The Pen Is Mightier…

I have been keeping a journal of some sort on and off since I was about 10 or 11, so about 34 or 35 years now. I kept one religiously all thru high school and university because it seemed like so much was happening with things changing so quickly, I was afraid that I would forget stuff and at that time in my life, I wanted to remember everything, good or bad. As I settled down into married life in my twenties and then motherhood in my thirties, keeping a journal was but a faint and distant memory. It was the farthest thing from my mind. At that time, there seemed to be no time left to undertake this sometimes time consuming task, plus, for better or worse, my life had seemed to have settled into something of a routine. Excitement and change seemed to be memories of the past. Not that this was necessarily a bad thing, just different.Seven years ago this past June, my father was diagnosed with cancer and he passed away the following March. For the first time in over a decade, I picked up pen and put it back to paper. Towards the end of his life, I found myself in a long since forgotten place, but suddenly it became extremely important that I remembered everything that was happening around me these last seven or eight months of his life. Now more than any other time, I did not want to lose so much as a single memory from what was happening. I was so very afraid that I might forget something about his last days. For all of us, it was definitely a time of change.

I carried my journal with me everywhere. I filled up dozens of blank ones over this period of time, and every time I started to feel restless, I would write, and write, and write. Many days, I had a lot of time to do this. For twenty plus weeks, I spent each and every week day waiting in various rooms at the hospital for my father to complete whatever appointment he had that day. Every day he had his radiation treatment, plus there were a multitude of other types of appointments related to his cancer. To top everything else off, he was also getting chemo at the exact same time as his radiation, although the chemo finished about a month after the radiation. For just over five months, I drove him to the hospital five days a week for his treatments. Most days we would be at the hospital the entire day, but there were others where we were lucky enough to get out of there within the hour.

Regardless of the length of each visit, there was plenty of time for me to reflect and write. It was also a time for me to really get to know my dad all over again, as well as he had a chance to reacquaint himself with me. Bittersweet is an apt description I should imagine. After he passed, I continued to write as an outlet for my emotions. To this day, I carry a journal with me everywhere I go, and any time I feel the need, I write something in it. An entry can be one word to endless pages. I have found that whenever I am restless, upset, bored, impatient, irritated, you name it, the moment that I start writing I am immediately calmed. My recent journals follow no set form. They range from neat and tidy to tremendously disorganized and messy. I paste pictures in them sometimes. I doodle in them. I make sure that each one is different from the next. I haunt stores looking for unique and different books to use as journals. I have become quite creative in my quest to make each somewhat unique in its own way.

Now, I also keep an on line journal, although it is nowhere near as current or updated as my written – I am hindered somewhat by my complete inability to type as well and as fast as I would like. It was about five years ago that I was told about livejournal.com . This became my first foray into on line journaling. It seemed to take me an exceptionally long time to feel comfortable expressing myself publicly, although once I more or less got the hang of it, it became easier and easier. For the most part, I have liked using livejournal, and in fact, initially, I ended up having a number of separate accounts there. In the beginning, I mostly used them to display and store my art work. But these earlier attempts were dishonest at best, half truths at the most. They in no way reflected my actual life, although they did allow brief glimpses of it from time to time.

As I became more familiar and comfortable with this method of journaling, it became increasingly important that they start to actually reflect what was really going on in my life at that time. Initially though this caused me momentary paralysis as I certainly had no desire to lay bare those portions of my life I had spent years pretty much hiding from the general populous. My “alternate” life needed to continue being exactly that – one face for the majority and another for the precious few that were familiar with my drug use/abuse. That face was not yet ready for public consumption.

With the identity that I had been using, I found that this was going to be impossible to be completely frank and open about my lifestyle. Finally one day, I created an alternate online identity to reflect my alternate life. This is the one that I continue to use today. Over the past four and a half years there has been a blurring of my real and of my alternate world. This has become possible because my comfort level continually increases allowing me the luxury of honesty. For the most part, my mask is still there. I try to keep my name and my families and those that are important to me as anonymous as possible in an effort to ensure that their privacy is respected, as there is no certainty that they may feel as relaxed as I.

