I’m sitting at my computer, shaking.
It’s a full-body shake, one that rumbles from the insides and cascades throughout my body. It’s impossible for me to sit still, really. I’ll likely pace the first floor of my townhome several times as I type this. It will ebb and flow throughout the evening, at times giving way to the sweetness of nothing only to return with gale-force shakes.
Most of the night, I will want to crawl the walls. It is an active decision I have to make, on nights like these, not to tear apart everything in my apartment. Not to grab a bottle of Jack Daniels and drink it down. Drink. It. Down. Not to stalk, un-caged, the streets of Muncie looking for things that most of you don’t know exist.
I am unworthy and unfit for human kind in these moods, stuck in a place that is not quite where I used to live and never quite where you are now. It is a lonely place, but ultimately one that I have chosen to live on my own.
Your rules and judgments about this place are inconsequential to me.
These are things that happen from time to time, and I’ve come to expect them as part of my life. I will be fine tomorrow, or maybe tonight, or maybe in an hour. Maybe by the time I am finished writing this, the soul-rattling shakes will have subsided.
It is not something that I concern myself a great deal about because there are no answers.
***
I am not good with dates. I don’t remember birthdays, anniversaries or other date-related things unless I have them on my calendar.
I say that to tell you this: I know, without looking, that my uncle died on April 10, 1993. It was seven days after my birthday, just a bit past 2 years into my first attempt at sobriety. He was in some kind of recovery-phase too. Or he had been.
I know this because we were in the same place: my parents condo. Dennis and I were rarely in the same place. He lived a different life, one that wasn’t conducive to family functions and proper schedules. I always got that about him. (Years after he passed, I went to my other uncle’s house and my cousin nearly had a heart-attack when I walked in because she thought I was Dennis.)
This particularly weekend, we were celebrating my 21st birthday. The only thing I wanted was for Dennis to teach me how to ride a motorcycle.
As we made plans in the kitchen, while the rest of the family laughed away in the living room, I couldn’t help but stare at his hands. They shook. Not trembled. They shook.
When I called him a few days later to set up my lesson, he told me that he couldn’t make it the next weekend. He apologized. Repeatedly.
Then he was gone.
***
There are things that I simply can’t write.
Negative, nasty, mean things that eat my insides. They are the things that used to send me to the bar, to the bottle, to the streets. In search of anything to make the pain and the ugliness and the darkness go away.
I have always existed comfortably in that nasty state, so long so that it became my second home. A place where I knew the lawless rules, where civilized society wouldn’t bother me.
I found the bars with no lights, surrounded by desperados and degenerates who had no more intention of getting to know me than I had of getting to know them. We commiserated in this.
There is a brotherhood that exists within these places that I understood. A code. An honestly.
Still, I can’t write these things inside me because they are not about me. They are about the things that people say about me when they think I can’t hear. They way they act towards me when they think I am not around.
These, of course, are not things that are particular to me. They are not things that reflect upon me. They say far more about those who say and do the things than they say about me. I have made my amends. I have told my truths to those who need to know.
I do find it interesting that life in the gutter was far more civilized and honest than life in the sunlight. And on nights when the violence and the shaking returns, I wonder why I am not there again.
***
I am not religious, but I am penitent.
My days and nights, though, are no longer spent with worries about those who would seek to use my past as a weapon against me. The person they are chasing doesn’t exist anymore. They are chasing a Whale and that is their cross to bare in the quiet times when nobody is around.
But I have been in that darkness, the place where emptiness surrounds you and darkness envelops. The place where you see no way out and primal instincts kick in. I’ve been there and I don’t wish those moments on anyone, even those who would rather I slink away to some forgotten place.
This isn’t some benevolent understanding on my part. I must be clear about this. This lesson isn’t one that I have learned easily. Nor is it one that I am particularly fond of re-learning on a daily basis. It’s borne out of my own terror. My own fear. My own addiction.
Knowing what those feelings can do to a person, though, I have no choice but remain with those who haven’t found their way out. This is what I cling to on the nights that I am shaking and climbing walls. This is what drives me forward as I stare at another sleepless night in Muncie.
I remember Dennis. I remember my life just a blink ago. I remember that we are never quite sure what will be the moment that changes everything.
So I strive to be humble, patient and kind. Because maybe this is the day that everything changes for them.
***
I remember, too, that while these moments may be lost to my addiction. There have been good days before and there will be good days again.
