Tag Archives: ex-offenders

My Day With a Dentist and Thoughts About A Lawyer (Almost)

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VINCE

 

I have been waiting for this day for about five years. I was working in a Mexican restaurant, eating a delicious burrito when I crunched down on something very hard. It was a fork. I felt kind of like an idiot because I’d been eating food by myself for roughly 30 years at that point and thought myself quite capable of using a wide variety of utensils without any trouble. Well at that time I felt my teeth with my tongue and discovered that my number nine top left front tooth had broken off. Shit. I was already self conscious about my smile although my teeth aren’t too terribly bad, and this just made things worse. I had no insurance and all of my money at that point went to drinking, smoking weed, and gambling, and nothing would change that for quite some time as you may have read.

 

Flash forward to the future! A.K.A. now. Ugh. This computer keeps freezing up. Anyhow, I took the morning train to Minneapolis to the U of M School of Dentistry where I laid back in the hydraulic chair and let my student dentist practice making a plastic tooth in my mouth for about two hours. I felt pretty cool because she let me be in control of the suction wand thing but I still ended up drooling on myself quite a bit, not uncommon to any other day, right? I asked, I believe more than once, if we could make teeth other places like on my forehead or in my armpits. We laughed at that and a few other ideas I had like sticking the suction wand in my nose. Actually, that may have been in my head. In the end, she did a great job and I give her complete credit for my new smile which I plan to show as much as possible. I love to laugh and smile but for five years, I simply wouldn’t open my mouth to do either. I was embarrassed, and I thought about my appearance constantly. I’m happy. Thank you, Lauren. Someday when you’re a REAL dentist, you can help me put gold teeth on cats. Gangster kittens!

 

I had discussed my blog and my history with her on previous visits and again today and I decided to let her read one of my posts, Camp Heartland. It is, in my mind, a very moving post, and I could see her reacting to it as she read. The first time I had seen that first hand. As far as reacting to me telling her about my history with drugs and alcohol, she acted as professionally as I could have hoped for. She was inquisitive and sympathetic. It was a good day at the dentist.

 

I also told her about Chelsie Toaster, who I will now call by her real name, Mollie. If you haven’t read the post The Toaster Situation, Mollie is the girl I met and have been doing my best under my restrictions to see as much as possible. We have been limited to seeing each other on our way to and from and at meetings because all of my visitors need to be approved and that takes some time. Well today at work my agent, whom I had asked on every visit previous about the status of her approval, walked in and said, “Mollie is approved, Dude!” I threw my arms up in victory.

 

Mollie is sweet. As I’ve said before, she is the first female that spoke to me at a meeting, and I hoped she would talk to me every time after, and she did. She’s smart. She’s a graduate of Wm. Mitchell School of Law and takes her Bar exam in February. We joke about me needing legal advice in the future. I hope I don’t… She’s from Tennessee, and you can tell because of her ridiculous accent. And, she is beautiful. I haven’t been in a relationship for years. Too many years. I don’t want to push things or move too quickly, but I know that I like her, and I will do what it takes to keep her in my life.

 

Also, she’s a ginger.

Another Bad Night

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VINCE

The following story is about me, from the perspective of a friend of mine that has a much better memory than I do. I knew that this story existed, and I knew when I heard it the other day that I was in one of those blackouts where somehow you can still walk and talk or, in my case stumble and mumble. I asked my friend, we’ll call him Kenny, to write it out for me so I could put it on the blog. If I had actually remembered that night, it may have beat out my arson night for my worst 24.  So, here goes….

I (Kenny) had just gotten off work and was probably texting everyone to see if there was anything going on that night.  Vince, one of our friends, told me they were all out drinking at our mutual acquaintance’s private campground.  I grabbed a few beers knowing they would have more there if I ran out, or, god forbid, we’d start on the whiskey.  I arrived there shortly after the call and we promptly began drinking and bullshitting.

As the night progressed, all but three of us had gone home or to sleep.  Vince, Brad (a coworker at the time) and myself.  I had been texting a girl I knew from Rochester, and she invited us to her friend’s house to hang out and drink.  Brad’s car was the only one with enough gas, so after convincing him to let me drive us all there, we were on our way.

