The Story behind A.Fractured.Mind

 The purpose of writing is to be self therapeutic and to allow one’s self to digest things on a sub-conscious level. Now I can’t say as that anything has been ‘bothering’ me lately only because I’ve been so numb. Being released from prison has given me an elation of freedom though beyond that there really isn’t anything left. My freedom meant quite a lot to me but now I am at a position where I really am not moving. Granted there are steps that I am taking towards ‘Progress’ but are these things really going to work for me? Am I going to forever be stuck in the ‘Cycles’ of my own destruction? Questions constantly plague my head of the order that I know that something is wrong with me, why don’t you ever go and ask for help? Why can’t you get things right you do so well! Why are you fighting the changes that are trying to take hold socially, economically and so on and so forth. I don’t understand why my mind or something in me lashes back against these things.

Somewhere inside of me is a switch that is turned on precluding a ‘Manic state’. I mean look at what just happened to me with Kelsea and my work at Shell. Everything was going so well for a little while (and by well I mean there were no major obviously flawed actions taking place). After thinking about what I have just written I will have to re-qualify that statement. There were lots of things wrong with that time table. Actually pretty much from the moment that I found Yahoo! Chat on Kelsea’s computer at the old apartment, that facilitated my change to occur. Now perhaps it isn’t the exact ‘thing’ that caused me to begin my descent into another ‘manic state’ but it was definitely I am thinking the catalyst that facilitated these ‘negative’ changes to occur. I’m going to go ahead and examine the past two and half years of my life and show the ‘cycles’ that occurred and how it was that I lashed out at everything around me.

Alright roughly two and a half years ago I was coming out of a ‘manic episode’ in which I had stolen my Mom and Dad’s ATM debit card and withdrew $800.00 for the purchase of crack cocaine and prostitutes. I knew the moment that I was doing it that it was wrong and that there would be severe repercussions of those actions. Again though I didn’t care or perhaps I did but just not enough. I remember that series of ‘nights’ because I had disappeared for a number of days, it literally was a drug induced binge. I really don’t remember much of what happened exactly during that time, I mean I remember getting some crack and getting a hotel. I also remember having this woman give me head on the bed while someone else watched us from across the room. I also remember that same woman that gave me head trying to hook me up with a younger girl but I was already to far gone in the drugs haze by then to even care about ’sex’. The fallout of that whenever I ran out of money and began to sober up was I finally came home. (Home is relative, I have never had one) The first thing that people did, and I remember that everyone was here at that time. Sam, Kaela, Sonya, Mom and Dad, did was to first find out that I was ‘OK’ and then my father filed into me about being a failure, him being a failing father and “How could I do this? How could I do what I did and bring shame to the family and my Mother?!” In that one moment he systematically destroyed who I was again. Already I was in an unstable frame of mind and had no true knowledge of self to identify with. Though I was a fractured mind, spirit and soul I continued on.

Yes I had lost my job at Diamond Shamrock at the time because I no longer cared about it, to be honest I was rather bored with that position. Though continuing on, over the period of the next few months I had made signs of showing that I was getting ‘better’ that everything was ‘OK’. No one knew that I was still falling apart inside, I wanted to find someway to expel these demons that haunt my mind. Alcohol and drugs did that for me. Why? I unfortunately couldn’t tell you. After sometime my brother invited me to move down to San Marcos with him (Yes I was living in San Antonio with my parents when all the above occurred.) Thinking only that I could escape from the demons that were chasing me around San Antonio I jumped on board and never looked back. It worked! For about a year, I didn’t have any kind of problems other then that I had the occasional trouble spot in dealing with Sam. I held job for almost a year at Pizza Hut and everything seemed fine superficially, though right underneath I was beginning to boil because all of the tension from my past was coming up again. I had never dealt with all these issues that have just been stored somewhere in my mind. Of course with this time that I was living with Sam I had excelled at work and was on the fast track to promotion yet again. Everything was going alright until I started drinking again. I don’t know why it was that I picked it up once more, but for whatever reason I had. And I was beginning to drink heavily, nothing really mattered then. Bowie a once good friend of mine moved in with Sam and I, and everything was alright for the time being. Then I went to a party down the block with Sam and Kaela and well there is where I met Emily the woman that more or less acerbated and fed my illness. I fucked her that night on floor in our living room. We had a strange relationship with one another. I used her for nothing more then as someone that would give me somebody to warm my bed. I believe at one point she attempted to try and talk me into a relationship, though something in me would not allow that. I knew that she wasn’t anyone that I could be ‘Emotionally intimately” involved with. Though continuing with what happened; she was someone that I could feed off. Sexually and Emotionally. I remember the fall out that occurred because Sam And Bowie had to find me after I had taken Bowie’s car one night after drinking quite a bit. Of course they literally found me in her arms the next morning after I had used her the night prior. I remember the feeling of some ‘guilt’ that I had for making Sam believe that he had failed, though it wasn’t much. I had done what I did because I needed to do it. That is the only way that I can actually describe it. The action of stealing Bowie’s car didn’t in my mind hold any consequences because well Bowie was my ”friend” why would he be upset? That should have been a warning sign for me then, though it wasn’t. Only now can I look back and realize that it was wrong to do that, and to feel anything for them then. I supose you can say that I am playing catch-up with my emotions for the years of pain that I have caused.

