Fighting The Urge... Living The Fight

I don't think I made that last post to make people feel for me or to testify, I was having what I like to call a writing flashback. In my mind, I was comparing then to now.

For me right now, now really feels like then.

I remember how things felt as I was at the cusp of change. I had seasoned myself with those habits I described and even though I knew some of them would take more than others so I pushed on.

In that inception of my life I let bad habit and me falling into the status quo point me in a direction I had problems turning out of. Things feel the same now and I have a strong urge to drink but I haven't and don't plan to.

I look at my wife and look at our moves, stand back and look at the incredible responsibility I have every time I drive eighty thousand pounds and I'm baffled at how numb I am at just doing things. In the past few years I've transformed myself from a single, cubicle dwelling employee living in an oversized suburban condo to whatever I am now. I gave up the condo, sold my just bought car and gave away all of my belongings to go to Utah. When I got there all I had was an army duffel bag full of stuff, a few thousand dollars that I paid to go to trucking school and three people that I spoke to daily to keep me grounded and focused.

In a few months I was driving a truck and actually leased one of those large machines and was driving cross country until I got injured. My lease ended and I went back to Chicago.

Just like that, I was back at square one but things were different. I had no money, no place to stay and no job. It took my sister and brother, my cousin, my ex and a few new found friends to help get me back on track and in that time I hadn't taken a drink to help numb the pain until I got to Houston. The last month and a half there last year found me drinking the equivalent of a six pack a day to numb what I felt was a dire situation for me.

I went to Houston with good intentions and felt like I was duped by those who were helping me. Communication was bad and I had put my tail between my legs and ended back in cubicle land. It was expected of me to do this even though I wanted to get back out on the road and be free. I wanted to be my own boss again. Having that taste of living on my own terms was too much like right and I made bad decisions in where I landed after my injuries and trusted the wrong people so I corrected that, got free and ended up in Chicago once again.

The one person I thought I'd never get a chance to hold court with I married Christmas eve last year. We have known each other since 2005 and I continued to go places and chose to be with people that would have the two of us in different places. I've always known it would be a whole lot to handle fs we were to ever get our lives synced so I never had the idea to pursue her until I got to Chicago last summer. She was one of the folks I kept in contact with as a close friend but I never thought it would be her I would be planning a family with.

But I am.

And knowing of the whole that makes who she is and what she wants... Knowing her plans and dreams and knowing she's planning her life around me makes me feel like I'm cheating her sometimes. I don't know if what I'll do will ever be enough for her and that puts me in a place emotionally i've never been.

I believe if I wasn't responsible for that hundred thousand dollar piece of machinery I'm looking at parked outside my window...

If I didn't care about the folks I drive around all day every day...

If I didn't love to be in the presence of my other half...

If my pay was similar to what I used to earn back in the day...

If I didn't have this opportunity to be my own boss, setting my own hours to have the time to spend with myself out there under just the sun and clouds working on mastering my mind and spirit...

If we weren't planning a family and the ones I call friend didn't give a damn to check in every now and then...

I would be drinking again in heavy quantities. There are times that I wish that I could ingest just enough alcohol to make the pain of progress and the lack of understanding my emotions and the scope of things to come just go away. There are times that I wish I was just numb and non-existent. I would probably add some sort of narcotic to it so I could not be myself. I've opened myself up to so many that have taken advantage in so many situations that required me to be beyond who I am and exposed myself to a few that had ulterior motives just to take a piece of my soul that in some instances when I needed to dig a little deeper and pull a piece of me out to blanket a life situation I thought I can handle it either wasn't there or it was damaged to the point where I had to fake it in order to make it which damaged me ever more.

It's hard to try to cover life situations being damaged goods but there is literally no place to run.

I cannot tell you how I continue to move forward, so I look back to tell myself. It's just sometimes I give y'all a glimpse of who Hassan was before he was Hassan by blogging about it. It hasn't been pretty. I guess me wanting to have a better life and live out the entire story outweighs my desire to be drunk. I'm glad of that. If I were to give in to those urges I wouldn't have anything, and that is one option I absolutely cannot have.