We were all drinking on the way.  Vince would occasionally ask me if one of the girls would have sex with him, and Brad would remind me that he has an open warrant.  We finally arrived at this trailer park (which was half of the town) and got to the address.  Nobody home. We waited, and I tried to keep Vince  “calm.”  He would all of a sudden walk around the trailer and pull on the window frames.

We sat in the car and gave the girls ten minutes to get there before we took off.  Just in time, they showed up.  The two of them brought us inside and we start handing beers out trying to figure out how to have any fun.  The one that I didn’t know went into another room and my friend [not Vince] followed. 10-15 minutes went by.  Us boys were sitting and staring at each other when I finally wen to  see what the girls were doing.  I opened the bedroom door and both girls were taking turns inhaling Dusters [the canned air used to clean computer keyboards].  Vince popped up behind me, made a comment on how it had been a while since he had done it.  They offered him a can and he took a lung full.  I had never seen people do this before so it made me worried and uncomfortable.

One girl passed out and began shaking in the corner of a bathroom.  After a while I made an excuse so we could leave soon.  Vince was in one of their rooms going in and out of a drunken/duster stupor on her bed.  He kept telling me we needed to stay because the girl was going to fuck him, but she was in another room doing more duster.

I managed to get Vince to the door.  Before I left though I went into the room with the girls and took the can of Duster.  They made a fuss and tried to get it back.  Vince pretty aggressively pushed me and took the can.  He gave it back to them and tried once more to stay with them and failed.

We left and wound up at Denny’s restaurant in Rochester.  I’m sure Vince verbally assaulted the waiter after he brought him multiple shots of syrup.  He got up a few times with a steak knife and followed the waiter back to the kitchen.  Fortunately, the waiter never saw it.  We finally made our way back to Fountain.  End of story….

VINCE here. I have no idea why I had shots of syrup.  My guess is that I tried aggressively to order booze which they do not have at Denny’s.  Also I had never tried Duster before or after that night.  I am grateful to Kenny for putting up with me that night.  Who knows how many stories are out there that I will never remember.  Stories I hope to never have to hear.

Scattered thoughts of a recovering addict

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VINCE

I’m staring at the screen and nothing is coming to my mind.  I’ve started a few paragraphs and then erased them.  It’s almost 10pm and I’m very tired.  get up at 6:30 to get ready for the day by drinking coffee and making my lunch for work, then head out at 7:30 to catch the bus then the train for my ride in.

Yesterday the first thing I did at work was smash my foot under a very heavy (we guessed 3 maybe 4 hundred pounds) spring loaded loading dock ramp because the truck I  was going to unload supplies from was filled to capacity and when I pulled up the ramp from the floor and it went where it was supposed to but I couldn’t move.  I tried to move my other foot as it smashed down but there wasn’t room so I actually had to step on the ramp itself adding my weight to the pressure.  I have not experienced that much pain for as long as I can remember.  At that point I thought for sure that I had broken it.  I felt the urge to throw up from the pain, something I have never experienced. I got my foot from under the foot-wrecker and took a few limps around the production floor.  It was the seeing spots kind of pain.  I didn’t want to look like an idiot so I went back to work trying to hide the limp as best I could.  I told my friend about it and he was quite sympathetic to my injury.  Fortunately for me the pain dissipated within a few hours and when I got home and pulled off my socks I still had all five little piggies.  There was blood around my big toe and the one next to it (does that toe have a name?) and a little purple bruising but that was it. That’s the whole story.

Starting to build any kind of relationship while on I.S.R., especially the one I’d like to have with Ms. Toaster, is difficult.  My life is so restricted right now that the times I do get to go anywhere it’s for a specific reason.  I get to see her at meetings, and if I go out for shopping or during my exercise time.  Tomorrow I’m going to run with her, I think that’s a very healthy way to be alone with her, but again, it’s only for an hour and she’s not yet allowed to be a visitor at home.  On the flip side, I think it’s a good thing to not be together every waking moment in the beginning of a relationship.  Not that I would get sick of her, but it adds the elements of anticipation and excitement in seeing each other, if only briefly, every other day or so.  The other day she came to meet me after work just to walk me to the bus stop.  I thought that was nice.  I mean, she walked from her place and back just to see me for maybe 20 minutes.  It made me feel good.  Somebody desires my company, something I haven’t thought in years.  Thank you, Ms. Toaster.  I can’t wait to see you tomorrow.

