Life Goes on
Most of you who read my blog on a regular basis, know I go to AA, and quit drinking and doing drugs a little over 7 years ago. I joke all the time about trading cocaine for merino, and champagne for alpalca.
"Why spend your money on crack, when you can buy koigu?" Sometimes, I think I am too flip about. Sometimes, I think I take my sobriety for granted. It's been a long, long time since I have thrown up, passed out, forgotten what I did the night before, woke up and didn't know where I was, or woke up to find I had depleted my bank account. This week, I was once again reminded how "gosh, darn luck I am to be sober" and how sadly there are a lot of people walking around that just don't GET IT.
On the morning, of July 7th, I woke up feeling sorry for myself. I was thinking about our house and our mortgage; my job and my lack of free time; my best friend who hasn’t talked to me in 6 months; the home owner who had me re-do his location agreements 6 times and still wasn’t signing; the director who had seen all the locations on the movie three times and still wanted to scout next Saturday.
All and all, it was just the typical Monday morning pity party, and then I walked by a tractor trailer who had got stuck underneath the elevated train. For some damn reason, this guy decided to drive his tractor trailer under this overpass. He ripped off the top of his semi. He was having a bad day. I was just dealing with “luxury” problems.
Things could be worse, they could be a hell of a lot worse, and about an hour later, my luxury bad day turned into a “real” bad day.
When we left our house in GA, we turned the keys and our house over to a 24 year old. By all accounts, my husband and I knew that the young lady we turn the house over to was a kid. Our attitude was it would probably be okay though, because her dad lived less than three miles away, and we have a great next door neighbor, family down the road, and good neighbors on the block. I knew this kid was a slob, but I figured having to hire a cleaning crew 6 months down the road was a small price to pay to keep our cats alive and our house from being broken into.
Both DH and I went through all the rules. “You can have guys over, but no big parties. You can drink in the house, but don’t do drugs. Lock the house before you leave, Run the AC, but try to keep the cost down.” The usual crap you tell a house sitter. I sent her money once a month for cat food, and we knew that she was staying at the house, but our next door neighbor who works a day job and owns a business was going to be the one who really kept the house from burning down.
Eight short weeks later, we get the call that all absentee home owner’s dread. Last night, a 21 year old boy died in our bed. The long and short of it is that our house sitter had given the key to our house to her friend, and her friend had brought a guy over and the kid had been taking pills and drinking and had a seizure. The rest of the afternoon the phone kept ringing.
At first, DH thought he was going to quit his job and get on a plane and go back to GA and deal with everything. I thought he was being over paranoid, but about 5 hours later the reality started settling in, and I was starting to think he should get on a plane.
I think the thing that was and has been the most unsettling to me, is how little I care about the young man who died in my house, and how much I keep worrying about my cat. I also kept obsessively thinking about the smell.
So at 3am on July 8th, when I should of been sleeping, I found myself up on the internet looking up crime scene clean up. I also kept thinking about the girl who woke up next to this boy. I met the girl, and I remember when I met her, thinking that she was a walking traffic accident. I quit drinking and doing drugs because too many late nights of partying and too many hangovers left me frightened. I spent a lot of sleepless nights wishing I would either die or fall asleep and not really carrying which option it was, as long as something would kill my head. My husband doesn’t get how this could happen. I “get it” and wish I didn’t.
Today is July 12th, five days have passed, and the short version, is we didn't have to hire a clean up crew or fly home. We have an amazing support system in place in Georgia. Our neighbor, and our very shook up, young house sitter cleaned the house and the bed. D Nephew changed the locks, and DN called me daily to give me the updates. She also said the ONLY 4 words during all this that really mattered.
"I'll clean it up."
The past two days, I was on a tech scout. I worked from 7am-10pm, and had absolutely no time to think about the house until this morning. When I woke up this morning, my first thought was that I had to get my ass to a meeting, and check in. My second thought was that I really needed to spend some time knitting this weekend.
Now if you have made it this far into reading this post, I will tell you why I posted this particular photo this morning.
Many days, I feel like my sobriety has turned me from a sexy, hip party girl into an old prude.
Sometimes, I miss the late nights of drug use, the insanity of walking into a bar and hitting on the first cute guy I see, and "well.... quite frankly .....
going home with him."
And yet, seven years later, I still don't drink and I still go to meetings, because quite frankly I don't want to wake up next to a dead guy. And the house, the bed, all our world belongings they are just objects. The most important things that I own are the things that own me: my animals, my knitting, my career, my friends, my family and my sobriety.




































