Jamie
Jamie is the son or daughter my wife and I were going to have back in the summer of 2015. The child was lost due to miscarriage at around 3 months. At the time the loss wasn’t that hard to deal with. I cant explain why this is so, but its the truth. We had 2 very young kids already with a 2 year old and a 1 year old. I think that my wife was actually relieved a little because of our financial situation with me being a poker player that wasn’t bringing in all that much cash. I think that she went through more stress than I did about the financials in the end.
We named him or her Jamie because of the unisex use of that name. This was mostly my idea and I’m not sure my wife was into it at the time.
Soon after this I started to make a lot more money once I got into the 20/40 game at the mirage. A year later we got pregnant again with our 3rd child Blake. He was born healthy and still is at age 10.
Starting about 6-7 years ago I have been thinking about Jamie. Often its just about how much fun it would be to have another child in my life.
Last night was one of these times. I went to bed praying that I would either have an out of body experience where I could interact with Jamie or have a dream about her (even though Jamie could be male or female I typically picture a girl for some reason, so I will use the her pronoun from here on out for the simplicity of the writing).
I ended up having one of the most vivid dreams that I have had while. It began with the feeling that I was waking up from a dream in which I was in a timeline where Blake was dead. I cannot remember why he was dead, but that it had happened a few years back and we had been trying to live with it at this point. The big problem is that in the dream that I “awoke” from within the dream this was still the case with Blake being gone. I have had a lot of dreams where something bad is the reality and there is always a huge sigh of relief when I wake up from that dream because it was not reality and things are back to normal. When I woke from this dream within a dream I did not experience that relief because that was the reality that still presented itself. I remember telling myself that I wish I was dreaming still because he was gone.
A few days pass within the dream and my wife and I are trying to get through our reality in which we only have 2 kids. Every time I think about him I get this gut wrenching feeling that hes gone and that my life will never be the same. I turn my thoughts to the fact that he will not grow older and experience things for himself. All of these thoughts push me deeper into sadness and I begin to breakdown and cry.

I sob.

My heart aches for him and for the past to be different. I miss him and I miss all that he will be, all that he could be, all that he dreams to be. I cant stand, fall to my knees and continue to experience heartache like I have never felt before (awake or asleep. I wake up right then and quickly get the normal sigh of relief come over me like a warm blanket when I realize all of that was just a dream.

Blake is STILL ALIVE!!!
Oh I have never been so glad that I had been dreaming. I go to the bathroom and then I go back to sleep. Before I fall asleep I again pray that I will dream about Jamie. I do not realize it yet, but I just had a dream about her.
When I wake up in the morning I get ready for the day by taking a shower, brushing my teeth, making coffee, pack up my room and head downstairs for the hot breakfast at the Hampton Inn in Monroe Detroit. While I am sitting there eating my biscuits and gravy I begin to reflect on my dream. Its right here when I make the connection that it actually was about Jamie.
While reflecting on the overwhelming emotion I have just experienced I start to make the connection that the feeling I feel about Blake was for Jamie. I did lose her, and have not really felt that a loss like that before.
Another thought I have is that Blake could be Jamie returned to us. That feels wrong to say, but I guess could be possible given that we do not know entirely what happens when we die. Perhaps it was always meant for us to have three children, so when we lost Jamie her soul was given a new body by God.
I am truly thankful to have felt that strong of an emotion in that dream. It give me a deeper connection to Jamie. It gives me more depth as a person too. The more feels I can feel the more perspective I have on the rest of it.