The majority of my drug use/abuse years are currently not available to read anymore online as the site that I had been using for this particular period of my life, literally disappeared overnight about two years ago. I used to be part of a group of addicts and recovering addicts that all had their personal journals at JUNKLIFE. At any given time, there were about twenty to twenty five of us sharing our stories with each other and anyone else who was interested. Sadly, it is now gone. After a number of frantic months attempting to contact the web master, I finally was able to get all of my writings from my time spent there. Until I received them, I was utterly gutted, as I had well over two hundred separate entries just from the two years I had been writing there. More importantly, I needed these writings available to me as an aid in my current recovery. I had only just started MMT when my site disappeared, so the lion’s share of what was happening to me during this period reflected my very active addiction, as well as documenting how I allowed it to get so out of control. With each passing month, you could see where I was inevitably heading – the proverbial, or cliched, rock bottom.

Now, while I have all of these entries stored on my computer’s hard drive, I have utterly no clue how to get them uploaded once again to the INTERNET. They were sent to me as one .sql file – whatever the heck this means cus I’ve so got no clue! Ideally, I’d like to add them to this site, or even if I had to, start a new site for my archived writings from my addiction period. I can go through this very large file and enter one entry at a time by copying and pasting it, and then back dating said entry with its original publishing date and time. I’ve manually entered a few, but it is just too time consuming, and honestly tres boring to have to do it this way. This site was actually started approx May 2007 when I first started having trouble accessing my previous site. Any writings from that point on are all original to this site, any before this time, were culled from my previous two sites, and are sadly not remotely enough to really paint the complete picture of my severe addiction years. If nothing else though, they are a start. Perhaps I’ll suddenly feel energized enough to enter a few more of my old entries! LATER…

Stings Like A Bee

Someone recently commented about how I have somehow managed to keep this inside of me, or not to have posted about our attack and Jim’s stabbing. Initially after the attack, I made a few brief posts and for those I think you can find them in the archives for May 2008 and perhaps even June 2008. I did save some footage that the local tv station broadcast the day of the attack as well as the few days immediately following it. Not for the faint of heart, but if anyone is interested in watching one of the news reports, simply click HERE to view. You’ll need a simple media player to view this file.

Ultimately, three young men were arrested and charged with the attack on us as well as the stabbing of Jim. While all three of them participated fully in the attack, only one of them actually stabbed Jim. This was probably a good thing as the one fellow doing the stabbing managed to stab Jim a total of twenty four times. While a number of his wounds were defensive in nature, three of the stab wounds were extremely critical ones, and for whatever reason, should have been life ending rather than life threatening. To this very day, his doctors are still utterly amazed that Jim managed to walk away from this alive. He now has a near four inch scar on his neck where the knife ended up slashing through. By sheer luck or miracle, his main artery managed to be missed by the smallest amount, although the knife managed to damage nerves and tendons in this area. Jim still suffers the aftermath of this wound today as he has yet to regain feeling along that side of his body from the top of his head down through the upper part of this leg. He is by no means paralyzed on that side, but it is very apparent that some form of damage has been done, not to mention the loss of strength and co-ordination vs his other side. His lung was pierced which caused it to collapse at the site of the attack, plus his liver was also pierced b y the knife. Additional liver issues is exactly what a recovering addict wants/needs to deal with later in life as well! As a result of these two wounds, Jim now also has a major scar on his chest running from the end of his throat to his belly button due to the emergency surgery required to repair these wounds. Lucky me got to witness this entire attack.

To say that we have both been dealing with issues since this attack is definitely a bit of an understatement. Obviously, for Jim, his immediate concern was getting his health back which has required a lot of work on his part. He has had to go through some brutal physiotherapy sessions to get himself back to close to normal. He still has a long way to go but at least he’s able to even do this, something the doctors weren’t too sure of this time last year. Pretty soon he will be starting therapy to deal with PTSD – Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. I am currently in therapy myself getting help for the exact same thing. Initially, I had no idea how much this attack had affected me and my outlook on life and the rest of the world, but the longer that I am in treatment, the easier it is for me to see the damage. I have mixed feelings about everything IE the attack, our recoveries from it, the accused and what will ultimately happen to them. By this, I am referring to their ultimate criminal trial which has now been postponed twice. This is so very frustrating as we are now waiting once again to get subpoena to testify. Initially, the trial was to be held in January but that was canceled. We got another subpoena for the trial to begin May 7, 2009, but less than 24 hours before it was to start, we received a call stating that it was going to be adjourned until a later date and to disregard our most recent subpoena as we would be issued another once a new trial date had been set! Grrrr…Apparently one of the defendants decided he wanted/needed a new lawyer so now his new lawyer needs time to prepare.

