It was quite a lot of work keeping up with such a lifestyle, it is what kept us at our shitty jobs for so long without complaint. Prior to leaving the state, I had worked at job for over a decade in a restaurant that wasn't even paying more than ten bucks an hour with no benefits outside of getting a paycheck. Being totally alright with that was normal. Being upset with your employer about why they didn't care about you, but the reality being that our jobs were so brainless, everybody knew we were clutched deep into the grips of drug-addiction that we didn't know anything better so we didn't think it was in our right to be upset. And it was not in our right to have a say in the matter. "At least they don't care we smoke pot" I would often say to fellow coworkers about our justification for staying at the places we did for so long. A couple years back I earned my first, and only drunk driving offense in the state of Wisconsin on no other date than the day I got married, Halloween. I was still in my early thirties at this point in my life, and I was still under this false presumption that there was a place in the world for me, if I could just "get over this hump" and start over. So when the state of Wisconsin took my driving privilages away from me I found myself begging my Father to move back under his roof in order to "get back on my feet", or at least that was the original idea. What little did my Father and his new girlfriend and children know, that I was in the depths of alcohol addiction at this point in my life, getting through a single day without drinking was still advanced calculus to me, and a constant-perpetual struggle. Shaking, the sweats, the weird sort of orange-colored puss leaking out the bottoms of my feet into my socks making my shoes smell like cat piss, shitting blood were all just normal day activities that I had worked into my socially acceptable daily routine. Knowing that each and every morning I would have to force myself to throw up because even just a rough cough would be enough to make me want to throw up, so I would just force it out each and every morning as a way to kick-start my day. I spent the first-three months locked away in the same room I spent my ladder part of my teenage years, struggling with alcohol addiction and just trying to make it through the day. I looked into the Alcholics Anonymous program and attended a few meetings but my near two decades of being under the influence kept me too far way from reality to consider this idea of a god to be real. I had no faith in anything other than drugs, they were the only thing in the world that I believed in, and they were the only thing in the world that always delivered on their promise. People did not, my family did not, the people who would have at one point considred themselves friends of mine did not, and these "normal" people I would find along my path just seemed too fucked up to be someone considered having too long of a conversation with. The AA people came off as very cult-like as well. Hosting their meetings in the dark, damp, run-down and poorly lit church basements, holding hands while standing in a circle while praying to god and quoting the bible while telling newcomers they were not a religious organization. It all seemed like a drug they chose to take without taking drugs, and I just could not take them too seriously. I resented them after awhile, they pushed honesty so hard to one another and their ways were considered the "golden path" and any other path of approach to battling alcohol addiction was considered the work of Satan. Many of the members who where there for twenty-plus year were bewildered and downright offended when they would hear me try and say that marijuana was part of the reason I was able to quit drinking so quickly. At the time I was really convinced that was the reality of the situation, when in actuality it was just pure drive that kept me from drinking. Shitting liquids for the better part of a year and throwing up everyday started to wear on me. The inside of my front teeth on the top and bottoms were starting to deteroirate because of all the acids I was throwing up each morning. You just reach a point where your body tells you that you cannot continue. I reached two months of sobreity, I was able to eat pretty much any foods without immediate discharge happening from my stomach, out of shock that it was no alcohol. My body was used to having a 750ml of Tennesee whiskey comfortable in my stomach before noon during the week, and it took the entirely of two solids months to get past that. All that talk about how alocoholics cannot get past their addiction after a point is complete bullshit. It's all weak-spined excuses for people not strong enough to work through their problems. You have to deal with the blood in your liquid shitting, deal with the shaking, deal with the emotional torture all on your own. Not a single person in the world will help you get through that on your own. It must be done on your own and it works no other way. Anybody telling you anything else other than that truth is still doing someting behind closed doors. Everybody in the world is addicted to something, and everyone in the world is lying to themselves about their addictions. Priests at church quietly rape boys when the rest of the congregation