I don't even know if I've got enough daytripper to get through this.
It's been years since I sat in front of a terminal with the intent to write a journal entry. When I think about how hard it is to do it right now, it's almost funny to remember that I once filled up an entire holotape with journal entries. For me, though, writing is something that means that shit just went all kinds of wrong. The fact that I used to do it every day just shows how bad things were at the time. It got me through back then but now it's just a reminder that there's a problem that I don't know how to deal with. It was at some point in college that I got out of the habit. It felt good. It was like finally taking the training wheels off of a bike; I was finally able to get through a day without it. All I had to worry about in college was remembering to show up to class and keeping the campus police and my dealer from meeting.
I shouldn't complain about the journal, though. The fact that I even thought about writing in it again shows that it works...and that I need it. It makes sense that it was Nate's idea. Somewhere back in middle school, he'd told me that he'd heard somewhere that it could help people with my "condition" to keep their thoughts straight. As much of a mess as I am right now, I can still laugh about how he always tiptoed around calling me a neurotic wreck, even then. My mother always said that I never deserved to have someone like him around. I never gave her the satisfaction of letting her hear me say it but it's probably the only thing that we ever agreed on.
No, fuck her. Back to Nate.
I don't think he had any idea how writing in a journal was supposed to keep me from constantly cutting class and smoking like a chimney. Really, it was just one in a long string of ideas of his to help me get through the day. I was always in trouble for some damn thing or another and he hated seeing it happen. That's why I think that he was just desperate for a solution was throwing everything at the wall to see what would stick...or, at least, as much as he thought he could without running the risk pissing me off. He knew me well enough to know that the one thing that I hated more than anything else was having people constantly trying to fix me. I got enough of that before I could get out of the door in the morning to go to school, assuming that I was actually going. I really should've told him at the time that I knew that he was just trying to help. I probably would've if I'd had any idea how.
He tried plenty of times before and after but his journal idea was the one that actually helped. It never stopped me from doing what I was doing—come to think of it, I picked up far worse habits as the years went by—but writing about it helped. It always kept me from completely losing it, even when I was sure that it was coming. I've been a train wreck in motion for as long as I can remember but I always managed to keep it together just enough to keep from being written off as a total loss. Things fly through my head faster than I can catch them and only the worst ones come around enough for me to be able to remember them. Being able to write it all down helped me sort it out enough to keep from making that one mistake that ended up being the last straw. It was enough to get me through middle school and high school, which was the only way that I managed to get into a college on the other side of the country. If it hadn't been for that, things never would've gotten better. I can trace all of it back to the journal.
I haven't told him to this day how much I owe him—and not just for the journal thing. He's the only one that's ever been on my side. He never did miss an opportunity to prove that I could lean on him when I needed to. It's just as well that I never told him, though; he'd never accept the credit. That's not why today went the way it did, though. I didn't agree to this because I felt like I owed it to him. It wasn't until I started writing all of this down that it occurred to me that I do, in fact, owe this to him. I agreed to it because I hate seeing him in a bad way as much as he always hated seeing me in the same state. Hell, it was my idea. It took me a good ten minutes to get him to agree to it. I'm still waiting for him to call me back to call the whole thing off because he's decided that he's got it under control.
I should back up a bit.
Nate called me a little while ago because he needed someone to talk to. It made me forget about whatever it was that I was doing at the time. I don't like admitting it to myself but it shook me. I've known him since I was six years old and he's never told me that he needed anything from me, even when he did. He was always the one to rely on, like it was his role in life to be the binding that kept me from falling apart. Hearing him asking for help now sure as hell got my attention, even if he just needed me to listen to him. I've seen him go through bad and worse and couldn't even guess at what would have changed his mind today. I just knew it had to be a catastrophe. It didn't even sound like him on the phone; he's always been the loud and clear type that let you know from the beginning that a lack of self-confidence wasn't one of his shortcomings. Enlisting only made him louder, which I didn't even know was possible. Today, though, I could barely even hear him. He sounded...defeated. I don't really have a better word for it. It was like something had finally come along and broken him.
No, not like. Something did break him. Carrie left him.
I saw it coming before they ever got married. I only ever said anything to him once, though. When he first told me that he was planning on proposing to her, I did my best to gently put it that she was a lying whore and couldn't be trusted to get all the way to work in the morning without fucking somebody behind his back. Well, I did my best to put it gently, at least. He just laughed it off. He said that he wasn't under any illusions that it wasn't going to be easy but he was sure that they could make it work. He was as sure about it as he was about everything. It pissed me off that he wasn't taking it seriously but it made it easy to convince myself that I was just worrying too much and he would know better than I did what kind of person she really was. It sure as hell made it easier to be in his wedding without choking her out at the altar. Besides, it's not like I spent any more time around her than I had to, so it was certainly possible that knew her better than I did.
To Nate's credit, he was right for a while. He enlisted after high school and, taking up the role of the happy housewife, it looked like she was keeping her legs closed while he was gone. I wouldn't really know; I crossed the stage with my diploma and got on the next flight headed west to start college. No bullshit. I actually went straight from the ceremony to the airport. I didn't even stick around for any of the parties. He stayed back in Columbia long enough to finish basic training and then walked down the aisle. Something about her wanting a military wedding. It seemed like it was going well enough. He didn't have any complaints about her back then, at least. Believing that it was all working out somehow kept me from heading back to Boston long enough to put a foot up her ass, so I didn't question it. The few times I talked to her, she seemed like she was actually happy. She always had an eye for anything that cost enough and, when Nate started getting shipped out of the country, getting to follow him around the world was the kind of thing that she could brag to her friends about, secure in the knowledge that they couldn't afford to see what she was seeing for themselves. It still seemed off to me but, since they were both happy, it was easy to not think about it much. As long as Nate was happy, that was good enough for me.