Alright folks, that’s all for tonight.  I’m tired and I’m going to bed.  Thank you to all of my followers and readers for your feedback and comments.  If I don’t reply, it’s because I don’t know how.  I will figure that out someday.  Goodnight everybody.

Camp Heartland

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VINCE

Three weeks before  I left prison I went out on my last Restorative Justice program.  R.J. is generally the only time we left the compound.  Once per week, nine of the 17 in my squad got excited about going out into the community to help those in need.  We’ve done everything from cleaning windows in a nursing home, to removing concrete by hand, to shoveling shit after a county fair.  So naturally when It was my turn to leave, I was looking forward to a good day.  Well I got what I asked for.  We packed all of our gear and headed out to Camp Heartland in Willow River.

It is a very beautiful campground.  I didn’t know anything about the place until I got there.  We piled out of the van and lined up and stood at attention and received our orders for the day.  It’s almost always some sort of cleaning detail and that is exactly what the plan was for that day.  Then an employee told us who goes there, and why.  Originally it was set up as a retreat for children with H.I.V.  Now it’s for any child with a life threatening  illness.   We were given a brief tour in which he pointed out the cabins we would be cleaning.  They were small but functional and full of dead and living creepy crawly insects.  Nearly all of the beds had a ‘waterproof’ sheet which startled me a little because there’s really only one thing you need that for.  Enough said.  At that point we gathered our supplies and got to work.

After a couple cabins, the officer in charge came and got me and said there was a project inside I could do, so I followed him in and I ended up cleaning a huge sort of room with a stage, costumes everywhere, and lots of muddy footprints.  To back up a little, on the way down to the basement, covering the walls from top to bottom were drawings and kids’ names and dates when they were there.  There were thousands of them, and later I would find even more outside.  I kept looking at the walls as I cleaned, and I started to notice other things about them.  And that’s when shit got real.  Next to or on the paintings themselves were little white crosses and dates.  I realized what it meant, and I couldn’t believe how many there were.  I decided to take a little break and wander around and I just kept seeing more names, more dates.  I felt emotion for the first time in a while.  I couldn’t believe that all of those kids had been here and left not knowing if they would ever make it back.

It was then that I really felt guilty about how much of my life I had wasted when these kids were dying off left and right.  How could it possibly be fair that I was out dealing drugs and being completely irresponsible in every situation and never got killed along the way while these kids were literally fighting for their lives?  I took some time to read a lot of the writings on the wall.  Every one of them was positive about their situation; little kids who truly appreciated whatever time they were with us in this world.  It is even making me a little misty-eyed as I type this.  I don’t ever pray, and I don’t believe in God, but right there, right then, I said my version of a prayer in my head the words of which only myself and they will ever hear.  I continued to clean.

For over five months I had been eating only prison food which sounds and tastes exactly like prison food.  That day, the employees that were there (there were no kids there when we went) cooked up a feast for us.  All things we hadn’t seen since our sentencing.  We sat around a table and for the first time in years I sat at a table with people and ate.  I ate three brownies for dessert after eating as many fresh vegetables, slices of garlic bread, and I’m drawing a blank on the rest of it but it was amazing, and we all felt like humans that day.

As we were leaving, I saw even more names.  These ones engraved in the sidewalk that circled a water fountain.  All of the had two dates, and I had to walk away after I saw the name of a four year old that had died the day before his birthday.  I can’t waste any more of my life, it’s just not fair to them.

If you ever are looking for a good organization to donate to, I recommend Camp Heartland.  Let them show these kids some fun before they leave us way too soon.

Another First Conquered

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VINCE

As some of you have read, and are excited to read about today, I started my new job today!  I haven’t said that in three years. I am sore from doing yard work yesterday at my aunt’s house.  It was a great day and I had a good talk with her, something I’ve needed for a long time. But that is all I am going to share on that.  Some things are just for me. and, I have so much to tell you about the job!

It’s not exactly like anything I’ve ever done before but it is in some ways similar to the work I did in the wrapper room at Kemps Ice Cream.  I work at A.M.G. Laminating in St. Paul.  Essentially as the rookie I will be floating from machine to machine learning the different functions, getting my hands caught in huge rolls of plastic wrap, moving palates of various sizes to and from various places, cleaning up, and generally just getting to know the processes.

