What is Reality to a Mind Broken

I cannot tell if I am awake or asleep. My dreams are as vivid as the world in which I am typing. I assume the other world is of my dreams, it is all I can do – assume. I may be asleep right now. Can I prove it? Can you? I know I chose to believe this is reality, though I have no proof.

I wonder sometimes, is this the price I must pay for the years I spent embracing the darkness? Years of wallowing in excess and depravity with no regard for anyone. The harsh truth is I miss those days. I find myself wishing I had stayed there so many years ago and rode the dragon until the darkness became all I knew. I wrote of this once before, though it was years ago. I wondered if I was going mad, as surely as I was in my dreams. Now, I wonder if perhaps I did go mad and merely embraced it.

In my alternate world, I am close to my brothers, physically and emotionally. In this reality, the only time I have seen them in over a decade was a funeral and two weddings. I have no communication with them, save one. I sense in some their grudges, or spite for me. Spite for the years I spent in darkness when no one knew if I was even alive.

It does not seem to matter I left it all behind. Changed my perception of myself. I went through the rehabilitation process and can say truthfully, I have not ingested an illegal drug or drank of alcohol for over twenty-seven years. Two exceptions in the interest of transparency. I once sipped a so-called virgin margarita for my 17-year-old stepdaughter to verify the presence of Tequila, Cuervo 1800 to be precise. My wife was not certain of it’s true Virgin status. The second time was last week. I dropped a half once of Kahlua with cream into my coffee for a sip. I poured it out and got a fresh cup.

Alcoholic Anonymous Zealots would call that a relapse. I call it what it is. I decision to verify I no longer have a desire for alcohol. Which brings to mind I was actually asked to leave an AA meeting in Waterloo, Iowa in the early nineties.

Long story – short. I was listening to a gentlemen share how nervous and scared he was he might not make it to the coming Friday sober. It was Wednesday. I put forth an observation and inquiry out of curiosity.

“It can be rough, I know; especially in the first weeks and months. How long have you been sober?” I asked.

This is his answer. “Twenty-three years this Friday.”

I followed up, and in all honestly, I followed up as myself. “That is only two days away. How can you NOT make it to Friday after over twenty-two years?”

I was admonished by a senior member, a man of tenure. “There is no call for rudeness. Every day can be a bitter challenge.”

Perhaps I answered with a degree of sarcasm. I did not think so, but I am a poor judge of my own mood or tone of conversation. “Honestly? If I have gone twenty-two years and 362 days without a drink, I’d say Friday was a shoo-in.”

I struck a nerve. “We do not judge others in AA,” I was told with a venomous edge to his voice. I was already borderline as I used the term clean versus sober or I said clean and sober. That did not go over well in the early nineties. Drug addicts were treated as second class. I often brought up alcohol IS a drug. I was told by a physician the chemical compound of alcohol can is the same as ether with addition of an H2O molecule. Don’t quote me on that, look it up yourself.

The reason I was evicted; I said, “As long as you keep telling yourself you ‘cannot drink’, the longer you will remain a slave to booze, because the statement is bullshit.

“You can drink any goddamn time you want. I’s your fucking choice – not mine, not anyone else. I stay clean because I know with certainty not a one of you can stop me if I choose to do so.

“Staying clean and sober doesn’t work when you constantly live in fear. To tell you the truth, if I were three days away from twenty-three years and as insecure a mess as you – I would  be heading to the closest liquor store because you are miserable. Fuck miserable. If you cannot enjoy the clarity sobriety brings you, then all you are doing is pretending to be sober, when all you are just another drunk who still wants to drink.”

That is when I was asked to leave and not return. Such is life.

What the hell does that have to do with my issues with reality? Not a goddamn thing. That is the point of the digression. Staying clean for 27 years is no small feat. My love-hate relationship with narcotics and mind-altering drugs is the one thread that runs through my life from my early teens to the age of 40. My success in staying clean for twenty-seven plus years is the tie than binds it all together.

I will continue to convince myself this is the real world – that I am truly awake despite the vividness and often painful ‘reality’ of my dreams.

What I said of my brother is true, but without malice. I gave up contacting them years ago when I realized I was always the one initiating contact. I hate being right, though I will say this, my eldest brother has invited me to visit when we are physically in the same location.

The time I spent in the dark side of Dallas – Fort Worth was never dull. I met movie stars, athletes, rock stars and celebrities on a regular basis. I was never impressed by their celebrity which endeared me to some who treated me as an equal.

This is what I do when I mind teeters on the fine line between sanity and insane. I do not know which I am – and for the moment, once again I don’t gi

ve a shit.

So, I will continue to fight in my vivid dreams. I scream in my sleep. I fight foes who do not exist. I wake myself up violently – I dove out of the bed more than once to ‘tackle’ someone in my ‘dreams.

Perhaps, when all is said and done, I am insane. If I am, I accept it. It gives me a measure of self-confidence and fearlessness I use when faced with confrontations.

It is simple really. I died in my dreams and I will die in my reality. This much I know.

I am less stressed now for putting these words to paper. I have never felt I belonged in this world around me. Perhaps someday it will become relevant.

 

Until that day comes, if ever it should arrive,

I remain, Robert Ullrich

Erstwhile poet and writer.