More often than not

So when I was a kid, one of my girlfriend’s friend told her, “If you hang out with dogs you’re gonna get fleas.” That shit pissed me off. Like fuck you bitch I’m not no dog. But with time comes hindsight, and looking back it looks a little different, and while that bitch can still go fuck herself, I can see where she was coming from and can’t really argue the advice. Hang out with dogs, you’re gonna get some fleas. Same thing as, hang out with snakes don’t be surprised when you get bit. Same logic applies. Another one I like is, I was in jail one time and we would go to weekly AA/NA meetings, if for no other reason then just to get out of the pod. We were at an NA meeting one night with this dude named Kerry. I know it’s supposed to be anonymous but fuck you. Anyways, I asked this dude, I said, “How do you know when you’ve hit rock bottom?” And this dude says, “You stop digging.” That shit is the most relevant, deepest, most touching, understanding, thing anybody has ever told me. That shit really talked to me. Next time I came to jail, once again on my way to prison, I went to one of the weekly AA/NA meetings offered by the jail and was a little surprised when I didn’t see Kerry. I had wanted to tell him that I think I may have stopped digging. I asked the people running the group and they informed me that Kerry no longer ran the jail based version of their program. Kerry had died. He was dead. He overdosed on heroin. Sometime while I was in prison the last time, or maybe right after I had gotten out and began fucking up again, regardless, Kerry had relapsed and began using dope again. After like almost 10 years of sobriety Kerry decided that he wasn’t finished digging, and so grabbing his shovel he began to dig. Thing is, the hole had changed since he’d been gone and with the introduction of fentanyl to pretty much everything in the drug game, Kerry did a little shot, you know since he had been gone for so long and bam. Dead. At least that’s how I have it mapped out in my head. I never got past them telling me he was dead. That shit fucked me up. Fucks me up. You just stop digging. And it totally makes sense. Because rock bottom can always get deeper. Shit can always get worse. You can fuck your life up pretty much as much as you want, at least until you catch life. Then you might hit a wall. But maybe not. Because it can always get worse. These are all conscious decisions. Choices made. I was well informed. I wasn’t misled or tricked. Conscious decisions. Crazy thing is my asshole father warned me. He told me this was all gonna happen. No shit. He told me, “If you don’t straighten up and fly right, you’re gonna end up spending your life in prison.” Fuck him. Or maybe fuck me. Regardless, I had heard what he said, and knew he was probably right, I just didn’t care. For the majority of my life this has been the case. I just didn’t give a fuck what you told me, I was gonna do what I wanted to do. Take your threat’s and shove them up your ass. What are you gonna do? Take my freedom? My health? My future? My life? Didn’t give a fuck. In fact the only time I ever gave a fuck was when my children were born. When my kids were born, I did like my old man had told me, I straightened up and flew right. And they stole my children. Ha. Fuck me right? That’s why I had never cared in the first place, so that they wouldn’t be able to steal anything from me. Jokes on me. But like I said, conscious decisions. Did I deserve the things that have happened? Do I deserve the things that still do and will always happen to me? Who’s to say? But I made conscious decisions that had consequences and reactions that I was not blind to, so regardless of what I deserve, this is what I got. So now, after 41 years in this meat puppet, after all I’ve been and what I’ve done. The things I’ve seen, the moments I’ve lived. After all the choices. And all the consequences. Here we sit. Uncomfortably unsure of exactly who I am anymore. Or who I was. Or what I am. Or what I was. Uncomfortable with life. No direction. No stability. No clue. And I got myself second guessing an entire lifetime of conscious decisions. Life is a trip but more often than not, “If you hang out with dogs, you’re gonna get fleas.”