Today I spent most of my time cutting the extra plastic film between segments of what will eventually be nice, shiny, laminated cardboard boxes for a well known company.  I would transfer them onto a palate and when it was full I would strap them down tight and circle the palate in a dizzying dance of plastic mayhem.  I was taught how to do this by a real cowboy although I suspect he was just a man wearing a cowboy hat.  Either way it was his last day and I was his replacement… Awkward!!  It was very clear to me that everybody thought I was great and funny and amazing at life, at least that’s what my interpretation was.  My very good friend from C.I.P. [boot camp], Mr. Doty, the same man who made it possible (along with my repeated attempts via e-mail, telephone calls, and personal visits) for me to work there, was in the background doing other things but we managed to wave at each other several times.  At one point I attempted to pick up the chair he was sitting in with a forklift but I failed.  He was far too quick.  Mr. Doty is very tall, and he likes it when I make jokes about that.  His lovely girlfriend, Ms. D (Unrelated. (I will protect her anonymity)) came by to visit him for our lunch break and I tried to explain to her that even though the sun is 93 million miles away from the earth, he sunburns faster because of how tall he is.  We all laughed.  Hahahahaa.  Well, you all know what laughter sounds like.  She also brought a foam missile launcher system that she purchased from Rainbow for 50 cents which we all had fun with.  It was a good day.  I had a lot of fun and got a lot done.  Hey, I’m a wrapper!

After work I arrived at home and my mother had made (ordered) an amazing blackened walleye dinner.  It was just what I needed after a hard day’s work.  Thank you.

The plumbers and electricians were here while I was at work today and now in my room I have a three by three gaping hole with exposed plumbing.  I guess it’s actually better than having the washer and dryer in this tiny room which is what I thought would be the case.  It’s all closing in around me here.  I think it’s about time to start looking for a different place to live.  The other morning I woke up to my mom yelling at the kitten. No! No! No!  Over, and over, and over.  She then started clapping at it.  This was all at about 7am.  She’s used to living alone, so I can understand not having to worry about other people.  But I go out of my way to be quiet.  I tiptoe down the halls, barely close the bathroom door because old houses make so much noise with so little provocation.  Ugh.  I don’t know.  I shouldn’t have put myself into this position, I get that.  And I’m grateful that I have a roof over my head, walleye in my belly, and another day sober.  And with that, I pass.

The Job

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Vince

Three weeks and a day after my release from incarceration I got a job. I’ve filled out applications and applied online to a number of establishments and businesses, but today I was hired by the first place at which I inquired of employment.  Actually, I had stopped in there a couple times and called a few more, and was about to give up completely when I received a message from my friend that works there saying somebody had just quit.  Then he called me and said I could start tomorrow, which I couldn’t do, but I will on Thursday.  Yay!  Thank you Mr. D.  You know who you are.

Last night my agents paid me a visit around 11pm in which they were finally giving me a little bit of a hard time about not yet finding employment.  They said they weren’t really worried yet, but if I didn’t have some form of employment within two weeks, we would be having a conversation.  Then they asked if I had tried a temp agency, to which I said I thought we weren’t allowed to do that, which is what I remember from orientation, or something, I don’t know.  I have on more than one occasion called into the voicemail system with a relevant question and received no response.  Again, I say, this is the common frustration among us newly released.  It’s all very confusing and sometimes I feel as if things I hear are contradictory.  That’s the way it was in boot camp but I think it was more to see if they could get a reaction out of us there. Out here it wouldn’t really make sense to tell us anything that wouldn’t put us on the right track, so I think maybe I’m imagining a few things because they don’t make sense.  Does that make sense?  I could also be losing my mind.  I do think I should write things down more often.

I had a really bad dream again last night in which I hooked back up with my old drug dealer (who, in real life, is in a Federal prison in California for 15 years) and was holed up in a hotel room with a  huge bag of meth.  I don’t know what kind of hotel it was but it was odd.  I remember a knock at the door, and when I opened it up there were a bunch of high school kids who looked at me as if they were very disappointed in me and then left.  When I turned around I saw the huge bag of meth just sitting on the nightstand under a brightly lit lamp, but I didn’t seem to care.  I noticed that in general, I don’t ever have conversations in dreams.  Or, at the very least I don’t think I ever say anything.  Well, that was the end of the dream, and in real life it was morning time, and I got up.  I can’t wait for my meeting tonight.

