dave42

so friday night i get off of work. my na friend and i head up to the group. we are listening to the last 20 minutes of lone star dead (a local station that plays 2 hoours of grateful dead every friday night from 8-10pm). and the first song that comes on after the commercials is "terrapin station". this is one of my favorite songs. and i get all excited. i want to tell my friend about the time phish played this song. how that whole summer (97) they were busting out all these awesome cover songs for encores. i want to tell him how unexpected it was. how just listening to the tape i still get goosebumps. i want him to hear the crowd when trey plays the solo. but i want to hear the song. and then i get all shakey. i get uncomfortable in my own skin. when we get to the meeting it is packed. it is birthday night which means they celebrate people that have clean dates that month. clean date birthdays: 30days, 60days, 90days, 6months, 9months, 1year, 18months, and multiple years. and they have a dance after the meeting. i don't really go to these. they are pretty corny and all those people scare me still. i still have a fear of people but i love going to shows. i don't know. so we sit in his car and listen to the rest of the show. then we go to meet our sponsor, we have the same one. our sponsor says he doesn't want to go to the dallas aa meeting with us because he is tired. before we leave, he reminds me to write about my anxiety. and to stay clean.

so on the way to dallas we stop in this mexican restraunt for dinner. all the waitresses speak spanish and some broken english. as we are waiting to be seated our waitress' boyfriend comes in and narks his territory with a big old kiss. on man, it warmed me up. so they fall into conversation so we get a new waitress. my heart ached. she was burned, physically, pretty bad. but she was still pretty. and she winked at me! hot damn sam! and when she asked me something in spanish i had to ask my friend what she said. so we ordered and our food came and we ate. it was excellent. while eating this girl was walking around cleaning the tables. she was so beautiful! i wanted to marry her right there. she would ruin me. she could ruin everything. she didn't even look at me. oh man, she was something. after she got a table i kept shyly looking around for her. when we finished she was standing at the counter, smilling. i kept looking at her and finally made eye contact. i smiled and she smiled back. oh my heart. as we left i lit up a smoke and felt so empty. so lonely.

we drove around deep ellum after that. we looked at pretty girls. none of them could hold a match to this mexican beauty though. i kept thinking about her. i had to let her go but not now. in just a little while.

deep ellum was packed with the usual club kids. nothing worth second thoughts.

we finally found the meeting after about 20 minutes of driving around. there weren't as many people there as we thought would be. but there were these 2 sisters. i thought they were lovers at first. they were both dressed in camoflauge shirts with no sleeves, tight blue jeans, and boots. and when they shared, you could tell they were the real deal. real addicts. they reminded me of those 2 brothers in "boondock saints". and when they left the group early, i was sure they were going out to fight crime. maybe save some women from drunk frat boys.

the last person to speak was amazing. he shared on his first spiritual experience with sobriety. it was very inspiring. after the meeting (the topic was spiritual experiences) he came over to talk with me and my friend. he asked me about his tatoos. he told us he owned a bunch of hot dog stands around the city. he then pulled up his shirt sleeve and showed us this awesome tatoo of a hand holding a hot dog. he also told us that his 11 year anniversary was this sunday and he was going to come to our home group and pick up his tag. he had gotten clean at our home group but moved and didn't make it to that part of town very often.

i forgot to tell you about this kid at the meeting. he was so amazing. he would sit there with his eyes closed totally digging what everyone was saying. he would nod his head, smile. he was jamming on peoples words. it was so great. i wanted to give him a big old hug and tell him i understand. that i really do believe things are going to get better for us all. that God and love do exists.

so we left the group. on the way home we past the mexican restraunt and i thought of that waitress again.

close to home our sponsor called and asked us to meet him at ihop. so we stopped in for a little bit. there were a bunch of people from the dance there. we talked for awhile. once all the loud, drunk kids came in we decided to leave. one of the drunk kids girlfriend had a black eye. i didn't want to judge because accidents do happen, but...

when i got home i wrote for awhile about my anxiety. i wanted to be creative and honest about it. i had been planning an outline in my head all night. it was about the different thought that terrorize my mind while having an attack. the thoughts in between the deep breathes.

i wrote for awhile, played along with some songs for practice, watched a little tv, prayed, and feel asleep a little after 6 am.