I'm no hero...

I've thought long and hard as to how to how best to explain my absence on the blog and the truth is the only way to go.

I was just released from the VA hospital. I checked in last week. Suicidal and self-medicating, again. For you novices to recovery I was drinking and smoking weed. No apologies, no excuses.

Turns out my medication stopped working about a year ago. I didn't know it. So every day, I slipped lower into the shit...wondering eventually how it got up to my nose.

Also let me know I have been dealing with untreated PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder) since childhood. Untreated for forty years. Nice. At least I have a name to attach to it and thereby get help for it. So yeah, it's back to meetings, medication, therapy and an attempt to salvage my relationships with my children. If I have the time left.

I'm on new medication, and it looks promising. I hope so.

They offered electro-shock therapy, as an alternative to the meds. No effing thank you, I like what personality I have, and I have no need to arc weld when I piss, so I say no to the voltage. Jesus.

This stops. Regardless how this pans out, the self destructive, hateful behavior ends. I am electing to go into two different VA treatment programs, walking away from what little I had, to get better.

I was hesitant to try the VA as there are so many who really have paid the price, and will never come home, or get well.

A sideways kind of survivor guilt, maybe. Who knows.

I learned a lot in a week. I learned my guilt and remorse over my three failed marriages and the disastrous job I did with my kids has kept me from finding someone else to love. I stayed alone, and grew more and more disconnected. Talk about a fixer-upper.

I would love to write material for my act about the experience but feel it too selfish while others still fight and die and lose more than I have ever had.

They are the heroes. I'm just trying to settle the demons.

To my family and friends who have been supportive and continue to be, thank you. It means more than I can express.

If less is more I'm going to have to get a bigger empty apartment.

Back to survival boys and girls...everyone's favorite topic.

I won't bore you with trite details, although therein lies the Devil.

Or so they say.

I'm up to my chin in a pond of debt. Oh great...a wave. Just what I needed.

And here I thought it was a winning quick pick or an agent in the audience with a sweetheart deal.

While I wouldn't say no to either one...holding my breath is just going to make me winded.

Life's too short to wheeze around the ugly.

If I was driving with my windows down, and had a male inflatable doll...would it look like I was driving a surprised Michael J. Fox to the Doctor?

I used that the last time I did my act. It went over really well.

I went through one of the hardest, bullshit weeks I've had in a while. I was going to cancel the show. Was not feeling it.

But apparently I have friends who believe in what I'm doing. They wouldn't let me cancel.

They inspired me to book a spot at Hyena's at 75 and Mockingbird on the Sunday after Easter.

Back Door Comedy on the Thursday after Easter and Hyena's on Sunday.

I'm not at all used to people believing in me...who are making me realize my potential, or at least trying to.

Friends...hmmm.