is on their knees praying to a false god. Cops are quietly doing some of the drugs they take away from teenagers. Husbands and Wives quietly fuck someone younger when their spouses are "working late" while also fucking someone younger. In my experience in life it seems to be the ones who have abstained themelves from drugs and alcohol during their developing years that have the most decreped, sick and morbid activities they partake in when nobody else is looking. I started working at a retail job at a new chain-store that opened up in the community I spent the wealth of my teenage years. Our family had something of a black mark on their name, all sort of unofficially. Most of my family had been dealing drugs to the locals in this town for majority of the last decade so in my eyes all it would take is one simple slip-up in order to tear that wall down. I thought if I had been arrested for driving while not having a license would be enough to start some sort of federal investigation into what my family was really up to. So I decided that the only way to go about "starting over" was the total legit way. Walking to two and half hours to this new job each day. It sure did suck at first, but I learned to find solace in these two and half hour walks to work each day. Sometimes I would feel adventurous and take my BMX bike to work so I could "shred some concrete" on the way home from work. All this pent up energy that has been rekindled from fifteen years back came poking out at times like this, when I would get off work. One late Friday night I'm heading home on my BMX, just around midnight. Taking shortcuts through yards and back alleys of businesses to try and save a little time on my route. I just wanted to get home to smoke a bowl and listen to some music. At the time "smoking pot" wasn't considered "doing drugs" to me. I was still a "young, stupid boy" despite the fact that I was well into my thirties. Blasting music in my ears via Bluetooth and my smartphone, I caught a flash of light behind me and took a quick look behing me to make sure a car was not approaching. Turn back around after seeing the coast was clear, suddenly the next five seconds of my life would happen in extreme slow motion. A huge pothole in the road was dead centere in front of me, and my teeenger instinct kicked in, I thought I would be able to just bunny hop the pothole and keep my ride going. Sadly that is not how things worked out. I did make the jump over the pothole but my rear tire hit the far end of the pothole and I tumbled over the front of my handlebars crashing down hard on the concrete. The moment I hit the ground I new my life was changed forever. I could feel my leg but at the same time I couldn't really feel it. Screaming and crying like the day I was born, I pull up my pant leg and see an imploded kneecap, bulges in all sorts of directions they should not be in. I dragged myself to the street before a patroling police officer saw me. He rushed me to the emergency room in the back of his cop car. I begged him to just take me in his car because I didn't have insurance, having just lost coverage after my divorce. He was kind enough to take me in, but it wasn't without a cost. "Just can't seem to win can you Mr. Cormier!?" I remember the officer telling me, in a voice I remember. He had picked me up for so many offense during my teenage years, and here he was still pushing paperwork for the same police department all these years later. To his defense, and to his memory, the nurses at the emergency room told me he stuck around in the waiting room until I got a proper diagnosis. I spent the night in the emergency room, leaving in a leg immobilzer by way of my Mother at five o'clock in the morning. My Brother caught wind of what had happened, as my Mother called him when she was waiting for me to be released. He met us at my Father's house when my Mother had taken me home. That was the first day my Mother saw either my Brother or myself smoke pot. It was such a great time, or at least it seemed that way at the time. After that, there isn't much that my Mother didn't know about us. She was still a little bit unaware of how deeply involved my Father & Brother and their friends were in the local drug trade, but she started to get an idea. The addictions to drugs started all over again. The hospital had prescribed heavy-dosed pain medication to me and at first I did almost everything in my power to not take them. Teetering on the edge of knowing what would happen if I took these drugs long enough, and all my fucking around with that prevented me from being able to have a proper recovery. Six months after my accident it was very clear to myself and myself alone that I wasn't going to be able to function like a normal human being any longer. I was officially "lame" by every correct sense of the word. Of person or animal who cannot walk properly due to an injury of the foot or leg. When this reality became apparent to the rest of my Family, my Father and my Brother really started to distance themselves from me. Both of them had provided me with marijuana during the recovery time but then one day decided they were going to stop their support. Which my body was not ready for. My mental state was not ready to suddenly be cut off from all forms of alteration of sobreity. It was a