We all have these gaps in our personalities. The interesting part is when we figure them out, for the most part it takes others to do this for us. During the original carpool back in vegas with Forrest one was pointed out pertaining to the pronunciation of a few words I clearly did not know how to pronounce. Its odd, you spend your entire youth and young adulthood reading books/articles and you say certain words to yourself as you read them and convince yourself that is how they are said. To never have heard them out loud it makes it difficult to actually get them right all of the time.
One of the most notable gaps is how there is always someone that doesn’t realize the volume of their own voice. They carry on these trivial conversations in public when most everyone else is either being silent or pretending to be asleep. The other challenge sometimes is to pretend not to listen to them either. Sometimes its easier said than done. Especially in an airplane when there isn’t anything else going on and the joy of boredom is wearing thin.
A few words that I still have trouble with are latent and queue. Every time I think to say these I have to go back and really think about which way I want to say them.
A huge one that I have to live through almost every day at work is that my coworker somehow never learned that you aren’t supposed to put your dirty ass feet all over the furniture. I could never invision him over to my house because I would be afraid he would treat my furniture like his personal door mat. He wont stop at my chairs. He will occasionally put them on my desk as well. I have even seen him do it in a staff meeting. Someone might say that he had a lot of balls to do that, but that’s not it at all hes just that fucking dumb.
A show that I watched with Blake a few years ago was called Alone. On the finale the winner had somewhat of a revelation about his perception of life and whats important. One of the things that he said was that if you spend an extended period of time all by yourself with nothing but your thoughts – you had better like yourself. I thought about that for quite some time. It is simple to escape the feelings of loneliness back here in civilization because we can always go and get high. I’d like to think that I would be fine with the alone part of it. How much introspection would I gain? I’d like to think a lot.
I often like to think that I do like myself, I am easily my own biggest fan. But what does that really mean? Do I enjoy the things that occupy my day, or is it just the thoughts running through my head. If it is only the people around me then perhaps I would not do well in isolation. If we really only exist through the eyes of another than having no one in your life would be a tragedy.
A common gap is that people seem to give random people or even strangers power over their emotional well-being. To post a thought or idea or picture on social media has no perfect ending. The worst case scenario for these people is that they get negative replies or crickets. With every post comes an expectation of replies or an approval of some sorts from the masses. Therein lies the problem with that process. For the emotionally challenged among us this is a train wreck. The solution to this is simple, don’t give the strangers that power of your emotions. Posting is powerful tool and way to share your life with your friends, use it but don’t put effort into a relationship that cannot actually work for you.
Let us all reduce our gaps. The one problem is that we need people in our lives that care about us to communicate those gaps to us.

