Thunder Road

I have another journal at why do anything when you can forget everything? and I tend to update that more frequently than I do here. I like it here and all but I just don't have the time to update both although I am sure going to start making time as I see livejournal has sure done a lot of updates and I like them!

Well, I woke up this morning in a fantastic mood and I am still shaking my head in near disbelief cause this is truly a unique position for me. Don’t want to lose that vibe either! Jim even had a coffee all ready for me to drink when I opened my eyes. Wonderful. We will also be getting the truck back today around twelve so another good thing. Finally. Looks like the bill is going to be about $4900 but at least we will now have a vehicle with a brand new engine and a one year warranty on the rebuild. Oh yeah.

Now if I could just get my eyes to stop watering all would be good. At least my nose is not running as much as normal. It seems the moment that I get into work, my eyes literally start tearing. They don’t quite go bloodshot but they have this sheen to them, they kind of glisten. I will be leaving to grab my dose of methadone in a half an hour or so so hopefully this will put an end to this.

This past week and weekend we were pretty low on funds. I don’t get paid until this Friday and Jim’s parents were away so he wasn’t getting the normal money that he gets from them. Thank goodness they got back yesterday cause they dropped a hundred in our account so I was able to grab some groceries last night after work plus grab a couple of pills. The only things around were 100mg morphine so I only grabbed a few of them. I used to be a huge morphine fan way back when but lately I find them irritating at best although they do seem to break through my dose of methadone and the dilaudids definitely do not. I did a hit last night but left the rest for Jim cause he is not yet on methadone and is not sure if he even wants to go on it. I got off on the morphine just fine though.

The moment that I did it I felt my insides start to warm up and then tingle. I could feel my face turning a bright red. Morphine affects me beautifully when I nail that vein just right. Then the itch starts, that warm, comforting itch. Gotta love that. It takes about ten minutes for my skin to calm down. It is so obvious to anyone that knows when I do a hit of morphine. Must be that fair, Irish complexion of mine!

He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother

For the past decade my brother and I have had a tenuous relationship at best. A lot of this has to do with his choice of partners unfortunately. Try as I might I have never been able to warm up to his wife, someone that I actually knew for seven years prior to their dating. They actually hooked up because of Jim and I but that is a story for another day. Since my father died almost three years ago and since the birth of my brother's third child, we have seen little of each other. We work opposite hours and we no longer share similar interests. We did meet for brunch a week or so ago after not seeing each other for a few months. It wasn't as awkward as I expected but not as comfortable as I had hoped.

Of course the conversation started to travel in the direction of addiction, etc and the moment that this started I attempted to stop it. He was about to go all self-righteous on me and I was not in the mood to entertain this, especially from someone who smokes a fatty every single day without fail whose wife is a falling down closet alcoholic. The one thing that I did manage to sqeeze in was my asking for an explanation as to the differance in my life to his. His answer? Responsibility. Excuse me?

OK yes I live in this 24ftx45ft apartment in a congested, downtown city but appropriate for me, I guess. Maybe I'm just habitually drawn to it. I walk, take the bus and drive from time to time. Taxis are for running late, and late nights. So I live a pretty low profile lifestyle. I go to work, pay my bills (eventually) and observe from a distance (frequently).

My brother, married with three children and newly chained to a mortgage in the suburbs, judging me at this junction of our lives. Please...How can you say something nice to a statement like this? What should I say? "Well, I'm not working 14 hours a day to maintain a too big house that always needs repairs, to make monthly debt and insurance payments on a car that loses value every minute, to buy a flat panel TV." What do you get out of it?

I do believe money can buy happiness. But happiness for me isn't necessarily a big house, car, or job title, offspring, STUFF to show for myself. Almost all of what I have is in my experience and growth, so it's hard for certain people to see my success. And sometimes hard for me to see it but I know deep down that it exists. At least I am fairly confident that it does.