tough few weeks. Despite living under the same roof as my Father we could easily go two or three weeks without crossing each others paths. Literally living in a single 10x10 room and only leaving to go to the bathroom. Hardly eating at all, not being able to sleep propely due to the fact that I've been smoking pot everyday for the last fifteen years easily. I fell down to 145 pounds, which isn't too small for some people, but it is starkly thin for someone who is thirty-six years old and six-feet-six inches tall. When I started to make it known to them that I was no longer a part of their drug-related situations their relationships with me only weakened more. I started to finally participate in daily things like dinner and whatnot, but by this time they had already checked me out. My Father would get home from work and then go hide in the basement, smoking pot and watching HBO television shows on his iPad. He knew better than most how difficult it was for me to get up and down stairs so it was easy to hide from me down there. I found myself going batshit crazy after about only two short weeks of being depraved of the plant that has defined who I was a person for the wealth of my adult life. I didn't have the slightest idea of what to do with my time, finding myself addicted to non-drug activities just as badly as I was addicted to the drugs that I enjoyed so much. From playing Xbox 1 to stalking the personal ads on Craigslist, I was addicted to whatever it was I was doing. My strained relationship with my Brother stretched to thin as fishing line found itself at a head one day when he was over doing his laundry in the basement. He has finally purchased his first legal gun and had asked me to go along with to pick it up, as their five day waiting period had passed. I went with them to the gun shop and saw myself drooling over the heavy gauge revolvers behing the far end of the glass cases. "Something I can help you with!?" an employee of the gun store said me to. I've only fired a gun once or twice in my life. "Just looking, thanks!" I said to them. "You look really interested in those revolvers, do you own one?" they asked. The man had a strong beer-belly with a t-shirt that had the a bald eagle and red white and blue text that said: "These colors do not run!" His beer-stained handlebar mustache decorating his face showed where his real obligations in the world lie. "No, I wish. I do not own any guns sadly. My ex-wife wasn't a big fan of guns for reasons never really made clear to me, so I never had the opportunity to own one." I said to him bluntly. "That's why she's an ex, right!?" the man said as he opened the case before pulling out a standard revolver. "Smith & Wesson Model 10-8 .38 special. One of our best sellers." He takes it out from the confides of the glass case and passes sets it on the glass in front of me on a purple crushed velvet pillow-looking tray. I just took my index finger and slid it down the barrel of the gun, almost afraid of it like it was going to suddenly start talking to me or something. "Go ahead and give it a hold, she's a beauty in the hand." he said. I picked up the gun and pointed it back at the guns hanging vertically behind the counter. The AR rifles and the shotguns. "Really light." I said. "You want something a little more powerful? This one here will put a hole in the wall and the engine block in your car if you keep it under your pillow at night as a form of household security," he said "Smith & Wesson .357 Magnum Post-War "Pre-Model 27" with 8 3/8" pinned barrel, Patridge front sight with micrometer-adjustable rear sight, five-screw target N-frame, checkered top-strap and barrel rib, grooved fore-strap and back-strap, seratted trigger, checkered hammer and checkered diamond walnut grips with Smith & Wesson medallions." I just held the gun up and it was a hell of a lot heavier. I had to actually put forth effort to keep it pointed straight forward. I just shook my head at his words, I had no fucking clue what the fuck he just said to me, but I wanted to just silently nod to sort of make him think I knew guns better than I did. I left the gun store that with something of a new vision of everything. I went from sad and depressed about being a fucking lame bastard that nobody seemed to care about to someone who was extremely motivated to make real change that people can see with their eyes. I went home that and hopped on the website of the retailer I was working for prior to my injury. I went into great length during my application process to help them remember who it was that was applying. They had these huge visions for me in the company, they thought I was such an incredible employee, but it wasn't that my skills were any better than anybody else who worked there it was just that I had been used to working super long hours without any recognition from the people who were in charge. So when a collared suit would come up to me at work and tell me "David, keep up the good work!" that would really motivate me for the rest of the week. And they passed these little lines of recognition quite frequently. I realize now that it was more "corporate policy" to keep morale high in the amongst the low-payed hourly employees but it still helped keep me in a good mood, especially when the days were long and exhausting. I heard