I have mixed feelings about having to testify in court as in I’d really rather do anything else but this! I know that if this does actually proceed to a trial then I ultimately may have no choice. Obviously in the end, I will also do the right thing. I guess because for so many years, we lived in that gray area of drugs and dealers that for me, its kind of a knee jerk reaction to avoid the law and courts at all costs. Its like I’m being a rat of some sort if I testify against these three. I know that I am not, that this is an entirely different situation. These are people that you had never, ever seen before that day. These are people that don’t run with the same crowd that we used to run with, nor will they ever. Yes, its now been three and a half years since I removed myself from that environment, but its still hard to shake off the stink. Also, ultimately, these three attacked and deeply affected me and mine, and by their actions, very much made it personal. I also know why they are dragging this out delaying their day in court, even though, to this very day, not one of them has been able to make bail and have sat in jail since about three hours after the attack. I understand that one of the accused is still only a landed immigrant to this country and that there is an extremely good chance that once he has served his sentence, that he will be deported back to his country of origin – the Sudan. I suspect that the other two – who happen to both be brothers – are counting on getting two for one credit when sentencing is finally handed down.

The thing is that, honestly, I don’t really care what happens to these three now. Whether they are released five minutes after their trial ends, or whether they are sent away for another few years it doesn’t really matter. Their damage is already done. No sentence or punishment will give us our old life back. Its gone, over, changed forever.

A Very Long Overdue Rant

About thirteen months ago, my husband and I were victims of an unprovoked, and very random, attack by three unknown young men – at the time, they were 20, 22 and 23 years of age. The attack occurred while we were responding to what should have been a routine noise complaint made by one of the other tenants of the apartment building where we were Building Managers. Within seconds, it was all too apparent that this was anything but routine. What should have been fairly straightforward and quick to resolve, quickly escalated to a harrowing and extremely violent and savage beating and stabbing of my husband. While the blame obviously lies in the hands of the three young men who initiated this attack, I hold one of the the other tenants primarily responsible for the resulting escalation of violence. I strongly feel that is was his actions immediately prior to the attack that nearly ended up costing my husband his life. I’m very surprised that something similar had not actually happened before this, and while I still hold a huge amount of anger and resentment towards my husband’s attackers, there are times when I find myself angrier and extremely bitter towards this tenant. In the end, I suspect that I will find it easier to forgive the attackers before I will be able to forgive the tenant. Not only did his actions, immediately prior to the attack, do much to exascerbate an already potentially volatile situation, but his utter lack of action while we were being attacked and immediately after resulted in even greater injury to my husband.

This was his second complaint in less than 25 minuted that day to me regarding his neighbours. During his second call that day, I requested that he please give the police a call to issue a formal complaint against his neighbours. Generally regarding noise issues, the landlord, or his agent, is not really supposed to contact the police. At a later date, there is always the possibility that the tenant could end up charging the landlord with harassment, as well as a number of other things, because of this particulat type of action. It is preferable to have a third party make the noise complaint to the authorities, thus allowing the landlord to maintain his neutrality. In fact, the very fact that we were even receiving a noise complaint from one tenant against another tenant within the building was practically unheard of. This was, and still is, an exceptionally quiet and calm building. It is extremely unusual to hear noise of any kind. In fact, I can easily count on one hand, the number of noise complaints in total that we have even received since we began working here. This particular problem simply does not exist within this building. Kind of ironic when you think about it now, but the few noise complaints that we have actually received, surprisingly, have all come from the exact same tenant. Colour me surprised.

Shortly after Jim and I had started working as Building Managers at this property, we were contacted by this particular individual regarding a tenant that lived on the floor beneath his. On this particular afternoon, apparently, the tenant residing below him had been listening to here reggae music quite loudly – is this even possible? He requested that one of us go and investigate what was happening, so immediately upon hanging up the phone, off I went. As I arrived at the floor that the other tenant lived on, I witnessed the complaining tenant walking away from her unit. During this time, I also witnessed her response apparently to his direct involvement in this situation. She was shouting quite loudly at him through her closed door to “f**k off, leave her alone, stop coming to her door using his cane to knock loudly on it until she came to her door”. Hmmm, most interesting.

Typically, we encourage tenants not to get directly involved whatsoever with each other when it concerns any type of noise issues. Surprisingly, there is a tendancy for violence to develop between the two tenants. We strongly advise the complaining tenant to allow their Building Managers to handle this situation. We ask that they give us reasonable time to investigate said complaint, as well as time to resolve any issues associated with their complaint. This is pretty much the industry standard, and the majority of Building Managers do their damnest to adhere as much as possible to this procedure. Problem is that it is next to impossible to do this when you’ve got a loose cannon thrown into the equation. Lucky us, as this is exactly what this tenant is, a loose cannon – may I add at this time that I’m being very charitble describing him as such. He is the type of tenant that is utterly incapable of leaving well enough alone. He has to be right in the middle of everything, and generally ends up doing more harm than good, not to mention, undermining our job each and every step along the way. This guy in particular is really quite the piece of work. He is a walking cliche and stereotype come to life.