Tomorrow I will be spending the day doing some manual labor and general maintenance for my dear aunt Connie.  That I have scheduled from 9AM until 7PM and with a morning run and an evening meeting I wont hardly be home at all, which is something I’m looking forward to.  Connie is a survivor of cancer and a hero to me since childhood.  I have a lot of making up to do in our relationship since I took a vacation for so many years.  She was one of those people that tried to help me out when she found out I had relapsed oh so many years ago.  So, she didn’t make the friends list.  I will work hard tomorrow digging out a tree stump, trimming some trees, and what-not.  But what I really want is the opportunity to talk with her one-on-one, an opportunity I have not had as of yet.  An opportunity for me to apologize, make amends, and move on. And if you’re reading this, Connie, pretend you haven’t when I see you please. 🙂

Coming up on the blog: First day on the job!  Please share this blog with your friends.  The goal as always is to help the still suffering addict, and make me a famous writer in the process!

They

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VINCE

Today was my friend’s daughter’s birthday. Audrey turned 10, which officially marks the point at which you can write numbers instead of spell them. Exciting! Anyhow, for whatever reason, a few other people from down in Southeastern Minnesota where I lived for a number of years, were sending me pictures of myself from back in the day, when my main source of nutrition was beer and weed. It brought back a lot of good, fun memories. In these pictures, I wasn’t engaging in illegal activities, and it appeared that for the most part I wasn’t hammered drunk. In  one I was hugging Audrey (the birthday girl) when she was maybe three or four, and she had a huge smile on her face, which she almost always does. I don’t have children, so she is the closest thing to it for me and I was there with her growing up for years. I was around for seven of her first ten years, missing the first and last two.

I miss all of my friends from the Fillmore County area. But with her I feel as if I left her without an explanation or understanding of why I was gone. I left the area because I got hooked on meth again, because somebody I used with many years ago moved to Fountain and I just went for it. It happened so fast. It took six months from the time I first used to stop talking to my friends, get fired from my job, and start selling. I managed to get a job in Lanesboro for one season but I cut all ties with the area once the tourist season was over, and went to work on the road full-time as  a meth dealer. I lost my apartment but I didn’t care, I didn’t plan on going back.

I wrote to a lot of my friends when I was locked up. Not all of them wrote me back as much as I thought they should have. I don’t know why I expected them to after I just threw my life in the trash and left them all without a word, but I did. I wrote Audrey a few times. I tried to explain to her what I had done and where I was in a way that a nine-year old could understand. I don’t know how well I did but it must have been alright because she wrote me back. Twice. And those letters made me feel like I still had a soul.

Every period in my life when I abused drugs, and sold them, something happened to me. A transformation took place in which I was no longer able to care about people. More specifically, my family, or any close friends that would not have approved of my drug use. When my friend died (the one I wrote about in a post recently) I had no emotional reaction to it. I remember getting the call from her partner and my first honest thought was, “Fuck. She owed me $300.” Then I went over to see Christie and when I arrived she seemed quite nonchalant about the situation. She had just come back from the grocery and liquor stores, and she asked if we could get high and we did.

It was not uncommon for a person’s life to be crumbling down around them and have no care in the world. People losing their children, their homes, their loved ones, but continuing to do anything other than get a job to get high. And of course there I was ready to listen to their story and sell them a bag. It took me a while to get over the fact that I didn’t have any morals. Thankfully I worked on it in treatment.  I can relate this in the opposite way to how A.A. works for people. When we were getting high we associated only with those types of people because we could understand each others’ pain. We didn’t do anything constructive about it, but we can now. And we are. I am. And as hard as it is for me to deal with society as a whole right now, there is a small group of people I meet with every Tuesday, Wednesday, and Saturday nights that understands me just as I do them. I wish I could go to more meetings. But that’s my topic for the next post.

Dreams and Dentistry

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VINCE

I woke up this morning to my cell phone ringing. The number was restricted which means that it’s one of my I.S.R. agents calling. Most likely, as it was in this case, they are at the front door needing to be let in. For only a brief moment, I was terrified. I had a dream in which I went on the run because I was scheduled to go to court for violating the conditions of my release. I’m not sure what for, but it wasn’t a using dream, which can be so real that they often carry over into reality for some terrifying moments of confusion upon being awoken.

