One Of Those Days

It appears the weekends appear to have a little too much down time. Yesterday was a good day to rest my body; however, my mind is a different story. Maybe the last four days up until yesterday I was so busy I didn’t have time to think and yesterday and today when I am not nearly as busy, my mind tends to stray. I worked a “normal” program yesterday and today did a bit of writing and reading. I was given a book called THE WIZARD’S FIRST RULE by Terry Goodkind. I also watched some football yesterday because I needed a break from my bunk. This is where I stay most of the time reading and writing. The only exception is Monday night where I venture into the television area to watch Heroes. The only other television program that I would like to watch is Grey’s Anatomy but this is not available because our dorm watches something else on Thursday nights. For some reason, Grey’s Anatomy was on Friday night and one of my neighbors informed me but I was in the middle of writing and didn’t want to stop. Besides that I am not exactly sure why it was on a different night and I didn’t want to watch it because I knew I may not be able to see it again for a long while. The group – my dorm mates – usually watch professional wrestling on Friday nights which was not aired so Grey’s Anatomy was shown.

As you can see by the last paragraph and entries from the past few days I am all over the place. My mind keeps drifting back to my family in NJ. It maybe a combination of the fact that I have not spoken to my wife in over a week and the last letter I received from my mother was written two weeks prior to her trip to visit my younger sister. My subconscious has been pelting me with dreams of my wife and children - most notably of my daughter. I can’t seem to get past the fact that she will be 10 years old when I will be released. Ten is just another number but I can’t help to think it has significance in the age of a child. There is one statement that keeps resonating with me which was expressed by my daughter upon my two year departure. She said, “Who is going to tickle Jonathan and me when you are gone?” I am sure my wife and all our extended family are showing so much love and support back in NJ. But, I can’t help to think will I still be able to tickle my 10 year old daughter when I rejoin my family in less than 20 months or will she be too old and not want anything to do with me?

Of course, all this is fear of the unknown which I can’t do a darned thing about. I know what to continue doing in order to have a great life and that is to continue my recovery. However, my mind still drifts into these bad areas and currently I do not have an outlet – other than this blog – to get these bad thoughts out of my mind (nor do I expect to have one until my release). I miss my family tremendously and with the holiday season fast approaching it seems to exasperate the problem. Of course, I created this mess and must suffer the consequences associated with my illegal behavior. I have no one to blame but myself. I try to stay clear of blaming because it is only counter productive. However, on days when I look around and really think about how much I pissed away (sorry about the use of that word but I couldn’t think of a better one) I can’t help but to think of how ignorant I was when I was doing these illegal things.

I had the proverbial “perfect life” with the only thing missing was the white picket fence – as eloquently put by my sister-in-law in the Los Angeles Times article). I had what I should have considered enough but I let my addiction control my life. This is still a difficult concept for me to understand even after 21 months of recovery. My mind went completely insane so I could have more than a perfect life. The saying “having your cake and eating it too” is not quite right in my case back then. It was more like I wanted the cake, the plate, the fork, the table, the chair and on and on before I realized I had everything I needed in those three wonderful people in my family. I have stolen four months and many more from these amazing people. I not only stole from my employer I stole from my family. I will never be able to get this time back because it is gone forever. Everyone is making the best of this current situation and my family is in a wonderful place. Despite my words in this blog, I too am doing my best in my current situation. I guess I am having one of those days where I am certainly feeling sorry for myself. I don’t have that right because it was me alone who caused this mess. However, if I didn’t feel the least bit sorry I believe I wouldn’t be human. Contrary to popular opinion, I am human and am prone to these types of emotions. The key is what I do with them. If I continue to feel sorry for myself and continue to blame myself I am destined for failure. I hear so many of my fellow inmates blame this or that for their current problems. I don’t see a great deal of growth or responsibility in these inmates. I don’t want to become like them where my life revolves around coming in and out of prison making the same mistakes over and over again. I am responsible for my own actions and if I fall back into the woe is me trap, the same old horrible behaviors will resurface.

This awful experience is a one and only one time as long as I stay in recovery. The purpose of the blog is for me to be accountable for my own actions and yesterday as I watched the college football games I didn’t feel an urge to place a wager. However, I didn’t necessarily feel the pain of my past regressions as I watched the game. Early on in my recovery I didn’t watch much sports.

As my recovery progressed and I attended GA meetings very regularly, I started to watch a little more sports. Each time I watched I seemed to always feel a twinge of pain knowing how I let my sports gambling addiction ruin my life. It was a good type of reminder. Nevertheless, the last GA meeting I attended was over four months ago and I have not placed a wager of any kind in almost 21 months. Without these meetings, no matter how much correspondence I receive from my incredible GA friends it does not take the place of an actual live meeting. In all my correspondences, I try to include something on recovery in order for me to stay focused. Also, in this blog I need to constantly – sorry if I am being repetitive – remind myself of my recovery. In a nutshell, I do miss the GA meetings very much.

