Ten years without a drink

Monday 7/6/26

The heat finally broke on Sunday. My sleep schedule is all disordered. I've been falling asleep at times when I'd normally be waking up to start the day. The heat was the main cause, coupled with the Melatonin matter I detailed earlier. I've seen the Red Sox' recent late-starting West Coast games in full (almost).

Yesterday wasn't exactly a harbinger of autumn. It was still 80 degrees. But after the prior several days, it felt like a relief. You could be outside and move around again. Whereas, the day before, I was sweating just walking the block and a half to Starbucks on Atlantic Avenue. The air was like these tongues of fire lapping against you. Unbearable.

I took myself to Charlestown where I ran five circuits in the Bunker Hill Monument. I came in with a big number in mind, but I've regressed a bit with the days away. A combination of that and what was still summer heat and air. There's a big difference between doing stairs at 80 degrees and doing them at 63. You're compromised with the former. You don't have as much control as you'd like. You're impacted by this other factor, this thing in addition to where your legs and your lungs are at. I feel like if it were 63 degrees I'd be happier with my Monument efforts, but I don't know that for sure.

Having completed my five circuits, I began heading back to Boston, but slowly, thinking this wasn't good enough and I really should return to the Monument. I reversed course a couple times, then turned around again (man in conflict), until finally continuing on back up the hill and into the Monument for a second time on the day, where I did five more circuits. One of those cases of me inevitably being me. Loads of sweat. Again, the summer air. But I did ten circuits in total yesterday, which brought my total since 3/11/26 to 400 Monument circuits. One can see, with me being at 395, how I would have preferred the nice, round number instead. I also walked three miles and did 100 push-ups.

I guess the notable bit of news from yesterday was that it marked 3640 days, or 520 weeks, or ten years, without a drink of alcohol for me. A truly bad person I've known since the late 1990s whom I counted on and who betrayed me time and time again has been the biggest test to maintaining this abstinence over the past year. There have been occasions where a bottle is in front of me. There I am. Looking at it. Inches away.

After everything I've been through, everything my life is, this was something--this person--that was the last thing I could afford to have happen to me. The totality of their betrayal, their selfishness, thousands of lies--actually thousands, and yet this same person would never be able to bring themselves to say, "I am a chronic liar, I have a problem"--their manipulation, as they told me time and again I could count on them for everything and anything, when the truth is that they could never be a friend to anyone and I could count on them for nothing, not even the flimsiest show of respect or courtesy, and as I helped this person and his family and was always there for them, and even as I still help them. I set everything aside. This hell I'm in, what I'm going through, what they've done to me, and it's a case of, "I'm here for you," and me actively trying to figure out what I can do for them and then doing it. Each time I do, there's just more abuse that comes back to me, more hurt. The selfishness, the heartlessness.

I think it's the heartlessness that stops me cold more than anything else. The wanton, needless heartlessness. I don't understand how anyone could make these choices and choose to do that to someone else who has shown them so much love, and is up against so much, as they live a life that isn't endurable. It's like it's sport. It just means nothing to them. Coleridge wrote that Iago in Shakespeare's Othello is a character of motiveless malignity. That is, there's no reason to his evil doing. In Coleridge's view, mind you, not mine. He does it to do it. Not to get himself stuff. Simply to do it. It's nothing off his back. This is the closest I've ever come to something like that, but it's worse, because I can come up with reasons why Iago did his evil. I think he did get things out of it.

This person has been the thing to finish me off. In the context of all that has happened, everything they know, and what they still chose to do time and time and time and time again. Without any care, guilt. Just more lies. The letters to that kid? That was this guy's child. Me stepping up to offer to home school his other kid (for free; as something I just would have fit in somehow) when she wasn't able to go to school? Same guy. He's lied to my mother over multiple years. It never ends.

I understand why publishing is what it is and has been to and for me. There are so many reasons. Logical reasons. They're here in this record. Laid out, discussed. As that which in turn has to be combated or gotten around. It starts with identifying, knowing. You have to know what you're dealing with. And why the world is what it is and how that affects me like it does. It makes sense.

But this person is worse than those things and those people, because there's no reason for any of it. None of it had to be done. If I was bleeding out from a hole in my neck, this person--who would tell you he's my brother, which numbers among the most absurd, almost comically false remarks I've ever heard or experienced--who once said to me, "I would help you bury the body," as some kind of metaphor for how he'd do anything for me--wouldn't so much as lift a finger to plug that hole if I was right there next to him. They have been the hardest test over this last year to just not saying, "Screw it, I can't anymore," and drinking.

The horrible truth is you can't have no one. This is what I've had.

Another horrible truth is there's a tipping point. A "I can't do this anymore" point. That's a result of a kind of massing--a piling and piling and piling. Which is where the line about the straw breaking the camel's back comes from. But it's also contextual. I've just had so much happen to me and been made to live with so many horrible things that I couldn't take on this betrayal. Not after Molly. Not after publishing. Not after what the world is and how it appears that there could never be anything here for me that's good in it. The aloneness. Having no one. Being hated for what I am and can do. Paying the price of my genius. And also the person I am. The person I've fought to be despite all of this suffering and adversity and aloneness. The better I've become in everything, the worse life has gotten. This person, after all that, and with them knowing all of that, and still electing to do what they've done, caring so little, and doing it for no good reason, has been a kind of bridge too far for me here through 2025 and 2026. And because I can think of an endless amount of things at once, it's like it's always here with me now.

