Still clean (105 days)

I was thinking earlier today that I need to accept the idea that I’m never going to be happy. That seems kind of strange coming from someone that has a smile plastered to his face so much of the time. And it’s not like I’m faking being happy. I’m having fun. I’m laughing. I’m enjoying myself and my friends and the dumb (fairly ordinary lately) shit that I’ve been getting into. But I’ve been spending so much time with friends lately and – when I’m with friends – I mostly feel pretty okay. But then – when I get back to being alone – it’s kind of another story. Chris Hembrough was just in town visiting and I spent the whole week with him at his mom’s house; it was sort of like being on vacation. We’d get up every morning, go to the gym, get lunch, kick around the house for a bit, and then go out at night to meet up with more friends. And we had a lot of fun. Like, pretty much every minute of every day was fun. Now that I’m back “home,” I’m thinking about the fact that I don’t really have my own home right now. I don’t even really have my own room. I feel like a child. Like a dependent. I need to rebuild my life and get back to being independent. But what does that even look like? Where does that take place? Who am I even anymore?

So I still talk to my sort-of/pseudo-(ex)-girlfriend every day and we try to make plans to get her into detox or rehab and, ultimately, down here to me. But she’s got no money, no nothing; she can’t stay where I stay, so I’m on the hook for at least her first month’s rent. Which is fine because I want her here and there have been plenty of times when I was in worse shape than her and she took care of me. But, obviously, my resources are super limited right now; if they weren’t, then I wouldn’t still be in the position that I’m in right now. So it’s, like, I need to make more money but the only way I make money is from art and while there’s some degree to which I can make sales happen, it’s ultimately (more or less / at the end of the day) just about catching breaks and getting lucky. It’s about somebody hitting me up and wanting to buy one of the originals and making me “rich” again. It’s not like I have the resources or the tools that I need right now to hammer it out the way that I used to so far as selling prints on the street or hitting up galleries is concerned. So – yeah – all I can really do is what I do and hope that it comes back to me.

But let’s fast forward a little bit. Let’s say enough time passes that we get our own place and move back in together. Is that here? Is that in some other city or state? There’s so much I need to do before I’ll even be in a position where I could move my life somewhere else again. But let’s say that I get all my shit worked out, let’s say we do move away together and get our own place again… Let’s say my art career picks back up and I’m making good money again. Let’s say I get everything that I want…

I’m just gonna want different shit. There’s gonna be something wrong with something and I’m not gonna be okay. She’s gonna get fucked up again, or I’m gonna be stressed that she’s gonna get fucked up again, or get upset about how her family hates me, or – whatever.

And that’s not to say that all of my problems are about her. They’re not. They’re really, really not. And even if they were, if it weren’t her, it’d be another girl. I’m sure.

Like I wrote on one of my new paintings, it seems like it all always come down to girls and money. That’s what I always stress about; that’s what I’m probably always going to stress about no matter what.

SO… – how do I get okay with that?

I don’t fucking know. But the easy, obvious answer is that I don’t and that this is just the way that life works. So I need to just enjoy the good moments and do the things that I like to do. I need to do the things that put that dumb, crooked smile on my face so much of the time.

And just fucking hope that it all works out….?

That seems like such a copout. I’m not trying to rely on faith. I make things happen for myself. But I can’t right now. So how am I even “me” still? Am I? Am I Sammy thrashLife or am I “Sam North” or… I don’t even know what that shit means right now.

It’s moments like these when I feel like I need to change everything about myself and start from scratch. But shit… when I think about what that looks like, I realize that I may feel insecure about who I am right now or what I’m doing but I know who and what I’m not. And from that I can pretty much extrapolate to who I am. And – yeah – for better or worse, I’m that reckless, fucked up, paint-covered, snarky fucking kid (who’s not much of a kid anymore) and trying to be anything else is just gonna make me miserable for real. Not “dissatisfied in quiet moments” but straight up depressed all the time.

So I guess I should go paint some funny fucking faces now and maybe scribble about my feelings a little more.

I need a professional photographer in my new (temporary) hometown so that I can get real photos of my new work for use online and to make prints from. For now, here are three sorta-decent iPhone photos of the three pieces I’ve finished since getting clean. They’re not clear enough to zoom in and see any detail but they oughtta give you the basic idea. Two are still available for purchase, one is sold.