As I sit here in the Atlanta airport I get a phone call from an 800 number informing me that my flight has been delayed. This is not my final flight, I still have a connection in Phoenix that will take me home to Flagstaff. The initial delay in PHX was 53 minutes. My flight has now been pushed back 40 minutes. Leaving my official time to get to the gate at 3 minutes assuming I can get off of the plane immediately. I say 3 minutes because its airport policy to shut the doors ten minutes prior to departure “Thanks a lot Bin-Laden!” So I did the only prudent thing I could think of, I went to the counter and asked if I could be any closer to the front of the aircraft, I was in row 16.
When I get to the line I notice there are 5 people in front of me and one guy standing off to the left side of the line kinda looking around like he is lost. So I stand in line, but the problem is there is no one at the kiosk to start helping us, one guy is even sitting down in the line, I guess he has been there a long time. Ten minutes pass and I notice a worker see the kiosk is empty and heads off to go get help I assume. At this point there are atleast 6 people behind me and that one lost looking fellow is still standing there off to the side of me.
When the workers arrive to start helping us the line begins to move, but not quickly as the guy sitting down has stood up, but is still taking up quite a lot of space with his baggage and general aroma. After he makes it to the kiosk the line takes a marginal move forward, but as soon as the guy in front of me starts to move the lost dude to my left immediately gets in front of me in line. He makes no eye contact or says anything to me. Obviously I make the connection that he was there first, and I guess he was attempting to stand in line so I am not offended. But seriously, we live in a society and it would have been nice for him to mention to me either at the beginning that he was indeed in line, or at the end when he jutted in front of me explaining his motives and not leaving it to me to figure it out.
When I make it to the front I first make sure to great the lady with pleasantries because it always seems to help things out if you are genuinely nice to people before you start asking them to help you. I calmly explain my situation to her about my flight having a super tight connection to see if there is anything she can do. She just looks at me like, “well what do you want me to do about it?” So I let her know that I am interested in getting as close to the front of the aircraft as possible. She offers me the exit row seat in row 10 (that not 3 hours ago when I asked for this seat at the counter would have cost me $50 bucks), even though it’s a middle seat and I am giving up a window I take it because those extra 2 minutes from getting from row 16 to 10 while deplaining might actually help me make the flight to Flagstaff. I also at this time kindly ask her to send a message to my next flight to hold the plane for me because I am only late due to this flight. She obliges. I also inquire about the location of our landing gate to the proximity to my next departure gate, A, and B, so its about 10 minutes walking or 3-5 running full out.
You see this is the problem with addiction. When I first heard about my delay logistics start to play out in my mind about the night coming up and what I am going to do with myself. I know that is the last flight going up to Flagstaff for the evening so if I miss it I need to get a hotel or rent a car. So my first thought was to the hotel, and then thinking about where I was going to get some beer to drink once I got there. Logistically speaking though it would be ridiculous for me to get a hotel, it would be cheaper and a better idea to rent a car and drive home, the company will be paying for it anyways. I’m going to be home tonight no matter what. I have been away from home too long. And the logical part of me knows that, but still my instinct was to plan out a night of drinking.
There is truly no part of me that is pissed off about my delay. I feel inconvenienced by it, but since it is out of my control I really do not care. This is something that my younger self could not deal with. I would be furious about this. I think the part of my life where I made it through that was driving back and forth from south las vegas all the way through las vegas in rush hour traffic every day to work. It would literally take me 1.5 hrs to get home from work every day. I can vividly remember sitting there in the car shaking the steering wheel because I was so frustrated with something that I had no control over. There was always two signs right next to the strip and right around Cheetahs gentlemans club that was of Jesus saying something like “God loves you.” Everyday seeing this I would calm down a little bit. Eventually I started to focus on the prayer for patience. It goes something like this: Lord help me to accept the things in life that I cannot change, the strength to change the things that I can, and the wisdom to know the difference between those. I would say that over and over to myself for days, weeks, months.