I think about my father. If you lied to my father--we're talking one time--he'd basically be done with you, unless it meant a great deal to someone else he loved for him not to be. He would think you were a piece of shit. He would think you weren't a person of honor, integrity, character. Makes sense. It's almost certainly true. If you were going to have a relationship with my father--if you were going to be his friend, or a person worthy of his strength, his love, just as he endeavored to be a person worthy of you--and you had lied to him, you'd have to atone and show that that's not really who you were.

He'd give you that second chance. None of this was ever said. It's how I knew the man. You'd have to earn that trust. That respect. The idea of my father knowing someone who had lied to him thousands of times...and still being there for that person on top of it, still actively getting up and thinking, "What can I do today to help this person?" as I've done with this person I know, is enough to explode my brain. It's an impossible concept. My father would...I don't want to say that he'd hate this man. I don't want to attribute hate to my father's heart. But he would think he was the very worst kind of people.

The way this has made me feel...that someone who knows...who knows all of it...my situation...which no one else could endure...could hurt me this way without compunction thousands of times over...it kills me. It makes me feel so awful about myself, too. So alien and unlovable. Nothing has hurt me, person-wise, like this man. And I really only know pain as it is. I've only known pain for so long.

You like the word literally? People use it all the time, right? Use it wrongly. I'll use it correctly. This person literally wouldn't send me a four-word text if my very life depended on it. A single text. They'd have me die. I'm not in anyone's face. I'm not in some constant contact. I ask so very little. I give so very much.

One of their techniques was to tell me I'd make a billion dollars. This was said over and over again. Predictions about my house and other houses. I begged them to just deal in the reality with me. You want to be seen and heard. That counts for so much. Even when you have no hope, as I have no hope. Yes, I know, I keep going as if I have hope. I create as if there's some point to it. You could argue that that's faith, but I don't think I have any of that either. If I do, it comes from something beyond me, even if it is indeed in me, and if indeed maybe even hope is, too, though I can't recognize it as such. Molly was going to come running back because she'd "need me." Not that I wanted anything to do with her. A different evil.

It was one crazy thing after another. No accounting for where riches would be coming from. You're make money, there's a chain of connected things. There's no money here. There isn't money to be had based on what is presently in place. Everything would need to change. If that's for one person, that's for one person. But what exists right now couldn't do it. What could come into existence that did? Where does the money come from, even if the world read, and no one reads? It'd be on me to change that. I am trying.

But this person talked as if there was a magical fairy about to hand me a billion dollars. That was the number--billion. Then they'd go right back to their immeasurably easier life and leave me to it. To face it all alone. Without even being willing to see and hear me. It's me. Anything may be possible. Because it's me. I try and believe that. I'm not going to give up on what I'm trying to do--change the world to the good more than it's ever been changed, at the time in its history when it needs to be changed more than ever--until I don't have another second of fight left in me.

But the reality right now is the reality. And here was someone who didn't act like they cared if I lived or died saying, "Oh, well, you'll make a billion dollars soon," and then basically pulling a see-ya-wouldn't-want-to-be-ya and putting their back to me. Then later they'd say, "What? I've spoken thousands of times about a series of events that could result in all of this happening. It could happen thousands of ways." I'd say, "Name one. Give me one hypothetical." And you know what makes this person so deadly? They never could. In a trillion years, they'd never be able to. They never have. But they believe they did. Even as I say, "Give me one," and they can't.

It's a kind of sickness. Something pathological. And actually a lot like alcoholism. They say that an alcoholic has to be able to say and accept what they are. Until they do, there's no hope for them. No chance of change. Growth. They have to be able to say the words. This person I know could never do that. They'd dance around them. Make excuses. I think it's impossible for them to say the words. I don't even think they could say, "I'm a liar. I lie constantly. I lie reflexively. I lie automatically." They're enabled elsewhere. There are no standards of morality. They don't answer to any kind of moral code within. They don't hold themselves accountable. And no one else does either.

In the above conversation, after I'd made the valid point, and said, "Just give me one example, one way, one way in theory," they'd turn it around and say I was attacking them, blaming me. My tone is the same. I put anger aside in my life. That was something I had to do or else I wouldn't be able to do what I need to do. I have been wronged and discriminated against to a historically unprecedented degree.

Look at these publishing people. I can't afford to let anger rule me. I've had to put it off in this repository. In a separate compartment. I am kind. I am gentle. When I have to put things in this record about those people, I detest doing so. I often put it off. It's principle. You can't just let someone destroy you, deny you any chance, and just take it, go along with it.

