Reunion

Hi ya. I’ve been anxiously waiting for payday to buy a pint and a decent smoke, I been abstinent and on the cheap tobacco all week. It felt good to frequent the pub last night after my funds had gone through. I got in amongst the pool balls a little bit and then played some darts. I got the bull’s eye eventually. Can’t beat a bit of bully. So satisfying, so difficult, so rewarding.

That was after a Christian bible study. We looked at Luke 12, where Jesus is talking about hypocrisy, secrecy, eternity, and blasphemy. It was quite hard narrowing that down! Usually, a lot of the bible flies over my head, in one ear and out the other, but this verse I could understand. It was around a young Christian couple’s house. They laid on the snacks. Shortbread and carrot cake. Darius was in attendance, a young Iranian who is staying at a hotel. He said he doesn’t want to move into a village but wants to sample town life. Understandable.

I’m off to see my favourite teacher from school at a Waterstones event this evening. I think she is reading from her latest book or in conversation with someone. I haven’t seen her for 27 years. We were really close back in high school. When I got ousted from there into a secure mental unit, she came to see me outside of school hours. Despite the trouble I was in, that was all that mattered, the fact that I could still see Sarah. She kept me going. She was my first crush. We were even pen pals at one point. I’d love to read through those old letters now, but my mum binned them for some reason. I’ve got a slight case of the nervous jitters, as I can’t be sure of how she’ll receive me. Part of me doesn’t want to go, to leave the past in the past.

Just been to breakfast club at the drug rehab clinic. I’ve got two feet firmly planted in recovery now, having after deleted my dealer’s numbers from my phone. You can’t be gung-ho for recovery with dealers’ numbers on your phone, I once heard. And recovery IS the most important thing in my life. It took some getting used to, accepting that fact. I want to stay clean forever now, and I feel I’m in the correct mental state to do it. I’m counting the days no matter how few or how many at the moment, it is Day 12 today. The goal is 28 as usual. I call it The Rarefied Atmosphere. If I can do that three times over then I call it Fair Weather. Fair Weather is a simply beautiful place to occupy. I was Fair Weather last year but I relinquished it for a porn star called Maddy O’Reilly. She was too powerful for me at the time. Incidentally, just before I destroyed my last batch of pornography to go to church on a Sunday, she appeared very clearly in my mind, as if in a death rattle. Okay, that’s it for now, we’ll talk again soon.