I finally realized that I had no control over the traffic so I cannot let it affect my mental state, after all I did not want to arrive at the house with a wife and three kids all pissed off and take it out on them. I have worked hard my entire life to be a positive force around them in the household. So the wisdom I gained here is that what I could change was the location of my residence. We began the process of selling our house and moving to the north side of town and reducing the commute by 45 minutes. Of course this was in 2007/2008 and the housing market was about to take a HUGE dive. To make this short and to sum up, we did not end up selling this house, it became a foreclosure. We ended up renting houses for the next 4 years before we were able to buy another house.
My flight was just delayed another 15 minutes.
You know the best thing about the non-drinking nights is how I feel in the morning. There are two ways this makes me feel good. First I feel like I was able to stand up to myself and deny my wants and desires to withhold from drinking. That’s the most obvious and most everyone will feel that way too. But the other way is actually the more concerning reason. My body actually feels better those mornings. My back feels better, my legs, liver, head (slightly less foggy and more clear, I rarely have headaches unless I drink wine, which is why I don’t drink wine anymore even though my wife is big into it and it would be kinda something for us to do together, which is why I used to do it so much), and overall general wellness. I think in the long run I will be more athletic too, its hard to explain but a part of me tells me that if I keep up drinking I wont be able to do the things I want to do with my kids due to health issues. It could just the added weight I am carrying around on my body, its heavy and makes things hurt, my knees and back especially. I think optimally I would like to weigh around 220 pounds instead of 240. And that has nothing to do with looks because I am generally not concerned with what I look like.
This is partly due to the fact that I am married with kids and do not need to focus on my appearance in order to get into and hold a relationship. I am also very confident in myself so that helps as well. So the goal to get down to 220 is because when I was that weight (about 10 years ago) everything was easier to do in sports. Now it is a struggle to dunk a basketball, when just a few years ago it felt easy. When my boys get to be in highschool sports it has always been important to me to be able to show them how to play the game from my perspective, that includes dunking the basketball and all the wonderful ways that can be done.
The plane I will be flying in just arrived. It is a smaller glimmer of hope that we just might make the next connection. It is 6:23 pm with an official departure time of 7:00 pm, (originally 6:05pm). My next flight leaves at 8:00 pm Arizona time, with a scheduled 4 hour flight time that puts me arriving at the airport slightly late. They could still hold the plane though.
Wheels up at 7:10 pm and there is a shimmer of hope for me to make this actually work out. The hope still though does not lay with me making the connection no, the hope is for me. Once during the takeoff process I felt something.
You see its been a few years since I felt emotions like I used to. To some extent I am dead on the inside. The benefit to this is that I do remain remarkably calm during some situations that would drive normal people insane. Due to the nature of the jobs I have held this was something that must have been learnt along the way. So when I feel one, I try to hold on to it and think about it. But once I start doing that it goes away. Once you are awake its hard to go back to sleep.
Anyway, what I felt was I guess close to anxiety. I have not felt anxiety for some while. When the pilot said over the speaker the flight time of 3 hours 30 minutes I got to thinking about logistics and again back to the hotel. Why do I keep defaulting to the hotel plan when it will not work out.
One other thing to note about feelings. Some people will argue that the only reason to drink to the level of addiction is that you are trying to drown out some sort of event or personal failure. This has never been the case for me. At the most rudimentary level I consistently drink to attempt to increase my personal happiness. Even though it rarely does bring that.
Just got into phoenix promptly at 7:40 pm. My original departure was 7:59 pm, but I need to deplane from row 10 and make my way all the way over to A terminal. My seatmate was generous enough to let me out before him and I am able to get up and out a little faster than usual. Once I get out of the ramp I make a quick look at the departure screen to check for any gate changes that may have gone on, and good thing I did because it did change gates… and terminals. But what do you know, it was switched over to B terminal, which is where I happen to be. I grab my suitcase by the side and start running. I utilize the moving walkways as well and run on those. I make quick time and get over to my new gate to find it FULL of people with “Palm Springs” on the board. The flight attendant asks me where I am going and I say flag and she says that I am fine. I am puzzled and ask about all of these people and their destination, she assures me that they are also waiting to go to flagstaff. After walking back into the crowd I ask the nearest person I see, “where are you headed?”, she answers flagstaff.
As it turns out someone on the crew got injured within the plane somehow. There were police, airport security and a fire engine out there for like 20 minutes. The attendant then lets us know of an hour delay. But in the end it does appear as though I will make this flight.
I board the plane, return to normal life and addiction sadley marches on.