It is obvious I miss my family and the GA meetings so much. Without GA I have no family; however, the reverse is not true. If for some reason my wife decides she can’t wait for me or decides to move on with the children (this is completely hypothetical and I have no reason to believe this will actually happen) GA will be a part of my life. Actually, it is my life (I selfishly write) that is paramount in all this madness. Without recovery, I have no life and thus no family, no friends, and nothing at all. This is why no matter what life throws at me I must keep the GA program in my life. The saying “Meetings Make It” is so true because not having attended a meeting in so long I can see how people relapse. I can write and talk about my recovery until I am blue in the face but without a meeting it makes the recovery process that much harder. Unfortunately, due to the current prison conditions starting a GA meeting is next to impossible. It would be extremely difficult to do. Also, the fact that I am here for a few - hopefully – more months makes it even more difficult to get the meeting going. I understand the fire camps are more receptive to recovery programs and may even have a 12 step program of some type on their property. Whatever the case, I will continue to do my best by writing this blog and all my fantastic friends in order to stay accountable. Also, I will talk more to fellow inmates and pick their brains regarding their drug addictions.

One of the most common reasons for many of my fellow inmates returning to prison time and time again is getting caught up with the same old friends in the same old environment. I believe everyone whom I have spoken with has affirmed this reason. Thankfully, with my addiction, I did it alone. Yes, it started out with a friend but ended by myself. The environment which brought me back to my addiction was boredom and complacency. I need to be aware of these two factors at all times. As long as I continue working the GA program, I will not get complacent and as long as I view all the wonderful things in my life each day I will not get bored. As the years go by the memory of my current situation will fade; however, I must never forget this journey because it is making me a much better person.

Okay, sorry about my lamenting but I do feel much better, I wrote this passage much earlier than I have in the past. We have afternoon yard and when I returned from my breakfast, I decided to write. I am very happy I did write because it is definitely a release. I will run this afternoon because the weather is beautiful and my body feels very good. Also, hopefully this afternoon I will get a chance to speak with my wife but if I don’t I will try again on Tuesday afternoon.

What would a blog passage be if I didn’t mention my special vegetarian meal? There is nothing to report from dinner last night because I didn’t go to the dining hall. The main entrée was baked fish which is considered a vegetarian meal so I knew I wouldn’t get any additional food. The prison “culinary” team’s view of baked fish is very different than mine. This “baked” fish is just like McDonald’s filet o fish sandwich with the breading on the outside which was fried at some point. I have had this meal twice in the past and each time I felt horrible after eating it. I am sure it had something to do with the breading and how it was prepared. Also, the sides with this meal were lacking; scalloped potatoes with American cheese melted on them, and some type of mayonnaise salad. I opted to stay back in the dorm and prepare my own dinner. I was going to make rice and beans but the only type of beans sold in the store are refried. My taste buds won’t allow me to eat refried anything because to me it tastes like vomit - sorry! I gave them away to one of my neighbors who also stayed back in the dorm. My options were making rice by itself or making a soup. I opted for the soup and it is amazing how many calories are in one package – 380 calories – with 7 grams of fat but 0 grams of trans fat. How this contains this amount of fat is beyond me because in the soup are pasta noodles and a seasoning packet with an enormous amount of sodium. I try to use only half the packet and let the soup stand for a few minutes so some of the salt cooks out. I have to constantly remind myself that eating is all about the caloric intake and now that I am finally taking vitamins it makes getting calories a little easier. On the nutritional scale, last night’s dinner wasn’t very good but my choices are limited. I noticed that I was hungrier than usual during the day yesterday even though I didn’t work out. I suspect it had something to do with the workout on Friday. I was able to eat my peanut butter and jam sandwich for lunch which somewhat held me over to dinner. The only redeeming quality of my soup dinner was the two packages of carrots I placed in the soup.

Once a week we receive mini-diced carrots in one lunch. This would be the only healthy part of the lunch all week. Unfortunately, we do not receive any fresh fruit in our lunches because some of the fellow inmates would make “Pruno” from those fruits. So, the prison officials took away the fruits in our lunches. This gives new meaning to the phrase “One bad apple spoils the lot!” I save the carrots and also receive a few packages from my dorm members and place them in my soups which provide more nutrients and flavor. By the way, these dorm members don’t appreciate these carrots as much as I do.

This morning at breakfast, I sat with different dorm members. My usual breakfast partners were late on arrival. I didn’t request a special vegetarian meal because the only meat item was sausage links which were traded away for some canned fruit. I also traded away my eggs for more grits. It doesn’t matter who I sit with because it certainly seems everyone is content on trading away their hot cereal for the eggs and sausage. This works out fine for me because I am able to add those necessary calories. On the way out, I picked up my vegetarian lunch of peanut butter and jam in lieu of the lunchmeat regular lunch. I was certainly glad to see the peanut butter and jam and not the American cheese sandwich of yesterday. I wonder if there will be any consistency to these lunches, probably not, but I will take the peanut butter and jam any day.