You can't let evil people try and keep what the world does need from that world because of the hate and envy in their own contriving, blackened hearts. You have to do the right thing. No matter how hard it is. No matter how much courage it takes. Balls. Strength. Self-respect is part of it. You have to be able to live with yourself inside yourself. It's one thing to know what the right thing to do is; it's another to do it. I made that decision after taking twenty years of abuse and discrimination to do the right thing and speak out. There was nothing left to do. This was the right and the only thing. To do this on top of everything...on top of creating...it is more difficult than a person could imagine.

I am kinder and gentler than I was in my past, including in much easier times, and even in the happy times of my boyhood. I was a kind person then, but it's different now. Who I am is something I work hard on every day of my life. That has informed my art. How I understand the possibilities of what I'm able to do and create. The power those things have as a result. Being me requires what I'll call an infinite amount of mental discipline. I don't attack this person. It's just a simple and fair question that they can't answer.

Nonetheless, I'm here today, as in alive. For this minute as I type these words. I can't guarantee later on. But I'm here now. This urge comes over me...it's so strong...to just do it. I could see myself not planning in a given minute to kill myself, and then being dead moments after. Just jump off the diving board. I'm also not drinking as of right now.

I've gone through this numerous times before, but yesterday wasn't the "for real" ten year anniversary, but rather the "you messed up counting off these weeks" anniversary, which is what I count as the official anniversary. It was either in April or May 2016 that I stopped drinking. It certainly wasn't July. And last year I believe the anniversary was back in June (I believe), but I have no need nor does it do me any good to look that up and see those words in this record for that day. Because nothing would have changed save for it to keep getting worse. I count by the week, and, as one would know, track this by the week in these pages, rather than simply having an anniversary date because I have to engineer little things like that to try and keep myself going/alive.

These very short term goals, as nothing else, longer term, is ever going to work out in what is worse than hell would be for me. Living this life, my life, is worse than being in hell. If all of the agents of the worlds beyond this one got together and said, "Okay, knowing this guy as we do, and him being what he is, how do we tailor an existence for him that would hurt more than any other could?" If I wasn't the strongest person there's ever been, I'd have killed myself a long time ago. My strength is part of what's a curse. My ability. All of it.

But that spring 2016 date--whatever that date may be--is important, or something I think about often, because if I hadn't stopped drinking when I did, I know that I would have died in August 2016 with the pneumonia and the 107 degree temperature. There's just no way a man who was drinking twenty to thirty units of alcohol a day over a long period of time who had heart issues would have survived that. But in those months, I'd had time enough to get strong. Not strong like I am now, but I had a serious bounce back with my heart health. That saved my life that summer. Which I don't look at as a good thing. How could I?

In many ways, I'm like someone who ought to be dead who is still here. Like a living ghost. Or like dead Thomas. I never imagined when I was first writing that story, or in all the time I've been working on it since--and it's still not fully, officially done--that I'd come to see such a connection, but as I go on like this, as I'm dead in all of these different ways, while being more alive, too, than a human has ever been, for this I know, and this journal bears out, and certainly the work, which the evil people of an evil industry won't let the world see, which the world probably wouldn't look at anyway, because that is the world, unless it changes, which is really, as much as anything, what I've been trying to do, and what my work is for, it's clearer and clearer to the point of an almost supernal transparency. "Dead Thomas" isn't even most about dead Thomas. If you ever got to see the thing, though, you, person who may be reading these words...you'd just think it was the greatest thing there'd ever been. You wouldn't be able to believe that someone could do that. That it was humanly possible. But I digress...

What can I say about these ten years? Nothing good as pertains to not drinking. I'd be dead if I hadn't stopped. Is it better that I'm alive? Why? To suffer more? People hate me more because of this thing I've done. To be able to quit drinking like I did, with my life being nothing but pain, no love, constant discrimination, thousands of people hating me, blocking me, wishing me dead, no friends, in this apartment, nothing to live for, envied, feared, shunned...is unthinkable. To do it in that situation, which has only worsened and worsened...to do it alone. To do it through nothing but will power. No meetings, no sponsors. Not even credit from the few people I do know, who in many ways don't know me at all. They think, "It's this god-like person, he can do anything." Like it's easy for me.

Am I proud of having done this? No. I'm not really proud of anything. I expect things of myself. "Mouse" I may be proud of.

I posted something about this on Threads yesterday. The ten years. All of eight people hit that like button. Again, because it's me. People would prefer to see me fail and be less than what I am and unable to do what I do and create what I create (look at publishing). The public demands an average man, said Thoreau. It despises a person of greatness, especially one of absolute greatness. So it goes. If I was a woman who'd bragged about not drinking for a weekend, you know how that would go. But it takes only a sentence from me to know how different I am, never mind if you know more, read more. This has been another reason for people to loathe, envy, fear me, and discriminate against me.

There's been no benefit to not drinking, unless you want to count my health, which would only matter if things ever changed for me and I wasn't in this position and the things I said above were no longer true. That will never happen. Or, put another way, there is nothing in the entire world, nothing my imagination can create, that I can conceive of being less likely to happen. But I've done it anyway, as if...just in case. Or like that's what I'm still getting up and working for regardless.