It is a late Saturday night and like my normal routine I am sufficiently buzzed. The days typical mandatory duties for an involved father included coaching at two youth basketball games for both of my sons and shoveling snow off of our driveway. All of that took place before I started drinking. After all, I do care about my family more than anything so I always take care of them before I get started with my routine.

4pm rolls around sooner than you would normally think. I head to the garage where I hide my booze. I poor a stiff drink of Dewars scotch, aged 36 months! Why do they go through the trouble of saying 36 months instead of 3 years, that kind of stuff always bothered me. Obviously not enough for me not to buy it and poor it down the hatch night after night.

After three or four trips to the garage and about 4 beers all of a sudden its 9:30 pm. All of my beautiful kids are in bed sleeping. 10 minutes after tucking them in bed my wife comes into the living room with an empty vodka bottle in hand. I recognize this bottle, its the same 1.75 L bottle I bought for our new years party where hardly anyone drank it, which was ok with me because I immediately took it to my garage sanctuary so I could finish it off. A week and a half later it was nearly gone.

I had not finished it though, I took it down to maybe 2 inches left and then it disappeared after one of my work trips. Seeing it empty means that she must have finished it off. That is ok with me because she drinks too, less than I do, but she still drinks.

Her showing up in the living room with it empty was a surprise though. This is very bold of her. She does hardly anything bold. I wish I had more bold from her.

Her first words are saying that she thinks I am an alcoholic. I say no shit, I told you that 2 years ago (when I first told her she denied it). I inform her that I am working on it. –for the last 6 months I have been trying to control my drinking. I have been in touch with an unofficial sponsor and all. 

A little more history here, about a month ago I moved into the downstairs guest bedroom. We can get into that later. For this story, its only important that I am downstairs.

At the end of our alcoholic discussion she mentions that me sleeping downstairs isn’t helping anything. I respond that its helping me to adjust to life without sex. She is taken back by this and almost speechless. From that response she knows that I am serious and decides to end the discussion and head back to our bedroom.

During our discussion my drunkenness comes up and I obviously say that I am not drunk like always.

At the end of our discussions I head down to my room and she goes back hers. I sleep alone and reflect on what she said. It does hit me hard I must admit that she confronted me like that. It felt good to get confronted. After this I leave town for work for about a week.

This conversation gives me new hope of who I can be. I know there is a version of me out there that is just normal.

