The Retrospective Writings

On Homelessness Pt2 A prequel to my “The Hardness of the Homeless” post             “Yo man, you can’t sleep here. You gotta get up.”             I took the tarp away from my head and looked up to see Becca standing over me in her park ranger uniform. Tiny droplets of rain fell on my face as I squinted around to get a better look at my surroundings. Off in the distance, more rangers were waking the others, yelling out “Good morning! Time to get up!”             “Oh, hey Ryan,” said Becca. “It’s morning. You gotta get moving.”             I reached to my pocket and grabbed my cigarettes. The pack was soaked, hopefully from the rain. I shakily put one to my lips.             “No smoking in the park,” ca...

Chapter 2 The saying still rings true, I suppose, except now I’ve just given in; the “can’t” has come sooner than expected. My cynicism and disparagement in life comes with the territory. It started back when things were simpler, before the shakes and the seizures. The doctors told me that when they started, the alcohol was weakening my immune system. When paired with the chronic smoking, it all just gave me a greater chance to meet the reaper through the exact same hand my father had been dealt. Having never been that great at poker, I chanced my life with a bluff, and bet it all into the pot of gold that was part of the delusion that the disease reflected at the bottom of each bottle that I drank nightly and with each hourly cigarette. Eight years later, now at forty two years old, the doc handed me some papers with eyes that said, “I told you so.” I’d be dead within a year. My father, who had actually never smoked a day in his life, cursed God for the deceptiveness of the fort...

Life In Death “Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside us while we live.” -Norman Cousins Chapter One             My brother and I sat in the near-bare hospital room and watched my father breathe his last living breaths. Months before this moment, the doctors had told us all that there was nothing to stop the cancer now, that there were no more lung snippets to take without suffocating the man I had grown to respect. Weeks later, he made this hospital bed permanent, shrinking into it like a deflating blow-up doll. Minutes prior to his final living breath, my father spoke his last words, which were simply, “It’s about time.” We sat there now, waiting for the flat line, and the answer to our long awaited question.             It finally came, and the high-pitched tone of the machine was deafening. We bowed our heads in respect ...

V for Veiled – Written 7/7/16             Many of you who read these stories consistently know that I have mentioned that there are a lot of memories of mine that have been erased due to the many years of alcohol abuse that I have subjected my brain to, making it hard to recall most (if any) details about specific events in my life. The year that I spent living with one of my best friends, Kyle, produced many memorable moments (and many that I’ve tried to forget), most of which I’ve found difficult to fit into this semi-humorous collection due to their harsh and “real” nature, but that I still feel the need to map out on paper anyway. Some of them may someday fall into another collection with a more apt theme, but for now, there are still some that stick out to me as remember-worthy and that I think are appropriate to look back on at this point in my recovery. I try my hardest to look back and laugh at both the good and the...