I picked up where I left off.
It would seem like after all of the trouble I encountered thus far as a result of my drinking, I would stop or at least slow down after I got off the alcohol monitor. I wish I could say this was true. The day I was released from the monitor I didn't drink, but the next day I was right back at the liquor store for a nice pint of Black Velvet Canadian Whiskey. I remember drinking it straight out the bottle while sitting in my living room and thinking that this was going to have to stop one day. I had just convinced myself that today was not that day.
"If you find yourself in a hole, the first thing to do is stop digging."
They say, "if you find yourself in a hole, the first thing to do is stop digging." I knew deep down inside that I was in a hole, but I didn't want to face it. The life I was living did not consist of facing problems. The life I was living consisted of running from them. So I figured I would just keep drinking and avoid my problems for as long as I could.So I was about five months into my lease, working the job at ReCelluar and dating a woman who lived in my apartment complex. I met her while filling out job applications in the computer room of the complex and we started dating a couple weeks after. It probably wasn't the best time to enter a relationship but what I foresaw in my future was losing everything I had worked hard for. I had already lost my job, license, freedom (probation), dropped out of college, and next I was going to lose my apartment. My money was decreasing by the day and I didn't have much money coming in. So I wanted something - or someone - I could hold on to during all of this. Someone I could keep and call mine while in the midst of losing it all.
"I hate it when you drink!"
Everything was well between us for the first couple of months because up until that point she hadn't realized I was an alcoholic. But once she realized that when I started drinking, I didn't know how to stop, the problems began. She would cry and tell me things like, "I hate it when you drink (her favorite line)!" She would also say, "Why can't you just drink a little bit," or "I don't know what to do because I never dated anyone who drank so much." When it was time for me to meet her friends, she would tell me, "Okay Vernon, no drinking." She did not want her friends to see that she was dating a total drunk.There was also something that I didn't know about my girlfriend until about two months after we started dating, she was physically abusive. At times she would get so mad about my drinking that she would hit me. The first time it happened, I felt like it was my fault because I felt like it wasn't fair to her for me to be drinking so heavy. For example, one day she had just gotten off of work and came to my apartment right after. She needed someone to talk to because she had a bad day at work and just needed a listening ear. She came in and saw that I was already drunk and had more alcohol waiting. My eyes were red, I wreaked of liquor, my words were slurred and I was just an all-around mess. She got so mad that she started hitting me continuously. I ended up with scars on my face and everything. I told her I was going to call the cops if she kept hitting me - and I really was - but I didn't want to call them, they come and I'm drunk. Especially since I was still on probation and wasn't even supposed to be drinking.
After the drama subsided, we talked about it and everything went back to normal. That is, until the next time it happened . . .
There were a lot of reasons why I continued a relationship with my girlfriend. First, it wasn't all bad. We had a lot of great times and at the end of the day, she was in my corner. I had told her right before we started dating that she might want to pursue someone who was doing better than me in life. I gave her the whole spill about how I've seen better days and that it was going to get worse for me before it got better. She didn't care. She said she loved me, she could see my ambition and reassured me that we all go through things in life and that I was going to make it out. Since she had her license, she was able to drive me to work, drug testing and such. She was also able to use my car to get herself back and forth to work. I was still staying afloat with my investment money and was able to take her out, buy her gifts on the holidays and keep a smile on her face.
Community service.
You might be wondering how I was able to continue to drink while having to randomly drug and alcohol test. Well, if I was supposed to go in to test and I knew I wouldn't pass it, I just wouldn't go. I would tell my probation officer that I didn't have a ride. After about three times, the probation department would summon me to community service which consisted of picking up trash off of freeways and other random locations. They would give me a little bit of leeway as long as I was paying them on time, which I made sure I did.
