i'll ride the wave where it takes me

i'll open up. release me. pearl jam's release from the 10 album which i recently found out was released in august of, get this 1991. wtf? i sure remember it being later than that, but i was wrong. also, as a side note, temple of the dog(say hello 2 heaven, hunger strike) was before pearl jam and soundgarden. they were a huge part of the grunge take off in the early 90's. alright, now that i've gotten that out of the way......i went to a party last night at my girl julie's house after i got back from my work thing in houma. i saw my boy cheese, his girl jess(it was jessie's bday), chase, jenny t, julie, and t-bone. it was pretty cool. i normally get pissed when people tell me how "good" i look. i'm not really sure why. i guess i'm embarrassed by the whole thing, but amongst true friends these comments become compliments in my head. everyone was drinking and it didn't bother me at all, on the contrary, it actually was quite enjoyable. i remember having full-bellied laughs several times and thinking about how much fun it was to be amongst friends again in my new element. it was fun before, but only for me. see, in my old way i'm sure i was more of a liability to the group than an asset. anyway, it was fun. i stayed up til like 2:30 and had to bring a guy to work this am at 7:30 and be at work for 8, awesome. it also had occured to me last night that, once again, alcohol and drugs was a solution and not a problem. i know that, but someone engaged in a conversation with me about my history and i thought about getting into an in depth conversation, but figured she wouldn't understand, "really" understand. yeah, so i thought about all the times i would smoke weed and all that stuff, it would make me feel important. at first it was a good feeling to be the guy who could get whatever people wanted to get high on. that was my identity, my modus operendi, and i loved it. it was a solution to my incomplete life. the problem never became evident until mora's wedding weekend a few years ago. i'll give you a quick run down of the situation. i've been friends with blake since kindergarten and have had a closer than casual to extremely close relationship with him since high school. i helped him through a pretty tough break-up back in 2001, he stood in my wedding, and i introduced him to the girl he would later marry. now, back to the action...i got a call late one saturday night and on the other line was another friend of mine from high school who was in baton rouge in search of some 'party favors'. i asked him what they were doing at the gold club and he told me that everyone was in town for blake's wedding. hold the f on...blake's wedding? you mean the same blake who called me months prior to thank me for hooking him up with glenda and i told him not to worry about it, i just wanted to be in the wedding...not only was i not standing in it, i wasn't even invited. wow! blake and i are still good friends today and i love him to death, he is a caring and supportive friend who i talk to pretty regularly, but i was in such a condition that i wasn't invited to the wedding or the festivities, but the guy they called for illegal drugs. of course, my pride and my anger wouldn't allow me to get the dope for whoever wanted it, but i remember that night and that weekend. i always will. i have countless stories like this one, or like the time i got kicked off of jay lambremont's yard at mardi gras for smoking weed in the car. like i said, countless stories like this and i never got it. it never hurt me bad enough to stop. like i said earlier, the drugs and alcohol weren't the problem, they were my solution, and a mighty fine one. i knew down to the milligram of any pill, down to the beer count, shot count, or 'shot' count, what i needed to get exactly to oblivion and i went there and many times much, much further. i have another memory of an overdose on blake, chris, jay, and todd's bathroom floor. it was a self induced stroke of sorts. i laid paralyzed on the floor for close to an hour overdosed on cocaine........countless stories of how f'd up i had become-its embarrassing. so it doesn't sound like a solution to you, it was the perfect solution. in almost no time i could erase the pain of being me and it worked, it worked well. so if alcohol and drugs were the solution, what was the problem??? i was the problem. i could run away from people, places, and things, but i couldn't run away from me. there was no tactical evasion to get away from the peice of crap that i saw everyday in the mirror. words cannot explain what it feels like to absolutely hate what you have become and have no way to escape. it sucks....alright, i gotta get back to work soon so i'll wrap this up. things are way better for me now. my life and my health have been totally restored. i am friends with most of the people i ran off, i help the hopeless and helpless, and i am infinitely positive about this world and this life. i am sometimes embarrassed about some of these things i did, but whatever. my curse has been transformed and now is my ally. so i shouldn't be ashamed of these things, because these things may be the details that give you some sort of hope, these things may convince you that recovery is possible from any ailment, these things may be the ones that show you that things can be different, they can be better, even if things are good now. so back to the title of this. when i open up, i am released from the bondage of self and my ceiling has become my floor and the world is my oyster. ya heard? alright, i gotta do some work. love, peace, and hair grease...or glue whatever, whatever.