Ash and me went to lunch

It had been a while since I saw her. We leave each other voice mails.

Now that I think about it, we communicate a lot that way. Just leaving voice mails.

Anyhow, we had a funny conversation.

I said something like now that I've started working at the oil company, my life is so much less worrisome. I said I know I likely deserve to get kicked in the balls for saying it, but the big thing that's different is not worrying all the time about what's in my bank account when I go buy groceries.

Ash smiled at me when I said all that. Then I said something like, "I don't enjoy being kicked in the balls but I understand that some people do and you maybe have even met someone like that."

She laughed in that surprised way, and then snorted. I felt like I got a joke past her cool demeanor.

It was endearing. Ash is such a great friend.

She said how she says of course jobs are trash. She said how humans want to walk around outside in big families, sharing.

I was a little surprised she was so chill with it. Like maybe everyone else knew what it feels like to be rich, except me.

Obviously I'm exaggerating but really, there's been a lot of stuff I only found out about when I started working at a fancy restaurant.

Meanwhile other people often do know about this stuff.

We went to that Japanese place that I read about in the newsaper. It was pretty good!

What was Ash wearing? I think she was wearing a pretty cute outfit. Like it showed she was applying herself.

Ash isn't always immediately stunning, but sometimes, she really is. It's wild how much she varies in her looks, day to day.

She looked really cute, which made me realize that she likes me too. Likes being with me, anyway.

I realize writing this out that she has said as much to me, but I can't believe it. I loathe myself in such a way that it's hard to believe anyone else would not also loathe me.

But that's not right. That can't be right.

The thing that all the drug counselors said and all the people in the AA meetings still say is how I need to accept I was powerless over my addiction and I need god to run my life for me. Without something intervening, I was going to end up in jail, an institution, on the streets, or dead.

That's what they want you to think. That's what you have to convince them you believe if you want them to recommend to the judge that you stay out of prison.

I look back now and I'm beginning to remember just how scared I was during that time.

So, the question that I keep wondering about it is did it need to be scary? Did it need to be life-threatening?

Faking a belief in god. That was really difficult for me. That really threw me back. Back to who I was as a boy in junior high.

I was 13 and I remember that church lock in where at the end I said I wanted to be saved when we were all praying.

Then everyone made a circle around me and then I repeated that prayer.

And then Jeff, the youth group leader, he said, "All your sins are forgiven, Matthew."

And I felt so bad and good at the same time. I started bawling and that guy Jeff hugged me and then pushed me off for a second.

Now when I look back on that memory, I see it differently. It wasn't a scenario where this awful sinner was repenting after a life of causing misery.

Now I see it as a 13 year old boy that was secretly obsessed with dinosaurs but his parents went to a church that didn't believe in evolution.

A boy that had unfortunately been made to hate himself. Hate his skinny body. Hate his sex drive. Hate his own genitals after that creep pediatrician made up a bullshit excuse and grope him.

That's the boy that was crying that time in the lock in.

And that goes back to the AA thing about admitting your life was unmanageable in their words.

It's like they want you to say "I was about to die before I got here."

Maybe that's so they can justify doing anything they want to do. Like when a patient is sick and all the standard stuff has been tried and it all fails, then it's OK to try riskier, unproven stuff.

So AA people are like, "look we had to do some stuff to you to help you get sober. Some of those things might have felt uncomfortable. I promise we were just trying to save your life, and this was after you asked for help."

That seems like a genuinely nice thing, doesn't it?

But what about saying all that, but really, you're just looking for opportunities to get patients for your drug trial?

There's a whole industry I found out where hospitals trade patients. It's a fucked up game of go fish but with cancer patients.

And a lot of these drug trials involve placebos, or give the drugs to people not as part of treating their disease, but just to independently check for side effects of the drug, and not of the cancer.