Today will be the day that I am going to stop drinking. But I won’t be doing it the same was as most people. If I really face this with any realistic expectations of succeeding then it is logical to assume that I will of course continue to enjoy alcohol. I mean this in the way that I do not believe that I have had my last drink. The people that sit there and say (and really believe it) that they are done drinking for the rest of their life are just lying to themselves and others around them. Further, I am not even sure that I want to stop drinking for the rest of my life. I want to enjoy how most people enjoy. I want to not be an addict. I want to be that person that is always in control and still enjoying life to the fullest, and that includes having a good time with family and friends. The part of me that I want to have control over is the part that when I have a couple drinks tells me to have as many as I can.
Last night was the last night of a business trip that took me to the outskirts of Atlanta, GA. A small town called Rockmart. The town itself isn’t all that bad. There seems to be very nice people there and there are some tasty restaurants. The Slate Market Grill for one has delicious food. I have tried both the ribeye (bone out) and the French dip. Both of these dishes came with a side of my choosing, both of which I ordered the red potatoes. These red potatoes are truly impressive. They are diced up, deep fried and then seasoned. The French dip was deceptively scrumptious. Upon delivery I noticed that it was not cut in half and I was thinking about asking my waitress to cut it for me so that I can enjoy this meal. For some reason when faced with a large sandwich I am usually at somewhat of an impasse when it is too large to fit in my hands comfortably in my mouth. For example, I always cut my burgers in half. This serves two main purpose. First I can manage the meal in my hands and stay relatively clean. Secondly and most importantly the meal does not get destroyed by the first couple of bites. When the sandwich is cut in half I can mash it, twist it and compress it as I am eating and while the first piece gets in all sorts of misshaped forms the second piece is still sitting there patiently waiting for me to finish it off. Anyway, moving on, the French dip stayed together pretty good considering I was holding it the whole time.
I have been to Rockmart before. The last time the Slate Market Grill was in a different location and where it is currently was occupied by an Italian restaurant. I got the Bolognese meat sauce. Also at that time you could write something on the wall if you desired. I like those kinds of places because people tend to enjoy writing on places that is typically not allowed. I scribed one of my many nicknames on the wall – “Dufois”.
So back to the last night of the trip. I had 8 beers left in my refrigerator from the week. There were 7 shock top (in the can, because there was a deal if you buy 12, you get 3 more free) and one miller high life. My go to beer has been Miller High Life for a long time. I think I have always enjoyed the high life because it reminds me of smoking weed. Even though when I drink it I feel nothing like I do when I used to smoke. Class had ended around 4 pm and I drove back to my shithole of a room at the econolodge. For reasons beyond my recollection I booked the same hotel twice in a row. How I didn’t remember how trashy this place was the first time I stayed there is beyond me. The stairwell was the worst part. It stunk like something was decaying and beginning to decompose. I held my breath going through there, which is hard to do while going up let me tell you.
I get in my room and I get a text from someone I work with for me to call him. He had spent the entire day working on a problem that I was able to instruct him on how to fix it within the first minute of the phone call. We can discuss work stuff at a later time. I get off the phone (it took 15 minutes to assure him and walk him through how to check it as well) and I immediately go to the fridge and open up my first beer. Oh it feels so good when it first hits your lips…. I say that or think it a lot when I open my first one. I don’t know why, I think that I have seen that somewhere on in a movie I guess. But I think of it when I take my first drink. The first one goes down really fast, probably less than 3 minutes. I go and grab 2 more and bring it back over to the bed where I am sitting to watch tv. There is a couch, but I never really sat on it because I figured they washed the sheets atleast every so often, and probably never washed or cleaned the couch. I got two so I didn’t have to go back to the fridge every few minutes because that’s how much I was drinking. You see when I am alone I typically try to get drunk. I’m not socially drinking, or drinking to get a buzz, or drinking to pass the time, or just for something to do. I am doing it with one goal in mind, I want to get drunk.
The problem with getting drunk at this point in my life is that it takes fucking forever. I feel like I lose the ability to speak before I get drunk, like I used to anyways when it used to feel good and great.
I get through the first 5 within the first 45 minutes for sure. Still feeling nothing really, other than a desire to keep drinking. I want to get that feeling back, the feeling of when I was young. Oh what a feeling it used to be to get drunk. Back when I was a teenager, I could drink a six pack and feel great. Of course back then I weighed a lot less too. Currently at 240 lbs I am 80 lbs heavier than when I first started drinking. Additional body weight and of course the tolerance thing really does inhibit my ability to get drunk easily at this point- really something that is frustrating to me.
It takes maybe another hour until I finish the last 3 I have in the refrigerator. Now being that I am in the eastern time zone its about 3 pm back home and I know that my wife is picking up the kids. So I call her Audi so that I can talk to everyone at the same time. I make the call and am able to speak to 3 out of 4 members of my family. My oldest son is still in school as he gets out last. We start to chat and go through the pleasantries of me coming home the next day. I recite to them a poem I wrote the day before to my fantasy football league. Lydia loves it and is laughing out loud – I guess this could be because she thinks it is that dumb too, but I don’t care and as a continually positive person I choose to believe that she is laughing because it is good. During this whole call I do not slur any words and to my knowledge totally pulled it off.
