alienineyeliner I think most people who know me also know that I'm not a big talker. But I am a big writer. So I'm sharing a collection of photos and a long ass journal entry directly from my collection of pages bound in leather, which was gifted to me by my wife. In the photos: a snap I got of Bex as she got ready for the evening, a photo of me circa 2011 when I was beginning my work on sobriety (yes I know, I married a goddess who is well out of my league), and one of my favorite pages from my journal so far this year.
"--
In ten years I've become someone who is almost identical to my old self, but so different at the same time. In ten years I've saved my own life. I've had help, though. I needed the help, and I wouldn't have been able to do it alone. Ten years ago my brother picked me up from a rehabilitation center that somehow performed the miracle of helping me to get clean. I almost died in that center. I was unhealthy, lost, and scared. I was terrified that every time I went on a bender, it would be my last. Even if "the last one" meant sobriety.
Something they don't explicitly tell you, but something you learn later...it's the people. I kept people in my life for too long who would have preferred to see me passed out high in the dark bathroom stall of a punk rock concert. I had to truly learn to lean on those who loved me and wanted the best for me. I had to learn I couldn't go through everything in life alone.
Back then it was my brother whom I leaned on, and I thought that would be the end of a journey of human connection for me. I guess it sounds kinda fucking naive...but I really didn't think I'd connect deeply with someone again. It was as if I had been gifted a mass of silence, and I was the sole stoic shepherd tasked with tending to it for the rest of my life. A part of me was ready to float through the endless dark of this vast universe alone; an unintimidating meteor of a man, passing by whole planets and solar systems, barely making a blip in their atmospheres.
Well listen up, Kieran Fucking Hayes -- life surprises you. Ten years ago you hadn't known love; you were in an active addiction and you shunned others out of conspiracy to end up completely alone. Now? Now you're ten years sober, and you've learned that real connection is worth the journey. It's worth the wait.
Now, I love in ways I never thought I could love, and I have my wife to thank for that. I think she knows how much I need her (some days I worry that she knows I need her A LOT), but I hope she also knows how much she has saved me. Love is the easiest thing that I have learned from Becca. Patience, understanding, and grace are the lessons I didn't know I NEEDED, but she gave them to me, too.
I'm going to show my gratitude by loving every single day, by reminding myself that I am the person she and others see from their eyes. I'm ready to carry those lessons over with the love I already have for our unborn child. Little Bean has changed my life and I haven't even officially met them yet. (But I did feel them do a little headbanging from inside her belly...like father like child, maybe??)
Human connection has a lot in store for me yet. Maybe ten years ago it was easy to think that I had nothing. But what I actually had was a divine intervention in the form of every possible alternate reality and every essense and energy surging through the atoms of my soul converging into these moments which have led me to everything I could have dreamed of. I trust my love, I trust my family, I trust art, I trust myself -- though warily, this is another lesson gifted to me from the love of my life--, and I trust the universe; the dark night sky continues to unfold an infinite quilt of possibilities before me, but the pull of your orbit will always lead me down the right one. I will always follow the starlight to you. May 20th, 2022.--"
Happy Birthday, Bex, love of my life, mother of my child, savior of my soul.
alienineyeliner
"-- In ten years I've become someone who is almost identical to my old self, but so different at the same time. In ten years I've saved my own life. I've had help, though. I needed the help, and I wouldn't have been able to do it alone. Ten years ago my brother picked me up from a rehabilitation center that somehow performed the miracle of helping me to get clean. I almost died in that center. I was unhealthy, lost, and scared. I was terrified that every time I went on a bender, it would be my last. Even if "the last one" meant sobriety.
Something they don't explicitly tell you, but something you learn later...it's the people. I kept people in my life for too long who would have preferred to see me passed out high in the dark bathroom stall of a punk rock concert. I had to truly learn to lean on those who loved me and wanted the best for me. I had to learn I couldn't go through everything in life alone.
Back then it was my brother whom I leaned on, and I thought that would be the end of a journey of human connection for me. I guess it sounds kinda fucking naive...but I really didn't think I'd connect deeply with someone again. It was as if I had been gifted a mass of silence, and I was the sole stoic shepherd tasked with tending to it for the rest of my life. A part of me was ready to float through the endless dark of this vast universe alone; an unintimidating meteor of a man, passing by whole planets and solar systems, barely making a blip in their atmospheres.
Well listen up, Kieran Fucking Hayes -- life surprises you. Ten years ago you hadn't known love; you were in an active addiction and you shunned others out of conspiracy to end up completely alone. Now? Now you're ten years sober, and you've learned that real connection is worth the journey. It's worth the wait.
Now, I love in ways I never thought I could love, and I have my wife to thank for that. I think she knows how much I need her (some days I worry that she knows I need her A LOT), but I hope she also knows how much she has saved me. Love is the easiest thing that I have learned from Becca. Patience, understanding, and grace are the lessons I didn't know I NEEDED, but she gave them to me, too.
I'm going to show my gratitude by loving every single day, by reminding myself that I am the person she and others see from their eyes. I'm ready to carry those lessons over with the love I already have for our unborn child. Little Bean has changed my life and I haven't even officially met them yet. (But I did feel them do a little headbanging from inside her belly...like father like child, maybe??)
Human connection has a lot in store for me yet. Maybe ten years ago it was easy to think that I had nothing. But what I actually had was a divine intervention in the form of every possible alternate reality and every essense and energy surging through the atoms of my soul converging into these moments which have led me to everything I could have dreamed of. I trust my love, I trust my family, I trust art, I trust myself -- though warily, this is another lesson gifted to me from the love of my life--, and I trust the universe; the dark night sky continues to unfold an infinite quilt of possibilities before me, but the pull of your orbit will always lead me down the right one. I will always follow the starlight to you. May 20th, 2022.--"
Happy Birthday, Bex, love of my life, mother of my child, savior of my soul.