The day of our attack, I can easily imagine all sorts of petty and annoying things that he was bothering his neighbour about because this would be his way of getting back at them for their allegedly disruptive behavior. Not that his behaviour in any way excuses or remotely mitigates the other three individual’s subsequent violent actions towards Jim or myself. Not at all, but I wonder if what ultimately ended up happening that Monday afternoon just over a year ago, could have possibly been avoided entirely, not to mention allowed us to handle the situation differently then what ended up happening. I believe that are options for resolution ended up being rather limited, as well as being almost completely out of our control by this time. In the end, this resulted with us walking into a completely different situation than what we had expected and anticipated, and right from the outset, we were set up to fail somehow or someway because we only had the smallest of pictures, so tp speak. If it wasn’t bad enough that it was due to his actions towards his neighbour over the course of that particular afternoon ended up with is being attacked, he did absolutely nothing at all to help us in anyway while we were under attack.

Later on in the day, he was interviewed by one of our local tv reporters and what he said to the reporter ended up being played at each news broadcast over a three day period. He was able to describe to this report what actually had happened when we approached his neighbours door. He had a good enough view of us to recount how we had been given no chance at all from our attackers. He stated that after we had approached their door and knocked on it, the moment that their door opened, I was pushed off to the side, while Jim was charged and thrown violently up against the door across the hall from them. He said that we weren’t given any opportunity at all to even identify ourselves before they attacked. At least he confirmed part my statement that I ultimately gave to the police that it was a completely unprovoked and unwarranted attack against us. But that’s about all that he is good for as the only thing that I am able to bring away from this is that he was lying in wait for us to arrive at his neighbours door, essentially spying to see what was going to happen. Then after seeing how they ended up responding to us, rather than attempt to assist us in any way, and by any, I mean he didn’t even call 911 on our behalf. All he ended up doing was slamming his door and locking it behind him. Nice.

At one point during their attack against us, I found myself outside of his unit, screaming for help and pounding relentless on his door. When he did finally respond, all he did was open his door to quickly slam and lock it right in my face. Through the closed door, I remember scrreaming at him that they were killing my husband, and begging and pleading for him to either call for help or call downstairs to our main office. I understand that when he looked out into the hall, what he must have seen scared him half to death. I know it surely did me. At no time did I expect anyone to put their own lives in any sort of danger by actually physicallly assisting us, but I had hoped that somebody would pick up their bloody phone to call for help. Whatever…

Initially, I had actually doubted whether or not the complaining tenant was exaggerating the extent of his neighbour’s disruption on this particular afternoon, as his reputation preceeded him. Every high rise has this tenant, some even a few. They are the ones that know absolutely every little thing about their immediate neighbours, as well as the majority of tenants in the entire complex. Rarely are they ever satisfied with the property management nor their direct representatives, their Building Managers. The company can never do enough for them, whether it is ensuring the cleanliness of the property, its daily maintenance and upkeep or anything else that they could possibley think of bothering the office about. They feel entitled to getting a new paint job annually or new carpet or flooring or lighting or whatever, and goodness, don’t let them find out that another unit may have gotten an appliance replaced for whatever reason, like, perhaps after thirty years, a new stove was actually warranted. They are absolutely incapable of leaving you alone. On a daily basis, you can be assured that they will somehow find a way to contact you, and believe me, it will never be to pat you on the back for doing a kickass job either!

Every other tenant understands when asked to contact their Building Managers during business hours only. After hours is to be reserved for emergencies only. This tenant doesn’t care what time it is. When he has a bee in his bonnet, then this is the time. Who cares if it happens to be a Sunday evening before 11pm – or better yet, a Saturday morning before 7am. If he has decided that he just wants his first initial appearing on the tenant listing at the building’s entrance, rather than his full first name, then to him, this is very much an emergency and the moment this idiotic idea grips his tiny, narrow mind, he just has to let his BM know. To really drive home just how utterly self centred and egomaniacal this idiot is, he doesn’t even have a modicum of courtesy when he attempts to reach you. He couldn’t be bothered using the telephone to communicate said ridiculous request. Instead, to ensure that the BM’s entire family is disrupted, he actually goes directly to their unit and knocks loudly and relentlessly on their unit’s door – even though he could have also submitted a written request and dropped it through the door’s mail slot that I got hastily put up shortly after meeting said nuisance. Everyone else managed to adapt nicely and quickly to this alternate route for communication. In the end, of course, he had to because a policy was implemented that no request by a tenant would be addressed unless submitted in writing to either the property management or their agent, their Building Manager.

