The A Team

(I wrote this blog 8/16/13)

“Angels can fly because the take themselves lightly.”

-GK Chesterton

I had, or actually, have an angel. Susan is still that to me. How sick and twisted was I to have lost such a person? That dark evil side is so alluring. That lustful heart warming rush was just too irresistible for me to stay with my soul mate. She tried for ten years to stick with me through so much insanity and so many hard times. She even saved my life once. She found me unconscious, not breathing, mouth full of blood and blue. She says that was the worst thing she ever saw.

I thought I would never use again. If anyone understood what she must have went through, it was me. I found my mother on the floor, unconscious, pouring with sweat and nude when I was 12. I’ve never told too many, if anyone, that she was nude. I know she was incredibly hot from all the sweat that was pouring from her. I covered her with a light sheet and put a cold cloth on her head and tried to wake her until helped arrived. That’s another whole story.

I had plenty of reason to blame myself. I was the only one home and my dad instructed me on the phone earlier that Sunday morning to stay with her. She was always sick and in and out of the hospital. My mother said I could go downstairs an watch television. I did. After watching Beast Master and Annie, I went upstairs and found her. My dad called right after I found her. He rushed home from Procter and Gamble in St. Bernard. It is about 20 miles from our home. On Sunday there is little traffic, so he made it home incredibly fast.

911 did not exist, but I always felt I should have reacted differently to the whole situation. As soon as my dad saw her, he panicked and then ran and called the operator. As she was taken out on a stretcher, a police officer looked at me and said, “Everything will be okay.”

My brother met me at the neighbors home. We stayed there and watched a Star Trek marathon. “To boldly go where no man has gone before.” My dad came back that afternoon and the first thing he said was, “Mommy's in Heaven.”

After Susan found me, I really believed I would never use again. God gave me one more chance to be with Susan. Susan had just finished Grad School. Former Transportation Secretary, Lee Mineta, which Mineta San Jose International Airport is named after handed her the diploma. I was very proud of her.

She had always told me while she was going to school for 2 years, “When I’m done, I’m going back to Cincinnati. You can come with me or not. Get clean!” The day after she graduated, she happened to come home early from work and would find me dying. I hadn’t used in a couple of weeks because her parents had been in town. I had a seizure. I was in the ICU for a week. After I left the ICU, I walked down to 6^th Street, half naked looking for crystal meth. It was so hard for Susan. She cried and begged me not to kill myself. The hospital had said if I used again, I’d die. She called my stepmother on the phone and even she begged me not to use again. She even went to the police that she found on 6^th Street and begged them to stop me. They watched me with binoculars, but, I would somehow slip away. I vaguely remember it. I was still so high on morphine, all I wanted to do was to shoot some meth. It was as if I were incredibly drunk and nearly blacked out.

A couple days later, I began coming to my senses. I was out by the Golden Gate Bridge. I was so confused. I looked down and found heart monitors on my chest. I was so confused. I called Susan from a payphone late at night by the Golden Gate Bridge gift shop. She was so worried. She told me I had been in the hospital. I had no idea.

I did manage to clean up after all of that. How could I ever use again? How could I? I stayed clean for 4 ½ months. They were 4 ½ wonderful months. Susan and I had talked to someone at her graduation about going to the top of one of the Golden Gate Bridges tower. We did. I really was on Top of TheWorld. Not long after I relapsed.

I picked up in such a worse place than I left off. She begged me to get help. Eventually, it was all she could take. She couldn’t trust me to not take money out of her purse. She couldn’t keep going out looking for me. She couldn’t watch me kill myself. She had been through this, off and on, for 10 years. She said that even when I was clean she was just waiting for me to relapse. After all, I always had. She just couldn’t do it anymore.

We divorced. Since I moved us out here and I always had left her by herself for days at a time, she was often alone. I was too, usually, but I was with the lust of my life – crystal meth. She waited for me for so long. Now, she was very lonely. I knew she would end up with someone else soon. The voices warned me of so many things that would happen if I didn't get of their Universe. Things that haunt me to this day. I'll leave it at that. After all, I was being so wrong. I was to be “taught a lesson.” I was. They also told me she would get pregnant. She did. It was sooner than I was ready for.

God gave her what she always wanted. It may not have been how she wanted it, but it's how she got it. She deserves the best.

She wanted a husband who didn't use like I did. She wanted to move back to Cincinnati to be home with her family. She wanted to help them as they get older. She wanted to adopt a child. She didn't want to have one. She thought too many kids needed homes and she didn't want to go through pregnancy. She always used to ask, “Who will take care of me when I'm old?” We figured I'd be dead. At the time, her grandmother was old and her parents took care of her, so I think that really resonated with her.

God gave her what she wanted. After our divorce and I finally got clean in that Christian program, I always prayed for God's Will for her. Every night. I always prayed that it didn't matter what I wanted. I'd be whatever I needed to be. I had plenty of chances to be that husband who didn't use the way I did while I was with her – for 22 years. I wasn't always that bad, but I got progressively worse and she just couldn't take it any more. She thought her “help” might be killing me. Her “help” wasn't helping her either. I put her through hell.

The funny thing about my angel, is she doesn't believe in God. How is that? She is one of the most Godly people I know. She is giving, hard working, kind, caring and honest.... She changed our marriage vowels from “till death do us part.” to “forever.” She meant it. I was the one who made that impossible. It's as if I knew. After all, my mother died and my dad remarried a wonderful woman. I figured I'd be dead and she'd need someone.

What in the world does “forever” mean to her? When you're dead your dead. Right? She's an angel. She has always found her way to God. God will find his way to her.

James 2:24
"You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone"

 

White lips, pale face

Breathing in snowflakes
Burnt lungs, sour taste
Light's gone, day's end
Struggling to pay rent
Long nights, strange men

And they say
She's in the Class A Team
Stuck in her daydream
Been this way since eighteen
But lately her face seems
Slowly sinking, wasting
Crumbling like pastries
And they scream
The worst things in life come free to us
Cause we're just under the upper hand
And go mad for a couple grams
And she don't want to go outside tonight
And in a pipe she flies to the Motherland
Or sells love to another man
It's too cold outside
For angels to fly
Angels to fly

Ripped gloves, raincoat
Tried to swim and stay afloat
Dry house, wet clothes
Loose change, bank notes
Weary-eyed, dry throat
Call girl, no phone

And they say
She's in the Class A Team
Stuck in her daydream
Been this way since eighteen
But lately her face seems
Slowly sinking, wasting
Crumbling like pastries
And they scream
The worst things in life come free to us
Cause we're just under the upper hand
And go mad for a couple grams
And she don't want to go outside tonight
And in a pipe she flies to the Motherland
Or sells love to another man
It's too cold outside
For angels to fly
An angel will die
Covered in white
Closed eye
And hoping for a better life
This time, we'll fade out tonight
Straight down the line

And they say
She's in the Class A Team
Stuck in her daydream
Been this way since eighteen
But lately her face seems
Slowly sinking, wasting
Crumbling like pastries
They scream
The worst things in life come free to us
And we're all under the upper hand
Go mad for a couple grams
And we don't want to go outside tonight
And in a pipe we fly to the Motherland
Or sell love to another man
It's too cold outside
For angels to fly
Angels to fly
To fly, fly
For angels to fly, to fly, to fly
Or angels to die