As one might think the fall-out that happened between the three of us was severe. Bowie more or less fell into his already fragile mind in the belief that I had betrayed him. To some degree at the time I did not understand this, now though I realize that I was wrong. Again, it is years later though, and nothing I say or do will change what has happened in the past. Anyways, it took some time though I wound up with someone who was a little bit more insane then myself. Jill. She definitely has many self-esteem issues that she needs to address, and I used her and her family to the breadth that I could. I ran over all of them. That’s what I did then. I used anyone and everyone that I could to continue moving forward towards something. What that something was I didn’t know then, and I still don’t know now. Though I moved in with Jill I thought things would be alright, and they were for sometime. Until the day came that I woke up from my revelry and knew that Jill was nothing more then a washout. I started looking for something else. Through this time I found an ‘old friend’ Robby, to whom I started seeing a lot of again. He re-introduced pot back into my life For almost a year I hadn’t smoked, maybe a little longer, I don’t remember correctly. Though anyways it is inconsequential, my life changed again. I was once more smoking, thinking that it was alright to do so. Everything fell apart between Jill and I, and somehow I don’t remember I talked Sam into allowing me to move back into the apartment with him in San Marcos. I changed jobs and started working at Jack in the Box, it was fine again for a time. I wasn’t technically lucid as I am now writing this, but neither was I entirely lost in the throws of downward spiral, though one was coming very shortly.

While working at Jack in the Box I had wound up meeting with the woman that I was to be with for the next year and a half of my life. She drew me out of the downward spiral that I had started and had a very mellowing effect upon me. Somehow I was on a plateau neither falling or rising above it. I just was. We did well with one another for about six months before problems started to step forward. (I omitted the fact that during those six months I had started to smoke and towards the end drink very heavily) Though things were strained between us they were manageable. I remember her finding a conversation of mine from a Yahoo! Online chat that I had had with another woman. I guess I knew then that Kelsea wasn’t providing me with something. Though what it was I don’t know. I lied about it to her of course, said that it was me that had said those things but that I had acted upon them. She never knew that our relationship started the same night that I ate another woman out in her bathroom. Some foundation, right? Anyways we ‘worked’ through that, or rather we swept it under the rug and forgot about it for a while and believed that everything was fine. My mind’s illness wouldn’t be so easily fooled into believing those lies. I started to wander to other women, and even at times men. I lied to everyone around me, whether they were friends, family or fellow coworkers. I remember that when I was arrested the first time in February of 06′ for the felony possession of marijuana and DWI that Kelsea had found out I had lied to a co-worker of mine at Apple. Of course I recovered and lied to her, she believed me because she wanted to. I don’t know who was worse in that relationship. Me for the lies that I constantly spoon fed her, or her knowing that I was lying and continuing to believe me. She enabled me far worse then anyone else in my past.

I remember the moment that Kelsea was curious about Cocaine,I was more or less again in a semi-lucid state. I informed her then that I didn’t want to be around the stuff, because I knew what it did to me. Hell I had just a year prior come from an $800 cocaine binge. Though finally she did get me to come around and buy some coke, and it wasn’t long after that the world around me started to change again. I have come to the conclusion that whenever I abuse cocaine it is the step over the cliff and the beginning plummet to the Earth below. Well things were going ‘alright’ for a time and then I was recruited into Shell for management. I loved that position. It was everything that I had been wanting in a position prior in my life. I finally found a job that valued me for who I was and the natural aptitude that I applied towards the job that they gave me. I was an assistant manager first and the hours I worked weren’t that long initially, though that changed towards the end of November of 06′. I was beginning to take on more responsibilities of a manager. Through out this entire time Kelsea and I had been drifting apart slowly. Everything was beginning to fall apart around me. My initial fear of doing drugs because I was on probation began to fall away. The long hours of work, the stress of coming home to Kelsea and finding that I no longer cared for her began to take its tole on me. I lied to myself of course, thinking that things would eventually begin to fix themselves. I should have known that at one point I had stolen Kelsea’s car and run up to San Antonio in the evening and stayed there an entire day doing coke and hanging out again with prostitutes. I remember feeling agitated towards the whore that I was with because she kept running around in Kelsea’s car and wouldn’t allow me to go home. I knew a fight was coming so I prepared myself for it. I walked in the door and Kelsea and her friend Kim were there talking. Of course Kelsea asked where I had been I don’t remember what I answered her but I replied something along the lines of being out. She took another bite from that spoon.