Anyway, I’m sure that you have more than enough information now to be able to draw your own picture of this tenant. Given the time and opportunity, I could easily go on and on about this tenant as he is truly that annoying. In the end, it was kind or ironic that he stopped being his normal daily nuisance around this place. I presume that somehow he was able to connect the dots to figure out that perhaps he played a larger role than he imagined in the violence against us. I’d like to think that when he heard the extent of my husband’s injuries combined with the near seven hours of emergency surgery that he had to endure immediately after the attack, not to mention the last rites he received from the family priest that day, that just for a moment, he felt a tinge of guilt or possibley a modicum of responsibilty for what had occurred. If he did, I doubt very much that it ended up lasting too long. His type can too easily dismiss away these intruding feelings pretty readily. Its second nature to them as they’ve had a lifetime of practice.

HOOKED

While I was transferring some of my files from my old hard drive onto my new computer, I found a folder with a series of images that I thought some might find kind of entertaining. These images were the individual pages of a comic book that had been distributed throughout New York city during 1966. It’s called HOOKED and its a story about one guy who finds himself unwittingly hooked on heroin. If anyone is interested in reading this 30 page story, click on the image. Once at the link, you’ll see the web page I’ve created and uploaded for this comic. There are individual full pages for each page of the comic so that it is nice and easy to read. Enjoy!!!

FINALLY, AN UPDATE

Yet, once again, I am commenting on the fact that it seems to be an eternity since I last updated, and I guess it has. A number of things have kept me away from my computer these past few months, although nothing specifically. I did finally get my new computer all set up the way I like it. For me personally, it was quite the computer upgrade. I ended up buying a refurbished HP Compaq d330 Slim Tower Desktop PC at Factory Direct. It’s an Intel Pentium 4 Processor with 800 MHz Front Side Bus, 512 KB L2 cache with HyperThread and came with 2GB memory, PCI card or external USB, 6 USB 2.0 ports (2 front, 4 rear), and 48X/24X/48X/16X Combo CD-RW/DVD-ROM Drive, plus Windows XP Pro installed as its OS. There’s a bunch of other stuff which I can’t readily recall, but its all been good. I’ve been more than happy with it so far, and is easily twice the computer I previously had been using. I got all of this goodness for $89 plus tax – no monitor, but we had extra monitors anyway so no big deal. I’m using a near brand new 19″ Acer flat screen which we had picked up for a good price just after Christmas. We gave my old computer to the girls to use, and then gave their old computer to my brother’s three kids, so that they would now have two computers between them – they are ten years old and younger with another on the way, due just before Christmas. Yikes!

We’ve both been swamped with various doctor’s appointments as well. Both of us are still on MMT, and both of us are continuing to do exceptionally well in regards to our recovery. No slips still and I don’t forsee any in the near future either! Jim just celebrated three years on MMT, while I’ve been on it since February 2006. Jim just started his treatment for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder relating to the attack last year. He is currently scheduled for twenty four sessions initially. I started my own treatment for PTSD in February of this year and am about halfway through it – I think. Both of us attend different doctors for this. I go to one of our city’s hospitals which has an entire department dedicated to PTSD and PTSD only. There, I deal with up to three different individuals – a psychiatrist, a psychologist and a social worker – depending on my scheduled visit. Jim will be going to a private psychiatrist, who also happens to be a pain management specialist as well. I guess, two birds, one stone…Much more on this whole subject of PTSD in an upcoming post, especially as I have a number of questions that I want to throw out there that hopefully some will be able to answer for me.