In the dream I was just about to call an old using friend from Rochester to come get me. I knew that I was going back to prison so I wanted to go get high for as long as I could before going back. Even in the dream I knew it sounded bad, but I made the call anyhow. That’s when I woke up to my cell phone. When I opened the door up to the agent I saw the sealed plastic bag with a piss test cup in it. If I was nervous I didn’t show it. I knew I was clean, but the dream was still running through my mind.

When I went into county jail after my sentencing, I had some crazy dreams. Vivid. Colorful. And absolutely wild. This is fairly common when quitting meth. I had a recurring dream in which I was in a different jail, and friends of mine were on work release and would bring in drugs, cigarettes, and paraphernalia and I would think that I was sneaking them back into my cell. When I woke up, I believed that I had actually been successful and was shocked to check my pockets and find them empty, no matter how many times I had the hallucination. And everything, like the air, the background, was always green. It’s really hard to explain dreams most of the time, but these never went away. For about two weeks I had a hard time distinguishing reality from psychotic dream. And then they were gone. Last night’s dream had a real feel to it, but nothing like those when coming off of drugs. In the end, which was this morning, I passed my drug test. Doing drugs in a dream has never yielded a positive result, just the fear of one.

On another note, yesterday I went to the U of M School of Dentistry Clinic to become a Dentist. But, they said they “weren’t hiring” and that I had no qualifications and that I had no business wearing a smock and scrubs and what was I doing with a drill. No, no, no, none of that happened. I was there for my first dental exam in a decade. A scary thing for an ex meth user, and former prisoner where they don’t let you see a dentist unless you’ve been in for three years, Ugh. Anywho, after enduring an hour of a new x-ray “technology”, I found out that not only do I have really long roots, I have zero cavities! After all of that abuse, nothing. Since I don’t know how to upload photos from my phone to this blog, I will let you find them for yourself on my Facebook page. Well, I don’t know how to add a link either, so if you don’t already know, my name is Vincent Maertz, and I’m an addict. I hope you enjoy my pictures, and my daily response to life via social media. I know I do. My student dentist was awesome. She put up with me and my jokes, and didn’t cringe when I opened my mouth. My teeth really aren’t too bad, but I have a broken front tooth, and I haven’t smiled fully for years. I get that fixed in three weeks. I can’t wait.

Forty words left. hmm. Well, I’ve got the house to myself tonight, and other than writing this, I’ve been watching It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, and am going to watch a movie on Net-Flix tonight. I’ll tell you about it next time!

Dear Vince

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VINCE

This is another one of my treatment assignments. My dear mother has been waiting for me to publish this for a while since it’s actually written by her.  Well, sort of.

It was written by me during a phase of treatment in which we were learning about the ripple effect. Not quite like the butterfly in China causing a hurricane in Iowa.  Or whatever.  This is more like how my actions, however insignificant they may have seemed at the time, affected my friends, family, and society.  The assignment was to write a one page letter from a victim in our ripple.  I chose my mom pretty quickly because I believe my actions have had the greatest effect on her over time.  It wasn’t supposed to be hurtful or degrading, but simply state, from her point of view,  my actions and how they made her feel. It was well received by counselor and peers, but I still don’t know if I really hit the mark. I guess I’ll find out soon. I wrote it from the time just after my arrest for my current charge.  Here goes:

Vince, I haven’t seen or heard from you in so long.  But for now at least I know where you are and that you are safe.  When I heard you were arrested I can’t say I was surprised but I was still sad and hurt.  On the other hand I was grateful that you might have another chance at recovery.

In your nearly five years of sobriety, you shined.  You were always a favorite with the kids in both our, and our extended families.  They looked up to you. They admired you, and loved you. We all loved you since the day you were born.  Then, without any warning, you disappeared.  For the second time in a decade, you fell off the face of the earth.  Because of your history, we knew more or less what was going on.  And from our experience we knew that any attempt to communicate with you would have been shot down.