The lies continued for months after that. I was constantly cheating on her with people that I had met through work or old friends. There was Jill of course because she wanted to be ‘Loved’, and I didn’t care what she wanted, I just wanted a piece of ass. I used Jill over and over again, and she is and was still to weak to understand it. Then one night Aurora walked back into my life, literally. She was a woman that I had almost cared for as much as my ex-wife Ashleigh. Though I knew she was ‘damaged goods’ as well. She had a lot of issues in her life that she needed to walk through. I used her sexually too because I remembered from our previous times together that she was a nymphomaniac. I hadn’t known she had changed till later when I was incarcerated of what I had done to her. Akin to rape. I raped her emotionally and almost physically, though she never once said ‘No’. I remember one letter she wrote me while I was locked up and she had said that she ‘Never knew she could say NO to me.” For probably the first time since Ashleigh had I felt guilt or some emotion towards abusing a woman’s trust. And make no lie about that, I realize now that she trusted me to know what was right. I can’t excuse my actions towards her or ever make up for them. We still talk to this day. She is one of the people who is helping me through with this illness whatever that it may be. I lean on her friendship more when I can. Though as I said above she has problems of her own to handle, and she shouldn’t be forced to shoulder my own.

Aurora was the last person that I saw (that mattered to me) before I was arrested on March 28, 2007. I had originally left the house and stolen a $100 from Kelsea’s wallet and her car, and was on my way to try and get a piece of ass from this girl Devin who had actually about a week prior spent the night with me in the apartment while Kelsea was in Houston with her mother. Yeah it was a rather interesting relationship that I had with Kelsea towards the end. Well I found myself once more in the ghetto’s of San Antonio again doing the drugs and talking with the prostitutes to whom I felt comfortable divulging my fucked up life to. I remember calling home that next morning at around seven in the morning and not thinking much about the strained voice on the other end. I should have realized that something was wrong though I didn’t care. Or at least not until I had the cops drag me from her car right in front of the apartment. I didn’t fight them, I knew that I was going to jail that day anyways why shouldn’t it be expedited by Kelsea calling the cops on me for stealing her car? Heh’ should have known it would turn out like that but I really just didn’t give to shits about it. I spent the next month in jail comfortably numb. Recovering from my life that I had been leading up to that point. I truly didn’t start to think about the pain I had caused others until a few months in. Though I was still using people even while I was inside. Aurora and Jill the two outlets I had to the world outside besides my family. Though I would never tell my family what was really going on because they would never understand what was going through my mind. Of course I told them just enough to get through to them that I wanted to change. They (being my parents) didn’t need to know my past, all they would do is deny that it ever happened anyways. I can do no wrong. And I thought I was the one living a lie all these years. Who knew?

I’m starting to wake up now to everything. Of course this is probably in case to the fact that I am in a lucid frame of mind and not surrounded by people who have any kind of negative influence on me. Though I have no friends anymore, all I have left is the family that I am trying so hard not to lose. Everything up until now has always been about me in a negative way. Selfish and without thought or conscience thought to how it would effect others around me. Now though I am trying to seek the help that is needed to get me through my life and without anything that would adversely effect me. The thought of going back to the life style that I was living before now frightens me more than anything else. I don’t want to wake up again in six months and find that I am again stuck in and have no where to go but down. Right now I realize that I have up and that is all I need to know. Life has been harsh for me because I have placed so many barricades before me that it is nigh impossible to step over them. Though I have to make myself believe that it is possible to go forward, and that I can succeed on top of that. Without that hope without the knowledge that there is a possibility that I could get better then there is no reason to continue fighting. And unfortunately that isn’t who I am? I am a fighter always the survivor. I am tired of being just the survivor I want to live life again. And I want it to be on my terms.

~ by joel trevino on October 16, 2007.