Also, I’ve been doing a lot of sewing, something I haven’t done anywhere near enough of ever since we were attacked last year. I also undertook a few home decorating projects in our living and dining room which happily turned out perfectly. We have one fairly long wall in the living room – about nine feet – that had basically just sat there bare naked since we moved in over a year ago. This was bothering me to no end, but as I didn’t have a boatload of money available, I had to think of something on the cheap, as well as creative side. We have a store in town called XSCargo, which is like a discount store of sorts. They sell all kinds of stuff at exceptionally low prices. I found a variety of different sized mirrors there ranging in price from $2.99 to $9.99 and in size from 11″ x 11″ to 20″ x 24″, so I ended up grabbing 12 mirrors in total. The mirrors that didn’t already have a silver frame, I painted silver. I arranged them in a flattering pattern so that they fill up almost the entire length of that wall, and measure close to four feet in height. There was a small posrtion of wall left over near the entrance to our kitchen. I found this large metal butterfly in blue and dark brown – which are the basic colours of both my living and dining room – as well as a butterfly chain measuring about 40″, also in a light blue. I hung both of them up in this empty space of the wall. Now I am thrilled with that previously bare wall. I also had this old wooden half table with three legs that I was able to resurrect quite nicely by painting it silver. I placed it basically in the centre of the wall and added a small silver lamp which had a cream coloured shade with blue and brown strings thoroughout.

I have also started some work on our dining room. I put a 60″ x 36″ dark wooden table with black metal legs lengthwise in the room, exchanging it with a 42″ light wooden table that had been there previously, moving it into our kitchen. I had a number of canvases that I had attempted painting a year or so ago, but had failed miserably at. Rather than throw them out, I decided to cover them with some fabric. I found some beautiful taffata with patterns in complementary colours. I ended up covering all of the canvases I had because this project ended up working out exceptionally well – I even had one canvas measuring 30″ x 40″ which I hung directly above the table. I also bought new curtains for the dr window – sheer navy voile with some silver threads throughout them. I still have some more work yet to do in the dining room, although the living room is more or less completed now. I ended up slip covering one of our couches as I had found a 2 piece slip cover in a stretch navy check fabric that I really liked, plus it fits the couch like a glove so you can’t even really tell that the couch is covered at all. We also got a dark brown area rug in chocolate brown berber to place between both of the couches. I also ended up hanging up some of the fabric covered canvases in the living room to fill out some of the wall’s bare spots.

Well, I guess that this is all for now. Will be back shortly with a better update, I promise.

Making Plans For Nigel

Oh, my goodness. It seems like a near eternity since I last updated. Unfortunately, a bunch of other stuff ended up keeping me away from my computer. First of all, I just got a brand, spanking new computer which I am still in the process of getting all set up! Any of our computers that have come before this one, pale in comparison! I am so excited. Finally a computer that reacts the way I want it to! On top of trying to get it all put together, Jim and I scavenged through all of the various computer parts that we’ve managed to collect over the past decade, to put together a working computer for my brother’s three little ones – two girls and a boy ranging in ages from five to ten! Their one computer was no longer doing the trick at their house but this was also the worst possible time for him and his wife to attempt to buy a second one, so Jim and I got to thinking.

Somehow, we managed to get them another working computer less a monitor, something I think they’ll be able to get from her parents for next to nothing so this is good. Not the most powerful, but a 100% working one that the kids are simply geeked over having – not to mention how pleased my bro and sister-in-law were with our little gift! Obviously, something we so would not have been able to pull off three and a half years ago, but now, in recovery, something that actually didn’t even really feel like it took a lot of effort to pull off. Imagine that!!! Regardless of the ultimate cost of this extra computer, its how both Jim and I ended up feeling about ourselves that will end up benefiting us in the long run, as it is one more thing to remind us just how important staying on MMT is at the end of the day.

GOOGLE’S BOOK SEARCH BETA

A few month’s ago while looking up some information on a particular book, one of the results returned by Google directed me towards their new GOOGLE’S BOOK SEARCH BETA. Ever since I discovered this little gem of Google’s, I have been using it nonstop. If you have a Google user name, you are even able to add titles to your own library. Currently, I’ve got a fair number of titles in my library, and anyone interested can check my books out HERE. You’ll probably notice a bit of a trend regarding my current interests!

Once you’ve searched for a title, a number of title links will be presented to you – or you can do a more general topic search with these results returned instead. Depending on the book itself, you’ll be able to access its information by one of three means. You can either get the full preview of the book, a limited preview or a snippet view. The final one returns a page with all of the specifics of the particular book while the other two offer so much more. Even with a limited preview, normally you are able to read substantial portions of the book, generally a few chapters at the very least. If you really want to read the entire book and this is not an available option, there are ways around this though a tad bit time consuming and annoying.

Pretty much clearing your browser’s history and cache will allow you to choose otherwise unavailable chapters – restarting your browser after deleting the above mentioned files certainly doesn’t hurt either. Also, if you have multiple browsers installed on your computer then you can usually open them up and read different chapters amongst your various browsers – by different, I mean Opera, Firefox, Internet Explorer. If you’ve got one of the many IE based browsers installed, your history/cache for all of thses will ultimately be treated as one and the same.