After a couple years, the second time around, you showed up and said flat out you were using again and if I wanted to be part of your life I needed to accept that.  Well, I did.  It was tough.  You drank so much and so openly with your friends but you seemed happy.  But every time I would bring up the future, or school, or family, you shut down and didn’t want to talk about it. So I stopped bringing it up.

Then after eight years you were gone again.  The closest friends you have ever had couldn’t tell me where you were.  They were just as confused and upset as I was.  For a while I was so afraid that you would show up dead in an alley or on the side of the road, but then you showed up on the news, and you were finally somewhere again.

Since then we have become closer than ever, as a result in large part, by you being open and honest about everything with me and more importantly yourself.  I’m glad you are excited about being where you are. I hear in your voice and in your letters the same enthusiasm about recovery you had when you left Hazelden and Florida.  Me and the rest of the family will be here for you when you get out.  You will always have our full support in every way as long as you remain active in your recovery.

—

And that’s it.  When I was writing it I recall feeling sad for the first time in treatment.  I don’t often feel emotions, and rarely do they make me feel bad but this assignment did just that.  Even though that wasn’t the point of it, I thought of a lot of bad times I’ve had with her and because of being high or drunk nearly all of my adult life.  I hope you get out of it what you can mother, and I’m sure I’ll hear your thoughts on it in the morning!

For the rest of you. Well my day to day life is a struggle.  I don’t have a job yet.  I am not worried. My agents are not worried.  But I can tell my mom is.  I communicate with the world three times a week for an hour at A.A. meetings, through this blog and on Facebook.  I do not like talking to people outside of my family or very few friends, all of which I was incarcerated with.  Shit.  I’m over 700 words.  Until next time.

Uncomfortably numb

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VINCE

Sorry for the delay in posting this. I planned on writing it after my meeting last night and, well, I failed. It was a great meeting. Only the second I have been able to attend since my release because of scheduling difficulties and a complete inability to communicate with my I.S.R. agents. We are supposed to call a voicemail number anytime we deviate even slightly from our schedule that we submit every week. I should back up and say that every morning before 10 AM I have to call the voicemail with my schedule for the day, which I basically just read off of the written schedule I have already submitted. Sound redundant yet? Anywho, for the first week, I had the times for all of my meetings incorrect, and I had not left myself nearly enough time for transportation so I called every day I had a meeting to ask permission to alter and nobody ever called me back. EVER! So I stayed at home which is the protocol for when there’s any confusion.  We do not have a number that we can call to communicate with a person. I have spoken with many of my fellow ex-offenders and they say they are experiencing the same frustrations. But hey, what a luxury to not be behind bars, right?

St. Paul is what I consider to be my hometown. I haven’t lived here in a decade, but there are still some familiarities about it. In the nearly two weeks since my release from C.I.P., I have progressed from complete confusion and overload, to confusion and overload. I’ve gone out grocery shopping a few times and always I have trouble. Here are some examples of what makes me want to run….. Did you know that at Aldi (kind of like a grocery store) they don’t have bags to put your groceries in? True story. So after I take a quick tour around the store looking for anything at all in a size larger than individual, and canned fake duck meat, per special request from mom, I realize I need to go somewhere I can stretch out my very limited funds. There were only two people in line until I decided I wanted to check out what I had, then everybody seemed to sense that I was on a tight two-hour leave from house arrest and they all fell into line before me. Move forward ten minutes– So the clerk asks me if I want to buy bags and I just stare, as if I don’t understand the question, because I don’t. So she asks me again and I say no and she just puts my stuff back in the cart. Fortunately for me, I had been sent along my way with a number of tasks to complete along with all my shopping for the week so I had a bag of bags that I think I was supposed to bring to a store, or maybe throw in a river. I don’t know. And then I went to Cub Foods where everything went much smoother.

I think the term anxiety would suffice. I’ve never been diagnosed but it seems like that’s what I’m dealing with. Wherever I am, I want to leave. I blame others for being the cause but it is probably me. For six months we were not allowed to speak or even look at people without permission, we were told what to do, never having to ask questions. Now out here I am left to my own devices. I don’t know how to talk to people. I can’t sit still. I bummed a cigarette from somebody after the meeting last night just so I could talk to them. Then I left and drove straight home with 45 minutes of free time left, and I don’t get any free time. What do people do? O.K. I give up. Mother is hammering…. next time. Bye.