Now is that sad or what that when I make a phone call home that I have to think about whether or not I will be able to pull it off that I can appear sober. Because waiting to start drinking until after I make the phone call home is out of the question, that’s 2 good hours I could be spending drinking! I did walk up to the restaurant even though its about a half mile away because I do not want to risk a DUI. I am plenty stupid, but not completely an idiot. I do have much to risk with my family and career. The main reason I don’t smoke weed anymore is the risk of losing what I have by being fired after a failed drug test, which are random at my job. Weed is far superior to alcohol though and if it were legal and my work was ok with it I would be using that every day instead of alcohol.
After my phone call I go into the New York Pizza place to order my dinner. The waitress asks me if I want the family special to which I am quick to respond that its just me and I don’t need a family special, only a slice. When that sentence rolls off my tongue I feel a little sad thinking about how my family isn’t with me. They are such a part of me that its hard to compartmentalize my life into sections where I am alone and they aren’t with me. They are always with me and part of my spirit. It cannot be separated. After my order I go into Walmart which is next door to buy another six pack. I get XX amber because I do enjoy that beer from time to time. It reminds me of my mother in law because she used to buy that all the time when we would go on vacation together in Palm Springs. After I make the purchase I pick up my food and make my way back over to my room at the econolodge.
See there is some part of me that is almost always counting how many I have had for the night. This all started way back when it was a badge of honor if I could have 10 in a night… It was cool. But some part of me just counts things, so it doesn’t necessarily have to do with how many beers I’ve had, but just something to count. The part of my life when I played poker magnified this as I had to count everything, cards, money, bets, outs, hours, minutes, dealers, and of course beers too. Counting – so you see I have already done the mental math and have realized that if I drink this sixer I am up to 14 beers for the evening. Once I get over 12 the likelihood for a hangover doubles. Under 12 I rarely have hangovers as long as I drink plenty of water before I go to bed. As long as I stay hydrated during the night I will not have a headache in the morning.
So I choose to continue drinking, I may not drink them all yes that’s true, but there is a good chance that I will, knowing me anyways. As the night progresses I do end up drinking them all as I knew I would. To offset the hangover, I drank about 5 glasses of water right before bed. Yes, I know that I will have to wake up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom. But that’s the thing about drinking a shitload of beer all the time, I am used to waking up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom. It is just part of the deal with drinking a lot. Jill thinks this is because I am getting old and my bladder is getting smaller. I laugh it off when she says that and say “yeah maybe.” But I know better, I have the bladder of a camel. I drink like 5 cups of coffee and not really have to go to the bathroom. Throughout the day I may go three times total. On the rare nights that I don’t drink, I definitely do not have to wake up to go to the bathroom.
I get up in the morning and start doing the mental checklist to see how I am feeling.
Ok, first things first – Do I have a headache? Ok no, so that’s good, moving on.
Does my stomach hurt? Not yet, but sometimes this takes time. Lets keep checking.
Are there any unusual sore muscles from something I did that I don’t remember? Arms ok, legs ok so I guess I am fine there.
Ok, once more through it, head, stomach, are you feeling ok? Well that is another success story! This actually does bring me a small amount of happiness to know that I can drink so much fucking beer and not get a hangover. I guess we can get good at anything in life that we put our minds to.
At some point during my morning after I have had a cup of coffee and am looking at my fatass in the mirror I decide that perhaps today is the day I will begin my journey to fulling waking up in life. Years ago while I was still smoking a lot of weed my outlook on life and consciousness suddenly changed. I kinda call it waking up. You see I see things with clarity when I didn’t use to. I am a very logical minded person and through some deep thought experiments I came to a few realizations about life and our immortal souls. We will get into those later.
So I’m sitting in the Atlanta airport writing and look across the food court and see this woman sit down, organize her meal, stop scrolling on her phone, close her eyes and say a prayer. A moment of silence later she goes right back into the motions of looking at her phone while she takes a bite here and there. I sit here and imagine what it is she thinks about life. Is it simple, is she self-conscious about her looks, confident, got the life by the horns or even does she know addiction. Why does she pray before her meal at the airport? I pray at home with my family when we sit down for dinner, but if we are in public places typically we do not. I guess this is more of a problem with me though, because I should be setting the good example and saying a prayer whether we are alone or not. So part of me is commending her for doing that in public as so few of us do, and part of me is in a way judging her for doing so. It then makes me wonder if she is really praying, or just focused on thinking about who is watching her and thinking the thoughts I am thinking about her. To clarify here, I am not judging her in a negative way. Interestingly enough, a couple just sat down in front of me (and between me and the other woman) said their prayers as well. It wasn’t audible and heads were down, but I could tell they were praying because everything stopped for maybe 10-15 seconds. Right after they went back to digging into their bags to get their lunch out.
Ah lunch, yes I had the chicken lettuce wraps for starters and then finished with the shrimp pad thai from PF Chang’s. It is a most delicious way to spend an hour or two enjoying a meal. While sitting there slowly eating my food I did notice a few people ordering drinks and I truly did not feel like I wanted to have one. I looked at it and said to myself, well that would feel so good hitting the lips, but then again I also did not want one. I know that I will always like the taste of beer, it’s a part of me. There was a time when I drank 2-3 Dr Peppers a day. I still enjoy the taste of it, and if I had an option of soda I would choose Dr Pepper. But at this point in my life I have less than 1 per month. I guess that may change now that I will likely be drinking a significant less amount of beer. But I have no plans to increase my soda intake, if only to offset diabetes.

But it does feel good when it hits the lips….