One of the recent books that I just finished is entitled Mothers and Illicit Drugs. This book speaks to me on so many levels so I found it particulary helpful. If you go HERE, you can ready some of the book’s more important pages. I’ve created a web page with a number of thumbnails to direct you to these important passages. The page itself is especially easy to navigate.

What Abyss?

February has not been particularly kind to me so I’ve found myself absent from the blogosphere in more ways than one! Pretty much up until today, I’ve been filled with an overwhelming amount of apathy and everything that tends to accompany these feelings of nothingness.  Every so often I find myself in this exact same place, and I never really can identify specifically what brought me here. All that I do seem to know is this ever present and all pervasive kind of sadness. Seems to drape itself around my shoulders and until it decides to loosen its grip, I’m left feeling incredibly defenseless and vulnerable. Funny thing is that I also have a near impossible time identifying why suddenly one day, this feeling somehow no longer exists, having vanished completely into thin air. I rarely, if ever, even speak of my blue moments as I tend to be embarrassed if I show any sort of weakness. I know, I know, this is the farthest thing imaginable from logic, and yet, it is a habit that I’ve managed to develop over the years. It is also a habit that is particularly hard to break. I think that this may be wrapped up with my issues dealing with having to be a near perfectionist in anything that I try or do. When you’re a perfectionist, one of the hardest things to do is allow others to see any potential weaknesses that could possibly be used against you. OK, sounding more and more like a junky with each and every word typed…Paranoid much? Once a…always a…

So, moving right along now…Regardless of what precipitated these feelings, by the beginning of this month, I was well on my way to feeling deeply buried by them. Normally once I get to this stage, one of two things generally happen. I either become near manic in my behavior, starting – and most often finishing – any number of projects. If I am not knee deep this hyper mania, then I am most likely lethargic beyond belief with no amount of sleep seeming to alleviate this never ending tiredness. I could remain in bed for any number of weeks if I allow myself to indulge my pity party any more than I realistically should. Self absorption much? No, not really, but when I am, I more than make up for this that’s for bloody sure. Thank goodness for my Jim as he is not only extremely patient and tolerant of these moods, but he is my map back to reality, without wounding or hurting my already fragile state. He always allows me a reasonable period of time for me to indulge myself properly, but once this time has passed, he reigns me in tout suite! He rarely has difficulty identifying what seems to have triggered these moods, nor does he have any problems identifying what needs to be done to get me out of my funk.

This time, and I suspect most of my other times, he attributed to plain, old fashioned boredom. He’s most likely correct, although blaming solely boredom is just a bit too simplistic in my opinion. Actually, once I had managed to shrug off my mantle of lethargy, I returned to reading my favorite blogs and one recent entry at The Australian Heroin Diaries certainly identified a large component of what I seemed to be struggling with in this entry. Even though I have been drug free for near three years this time, I definitely seem to be suffering from the loss of interest in normal activities and interests/hobbies. It’s not so much this loss that troubles me in the end, but the fear that this could be a permanent state of mind, something that I may never be able to recover from. Perhaps this is simply one of the prices that we are forced to pay as a result of our years of uncontrollable and selfish substance abuse with no thought or regard to potential consequences because of our actions. It certainly would be justly deserved, although not remotely welcome. The horrific part of all of this is that I know that I wouldn’t have changed my previous behavior even fully aware of what the end result would be. How selfish is that!?!

Anyway, all that I really wanted to accomplish with this post was to give all a heads up, and to calm any worriers out there. Yes I was MIA longer than I should have been, especially as I didn’t even bother to post so much as a simple I’m alive post. Truly, bloody selfish indeed. To make amends then, I shall bore each and everyone with constant and multiple updates, so many, your heads may actually start to spin!