back from the store the very next day after I applied for the job and the Store Director had asked to have a one-on-one meeting with me in his office at the store that I had worked. I went in and pled my case, showed them that the guy they had all these worldy visions for was now nothing more than a cripple bastard that wasn't worth much of a fuck. They couldn't agree with that sentiment at all, due to all their political correct corporate bureacracy, but I've never taken people's words at face value, rather putting all my money in what people's eyes say to me. Despite how the Store Director felt about me they agreed to hire me full time to do basic cashiering in the front of the store during the overnight hours. I couldn't do the job I had wanted to do, which was Store Dectective, but that was because of the poor decisions I had made as a teenager, having two misdermeanor charges of Theft by Fraud and Theft of Movable property in value of excess of 2,500. They knew of these charges because I was upfront about them, and they still agreed to put me to work and I had intended on showing them great respect for this great honor. I worked fifty hour work weeks, six days a week. I had off every Monday. I worked eleven o'clock at night until 7:45 in the morning. It was nice because pretty much any sort of stuff a person would need for their life was avaible for purchase at the store that I worked so I could do random shopping after work. After seven months of near total-isolation I had become something of a minimalist. There was very little in the world I felt that I needed in order to "get by". So I just stacked up my money in a shoebox under my bed at home. I was in severe debt with my credit card companies that I had maxed out during the months leading up to my divorce and it was only a matter of time before the "man" caught up to me working again. Not to mention I was about 80,000 upside down from the series of surgeries I had during the last several months. I was working at the store for about seven months before I got a notice from my Store Director that the the man upstairs was going to start garnishing my wages for all the money I owed people. This happened around the time I was actively driving legally again and driving a car that was barely able to move on it's own accord, and I was visiting a gun range far out of town so nobody inside the building knew who I was. My Father and my Brothere were regulars at the gun store where they bought their guns. I didn't want the hardcore patriots behind the counter telling my family how much I was at the range. How I was honing my skills of marksmanship. The wealth of my good shooting was pretty much based on the Xbox 1 and not in the real world and I felt sort of stupid about that and wanted to be a good shot. At this point, I was also buying prostitutes about once a month as well. No real women who wanted anything of a serious relationship with a man wanted to be with a cripple, and despite the fact that I was able to remain abstained from sexual contact for the majority of my marriage, I wasn't able to cope with the overwhelming feelings of lonliness that came from being sober, alone and sad all the time. The prostitutes didn't give a fuck about my bum leg, they cared if I had money. Embarrasing to some, honrable to others - I paid these prostitutes and did nothing more than talk to them. Every once in a while they would freak the fuck out when I said I just wanted to talk and "get to know them", thinking there was something more grim to the told from that story. There where one or two that allowed me to become their "regular clients" in that I knew where to find them on what days. To them I am sure it was easy money, but just having someone listen to me talk and not crtitise me for how I am not walking was a fantastic feeling that I was more than willing to pay fifty bucks a half-hour for. One night I was down on 21st and National looking for Ariel when I spotted her a few blocks to the east of where she normally was working. She didn't have work clothes on but I could recognize that beautiful figure of hers from across the ocean. I pulled over and rolled down my window; "Ariel!? What's up are you good?" She must have known it was me, she glanced quickly before picking up the pace of her walking and took a quick right at the corner on a road I wasn't able to turn left on. I knew this neighborhood about as well as she had, as much as I've been down here so I banged a quick right and shot around the bigger block and nearly ran into her three blocks to the east. "Go away Chris!" she said. She thought my name was Chris, which was something I did to her intentionally. I did this because I knew sure as night turns to day that here real name was not Ariel. And despite all the things you see on television and motion pictures she didn't ask to see my ID or antyhing like that when we first hooked up to "feel me out" if I was a police officer or not. We are now past the residential side of the block and close to the 24-hour gas station where the world is a little more bright at three o'clock in the morning on a Tuesday morning. I could see her face was bruised and she was trying to hide her face. She wasn't dressed in her normal work attire because I don't think she was working today. She wasn't "workable" with the