"I'm Back"... and rusty.

I've spent the last seven hours tracking down this blog, trying to get into the email address from 2011 in order to ACCESS the bloody thing, and then a period of trance-like, compulsory reading... pouring over my own words from a time long ago enough that it's almost as if the last few years never happened. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- I can't decide exactly how to feel, but my cheeks are wet and my eyes sting. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- (That sentence right there should tell you so much about one of my greatest personal pit-falls. I'm leaving it because I haven't slept in three days and I know that sometimes THIS frame of mind will teach the better-rested version of me some valuable lessons. C'mon, BIG D... you CANNOT "decide" how you feel!! You oughta know better by now. The ONLY thing you can really "decide" is how much you choose to numb yourself to those feelings.) ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Fair enough. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- I'm sad. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- I'm really, really sad. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- It's 2016 and we just had our first day of spring. My last post was in 2011. It was a distracted and disjointed piece of writing. (Isn't all of my writing?) I had plans to escape to Moab. It was like I gave up on the story right before the third-act reveal... right before the shit hit the fan. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- What happened?? -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Did I escape?! -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Oh... I escaped alright. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Just not exactly in the way you might think. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- There's more white hair in my beard now that I've reached the magical age of 33 which we attribute to Jesus as his time of death. Frankly, despite my tears, I must always remain grateful that I'm still breathing at THIS age. Seriously... I'm surprised I out-lived him. The list of things I should NOT have survived has gotten MUCH longer. I've wrecked numerous cars, a motorcycle, suffered multiple bleeding MRSA infections, survived a few suicide attempts, and overdosed who-knows-how-many times on nearly anything and everything you CAN overdose on. Hell, a couple of those overdoses weren't even intentional! I truly and honestly went COMPLETELY by accident, the way really I hope so many overdoses have gone... John Belushi, the bassist for Slipknot, Brad from Sublime, Philip Seymore Hoffman. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- I would quit for a period of time, hold it together really well for that same period of time, then... poof, one day it feels like all the good is gone and you know (and I do mean, KNOW, without a shadow of a doubt) that you're a ticking time-bomb and, if left to your own devices, you WILL stumble and fall. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Sometimes that fall lasts an hour. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Sometimes you stay fallen for weeks. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Some falls span years or decades. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Some falls... well, they never end. You fall right through the bottom and you don't happen to be one of us lucky ones who woke up, got taken to a hospital, or had someone there to do your breathing for you while you turn blue and flop for 30-45 minutes. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Have you ever actually done CPR on someone for 45 minutes? I'll write about that in the next blog. This one wasn't meant to be my own personal Trainspotting, but instead a combination celebration/reckoning of the nostalgia I feel for that 29-year-old who wanted to go live in Moab. I wonder where I'd be right now if he'd have followed through. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ That saying: "In 20 years it will be the things you didn't do, not the things you did do, that you most regret..." --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- It's complete horse shit. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Feeling like that does NOT take 20 years. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- You can easily feel that way in 5. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I don't even know who will see this anymore. Blogger probably isn't even a thing these days. I figured the chart I saw that said my page had thousands of views was a load of bollucks. But then I started reading the comments. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Read it or don't. The days of thrusting my writing on other people belonged to the last guy who wrote on here. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I'm a little more beat up than that guy, but also "harder" in some good ways. I've been to the proverbial "there" and done more than just "that"... I've done "those!" Spent a few months in jail (well, a FEW jails) and ended up walking out a much leaner, better-read, and more disciplined man than the drunk asshole in my mugshot. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- In many cases I'd love to be able to go back and warn him. I'd choose to keep that Moab Dan soft and naive. -------------------------------------------------------------------- My experiences have left their marks on me, but I am not a product of my environment. Sure, the places I've gone and the people I've been around have both played a HUGE part in the person I am today. But that's peer-pressure, a desire to please, misguided love or even simply a lack of self-discipline exacerbated by a "negative" opportunity. -------------------------------------------------------------------- I'll tell you more in my next blog. I'm happy to be writing again. I'm happy to be alive. I can feel my heart beating. Words make me nervous. I can never seem to find the right ones. But DAMN do they excite me at the same time. -------------------------------------------------------------------- Words like would've, should've, could've... they're really just implements of torture in your choice of font. Love and Hate both have countless synonyms, but they are the ONLY opposites in the English language that can occupy the same space at the same time. Light and Dark can't do that. Large and Small are also mutually exclusive. But the LOVE you feel when finding the perfectly-crafted arrangement of words happens to live right next door to the HATE you feel when fruitlessly searching for the right words and coming up empty.