CURRENT PLAYLIST FEB 2009

R.E.M – Crush With Eyeliner
Blondie – One Way or Another
Dead Kennedys – California Uber Alles
God Bullies – Like It Like That
Iggy Pop – Candy
Joy Division – Sister Ray (Live)
Korn & Kittie – This Town
Nine Inch Nails – Physical
Psychedelic Furs – Pretty In Pink
The Clash – Police and Thieves
Oasis – Don’t Look Back In Anger
Psychedelic Furs – India
Radiohead – Creep
Roxy Music – Stranded
Sinead O’Connor – Nothing Compares 2 U
Soft Cell – Sex Dwarf
The Smiths – How Soon is Now
The Strokes – Last Nite
White Zombie – Thunder Kiss ‘65
Black Rebel Motorcycle Club – Screaming Gun
Mansun – Wide Open Spaces
Adam And The Ants – Ant Music
the Music – You Might As Well Try To Fuck Me
Stone Temple Pilots – Sour Girl
Foo Fighters – Darling Nikki
Bauhaus – She’s In Parties
Joy Division – Transmission
Depeche Mode – Personal Jesus
Psychedelic Furs – Love My Way
The Clash – Train in Vain
Billy Idol – Eyes Without A Face
…And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead – It Was There That I Saw You
The Cure – Lovesong
Depeche Mode - Useless
Echo and the Bunnymen – the Killing Moon
The Distillers – Drain The Blood
The Jam – Town Called Malice
The Cult – Firewoman
Adam and the Ants – Ant Invasion
Bauhaus – Ziggy Stardust (David Bowie cover)
Psychedelic Furs – Sister Europe
Depeche Mode – Barrel of a Gun

****************

My bad…have been feeling rather apathetic these past few weeks so I’ve not been doing much updating. Am seriously hoping for a change of mood!

SHAKE THE DISEASE

After running into our old friend and dealer the other day, it suddenly occurred to me the number of females that we know who found themselves pregnant in the past two years, have given birth, and yet do not currently have custody of their newborn. Ashley was just the most recent of at least a half a dozen, or even more. Of all of these women, I am aware of only one of them who was able to leave the hospital with her daughter, who remains with her to this day, almost two years later. All of the others automatically were involved with Social Services. One of their representatives was literally waiting there in the birthing room to remove the newborn from the mother the second that this could safely be done.

This is frightening on a number of levels to be sure. Obviously these females were still abusing one, or more, illegal substances throughout the pregnancy. If she was unable to quit, or at least get on methadone – if opiates were the issue – the moment she found out her condition – and once the decision was made to continue with the pregnancy – she made it abundantly clear how very selfish, and negligent, she really was. Obviously, no serious consideration was given to the potential damage she could cause for her unborn child with continued substancve abuse. Without exception, all of these women did nothing at all to even curtail or reduce the amount or frequency of their substancve abuse. For me, personally, I had an extremely difficult time even interacting with any of them while they were pregnant, as it was near impossible for me to refrain from comment about this abuse.

Last week when I ran into Ashley, I simply could not keep quiet, especially as she was the one to introduce this topic into our conversation. Since the birth of her daughter a few months ago, her use has actually escalated, not to mention that she has now introduced speed into her daily doses of 8mg dilaudid pills. I am sorry, but WTF? Currently, her and her boyfriend do not have an apartment of their own. They’ve been rotating staying at various friends pretty much on a semi regular basis. The baby is currently with her mother, and by the look of their current situation, will most likely stay with her for the foreseeable future. She mentioned that the Social Worker was giving her six months to get her act together.

She was given a guideline of sorts as to what was expected of her to accomplish in order for her daughter to be returned to her. She’s got about six weeks maximum now before she has to meet with Children’s Aid. At this hearing, she ostensibly is to present to them why they should return her daughter to her care, Obviously they’re going to want to see that she is serious about her recovery which means that she should be on MMT at the very minimum by this time. She is also going to have to prove to them that she has a permanent address with the appropriate amount of space, or rooms, for a newborn to be adequately maintained, never mind flourish. I’m also guessing that she’ll need to prove that she has all of the proper furniture, accessories, food, et al for the baby. No doubt there is considerably more things that will be required for her to do and have. CAS is certainly not going to hand the baby back to her in a cavalier manner. They will look at every last detail under a magnifying lens is my best guess.

So far, she’s not done any of this. Nothing. In fact, about the only thing that she has really done is ensure that now her boyfriend also has a hardcore dependence on opiates. What a pair! I told her as much. I said that she needed to get serious right away, especially if she really and truly wanted custody of her daughter. She maintains that she does, but I don’t know anymore. I look at all Of the women whom have gone before her these past two years, and all I see is the writing that is already on the walls. What’s really gut wrenchingly sad is that in the end, it is the children who will suffer because of these women’s ultimately selfish attitudes and choices. If they’ve decided that they are simply incapable of cutting drugs from their life no matter how hard they try, what they really need to do is remove themselves completely from their child’s life, because in the end, the inevitable sporadic contact with them will damage these innocent babies immensely. Do the unbelievably unselfish act of severing ties completely so that their child has a chance of finding a family who will nurture and love and be completely involved and committed to them. Otherwise these babies barely stand a chance, and they might as well admit defeat before they even have a chance to get started!