(no subject)
30/6/2003
"My name is Sean, and I'm an alcoholic."
Bollocks to that. Just bollocks. Not an alkie. So I drink? So does everyone else.
I can stop any time I want.
5/7/2003
Mike, my sponsor, says I should write in here at least once a week. Dunno what he expects me to say.
He also says I have to get out of this SRO. I'm trying, I tell him. Abby said she and the others were arranging something.
She also said she's only doing this so she won't have to tell Evie her Daddy drank himself to death in some fleabag squat, but if I expect to see Evie before she's 18 I'd best think again.
Someone's got gin. I can smell it all the way in here.
I'm going for a walk.
12/7/2003
I spend most of my time out walking. Mike's right about this place. Someone's always got something, and I find myself kneeling on the bed in the middle of the night, punching at the mattress and pillows with knuckles gone red and sore to keep from chasing the scent of it up and down the halls.
So I walk. I walk to meetings, almost every night, and I sit in the back and shake, and sometimes people look at me but it's not staring and it's not pity -- it's understanding. They all know what it's like.
When I can't find an AA meeting, sometimes I go to the NA ones instead; I talked to the guy who leads one, and explained that I wasn't really the one but the other, but I needed a place that was safe -- and he said it was fine.
19/7/2003
Nothing to say today, so I reread some of what I wrote earlier. That first entry -- what a load of bollocks.
I am an alcoholic. If I don't admit that, I've bugger-all chance of getting out of here.
I haven't had the courage to get up there since the very first night, though. Sad that I spent my life performing and I can't get up there and say such a simple thing.
Some nights I think I see the ghost of recognition in their eyes when they look at me.
25/7/2003
Abby came banging on my door this morning.
She looked a bit put out when I opened up, shaved and dressed and all. Even got up close to check my breath: nothing but toothpaste.
I could see her eyes going round and round the room, missing nothing. She definitely didn't miss the fact I've got no picture of Evie, or that Molly and Lorna in the double frame is the same from four years back, and the glass is cracked.
The bonnet -- the whole front -- of her car still doesn't quite match the rest of it. My fault, that. Not sure she'll forgive me, no matter how many times I tell her I'm sorry; not sure I'll ever forgive myself.
She drove me to some office -- a lawyer, I thought at first, and was prepared to dig in my heels a bit, let her see how stubborn I could be, before I realized it was an estate agent. A realtor. Didn't keep me from reading every word of every page she handed me to sign, and asking questions about every other sentence. She started fidgeting, but the realtor was right patient, answered everything. Not a word about Evie in there. At the end of it, he handed me a set of keys on a ring. "Congratulations," he said, and "good luck."
They've got me a place. For a year, is all, but it's a start.
30/7/2003
Tanked an interview today in some office, not the industry, when they asked about the gaps in my CV and I fumbled the question. One of them, a little mean bloke, was eyeing me the whole time, with a nasty glitter in his eye like he knew the truth.
I can't even get a bloody mail clerk position.
Had another interview lined up for the afternoon but couldn't face the humiliation all over again, so I called and cancelled.
Since I had nowt better to do, walked aimlessly, found myself standing in front of an address that looked familiar. Tried my new keys in the door, and I was right. My new place.
Abby's right, it does need work -- or did. First thing I smelled when I opened the door was varnish, and just managed not to step on what I realized was new-finished floors. They did me up pretty well, considered, even for a studio -- hardwood floor, in decent shape, and some nice gray tiling in the corner that's meant as the kitchen. There's even a little nook, where the loo sticks out, just the right size for a bed and put a screen in front for privacy.
'm on what they call the third floor, which isn't too bad.
There's a bit of a garden, with a lawn, in the courtyard. I wanted to grub about in the dirt. It's not enough space to really play, but maybe the girls and I could have a picnic some day.
2/8/2003
A taxi came by today to pick me up, take me to the new place. Guess Abby didn't want to be bothered. They did some work since she took me over there at first. I could smell new paint to go with the floor varnish, and they got a bit of furniture in.
There was an envelope on the counter, where I couldn't miss it when I walked in. Inside was a month's bus ticket, and a note. My girls -- Lorna and Molly -- they went in together on it, and they mean to keep on. "For meetings," it said, "and work." Worked it out, and it's half their allowances, each month, just so their old dad can cower in the back of the room and stuff himself with doughnuts.
Pulled their pictures out and might have had a bit of a cry at the table over that one.
Somebody'd stocked the fridge as well. A little fruit, eggs, milk, bread. The necessities. And when I opened the cupboard, tins of soup, tuna fish, and, oh miracles, a big tin of real tea and a little teapot to go with. They got me pots, a kettle, plates and bowls, all that I'd need to eat what they brought. Abby had no hand in this. It would amuse her to think of me, sipping cold soup out of a tin.
Maybe I should look into learning to cook -- for real, not just tins and boxes.
3/8/2003
Woke at six-bloody-fifteen this morning with the sun blazing through the window, right at me. Haven't seen that early since Evie was born, and even then I came at it from the other direction. Thought about burying my head under the pillow to sleep longer, but what with the sunshine the room started hotting up nicely.
Suppose the early morning sun is a good thing -- cheaper than an alarm clock.
The place looks bleak in the light like this. Sink, fridge, and stove in one corner, and the little box of the loo in the other. At least I've got my own en suite. Good job I put everything in hock, I'd have no place to put it. What with the bed (and what made them think I needed such a big 'un?), table, chair, and my old bag spewing ratty vests and trou across the floor, it's pretty well full up already.
's not home, not at all. Except it is, for me, now -- and I don't need anything more.
That's not true.
I need my girls.