purple and blue marks on her face. I got out of my car and approached her in the Speedway parking lot. She pushed me, which made me quickly turn around and quickly scan the parking lot to see who may have seen what just happened. I was worried people would think I'm here harming Ariel in any sort of way. She kept walking more closer to the entrance of the gas station. "Get the fuck out here, Chris!" then her tone gets a shade quieter and she speaks at the cement and off to the left. "I'm not working tonight." She was insistant on speaking with me this night. "What are you talking about, I just want to talk to you." I said to her with as friendly tone. But then I too talked to the cement. "I want to talk about what happened to your face." But she was not going to have my time at this moment. She pushed me away and walked into the gas station. There wasn't really any reason to make a scene so I went back to my car and sat there and waited for her. She stayed in the gas station only four minutes before she left the gas station and starting approaching my car. I quickly got out and walk around the rear of my aging Nissan and opened my passenger door. She looked confused for a moment before getting into my car. She was wearing broken fishnet stockings sand a pink mini-skirt. She was a pale blonde with a strong attitude. If she had a little more meat on her bones and was slightly tanner she would be doing a billion other things in the world right now other than working the corner of the ugliest parts of Milwaukee. She would most certainly not have anything to with a person such as myself. "You're fucking paying me asshole!" she said to me when I closed the drivers side door after getting into the car. "I thought you said you were not working this evening." I said to her. "I can just take you back to wherever it is you need to go. I'm curious who did that to your face Ariel." She screams. "What the fuck do you care!? Your're just some sick fuck who get off on talking to women because his wife kept his dick a jar for however many fucking years it was you were married." She puffs out a breathe of air. "Why the fuck do I even know that much about you anyway." "Because we are not business associates. We are each others best friends. The only difference between us and the rest of the world is that I pay you for your time with me." I looked at her with caring eyes. Curious as to what she was going to say. "Bullshit, I wonder how many girls you do this with? God knows your smart enough to do this in other neighborhoods, because none of the girls I talk to know you." She looks for a response. The first layers of ice begins to form. "God doesn't exist." I say to her. She was right though. The other girls I do this with are in completely different parts of town, one of them in a different county. "Let me fucking take you home then or whatever it is you call it is I'm taking you." I start the car. "Oh go fuck yourself!" she yells "Get me the fuck out of here." She crosses her arms and looks out the passenger window. As if this "god" that she spoke of were truth, he stroked me a moment of his grace at this very moment. Music is always playing in the background in my world. There are few moments in my life where there wasn't music on in a close proximity. Random shuffled music from my library was playing and "Ghost in the Town" by Joshua James was playing when I started the car. The song was still introducing itself when I got out of the car to confront her at the gas station. Something about the lyrics must have struck a chord with here as I pass block and block of some of the poorest parts of the city that I have grown to love. I only took her four blocks up Vermont Street and pulled over where I normally drop her off. She looks at me straight on. The left side of her face is blue and purple. The right side of her face didn't look too bad. She was hit more than once. Whoever did this to her wasn't much in way of strength. Unless it the person who was in charge of her. I was hoping she was going to tell me it was the person who was in charge of her. I wanted to feel like a superhero that night and say all the right things to her to make her feel better. There was a small part of me inside that wanted to wrap her up like a little Christmas present and take her places with me like a real person would. But I feel that way about almost every women I meet and over a long enough timeline I wanted absolutely nothing to do with them anymore. If they got to know too much about me, they would too want to keep me as far away from them as possible. YOUR GETTING CONFUSED YOU WERE ALREADY ON MEDS DID NOT WORK "It wasn't my Nate. The guy paid but Nate said I couldn't work and he pushed me out of business for one week, said I can't earn looking like its Halloween." "Some guy did this to you!?" I said to her quickly almost cutting her off. "Yes, but it doesn't matter because I'm not going to hookup with that guy anymore." she looked out the front window anxiously before looking back at me. "I never liked hooking up with him anyway.?" "You've been with him before?" I asked her. "Oh yeah buncha times. Real weird mother fucker. Kinda like you only he actually liked to fuck." For a moment I thought I could understand how a man could suddenly snap and hit a women just out of sheer instinct.