It didn't start looking like anything was off until he got sent to Anchorage. He couldn't take any excess baggage with him, so that was the end of Carrie's seeing the world and calling her friends to tell them what they were missing. On top of that, she was pregnant. I don't think that either one of them knew how it happened. Nate always wanted kids but Carrie always talked about pregnancy like it was The New Plague. It's probably the only thing that I can't really fault her for; I'm not looking for that kind of responsibility, either. That's where the similarities end, though. Nate always told me that she kept saying that she didn't want to have kids while he was getting deployed at a moment's notice, which made sense. Just enough, in fact, to keep stringing him along and making him think that it was going to happen one day. I fought myself at least a few times a week to keep from trying to talk some sense into him. He was actually talking about cutting his career short just to get his family started. I never really understood it but he loved what he did—enough to get halfway to retirement. Just thinking about giving it up was killing him.
Nate actually seemed relieved about it once he found out that he had a kid on the way, though. Knowing him, it meant that ending his career was something that he had to do instead of something that he was choosing to do since that was the deal from the beginning. Carrie was another matter, though. I never really admitted it to myself but I could tell from the way he talked about how she was acting that she was already on her way out of the door. He said that she acted like she didn't want him anywhere near her half of the time and all she ever wanted to talk about was how things used to be when she was seeing the world at the government's expense. He always tried to shrug it off and chalk it up to hormones but I know for a fact that he knew something was wrong. He didn't even bother hiding that he'd noticed that she never talked about the future anymore. Her head was in the past from the minute she took that pregnancy test.
Nate kept his word, just not the way that he wanted to. He took a bullet a few months ago that did some nerve damage, which meant that he was coming home, anyway. Truth be told, I was relieved...and I still am. I never wanted to worry him by letting him know that I was worried about him but it was always hard to not think about the fact that he enlisted six months before the country declared war on China. I guess he used up all of his luck getting shipped around the world on glorified errands for ten years before he caught that bullet. I'm actually thankful for that bullet since it didn't kill him. It fucked him up in some ways, sure, but he can still function about as well as he ever could. He gets honorably discharged and, at the same time, he won't go into combat anymore even if he had decided to stay in the army. On top of that, he got out before the Chinese got driven out of Anchorage. If it wasn't for that, could've been one of the ones that got sent in to deal with the food riots. I know for a fact that he would've deserted before he fired on Americans, especially for no better reason than because they were hungry. The only bad thing to come out of it is that Shaun beat him to Boston.
Carrie was the only one that didn't seem to care that he was home and mostly in one piece. Knowing what I know now, I know that she was out of excuses to put off the whole family thing. On top of that, she wasn't getting to travel the world for free anymore. Nate didn't bother trying to find a desk job and got out to go back to work. I doubt she missed the fact that it was only because of what she told him about having kids. Seeing the world is the only thing that I can think of that kept her around, anyway; I never heard her talk about anything else that actually made her happy. Nate was home but she acted like she couldn't stand him. On top of that, they had Shaun and I know for a fact that she didn't want him around. Thinking about it now, I'm surprised that she held out with the whole family life for a whole two months.
I can't even guess where she is now and if Nate knows, he didn't say. It's not like I'm going to ask him. It doesn't matter, anyway. All he said was that he was at work and got a call from a daycare that said that Shaun was there. He had been dropped off that morning and nobody had come to pick him up yet. While he was in the middle of trying to figure out why the fuck he was at a daycare instead of at home with his mother, he got home to find that half of their apartment had been cleaned out. She didn't leave him as much as a Dear John letter. Their bank accounts looked worse than their apartment; every account had been emptied and two of their credit cards had been damn near maxed out. Bitch didn't even leave her wedding band behind.
Shit. The daytripper is starting to wear off. Either that or I finally caught up to it.
That was the situation when he called me. All I could do was listen while he told me what happened and what he knew. It's a good thing that he was in the mood to talk; I sure as hell didn't know what to say to him. Besides, I know that he needed to get it out. It got quiet after that though. It made my insides go cold. I've never known him to be at a loss for words, no matter how bad things got. He always has a plan or an idea or something to say about what to do next. This is too much for him, though. His wife left him after he'd just left ten years worth of career behind for her and now he had a kid that he had no idea how to take care of alone while he was in the middle of learning how to be a civilian with a normal day job for the first time since high school. I knew it from the way that he was just quiet, like he was waiting for a solution to fall out of the sky. He'd never say that he needed help, even if he knew it. I don't even know if the thought has ever occurred to him before. I knew it, though, which was enough of a reason for me to give him some help, even if it was a terrible idea.
I told him that I was going to wire him some money. I cut him off before he could finish refusing it and then told him that I was going to wrap up a few things before I got on a plane and headed his way. I know next to nothing about taking care of an infant and even less about keeping one from growing up and ending up like me. I know it's not a one-man job, though. Hell, I should be bringing a whole fucking village with me if I'm going to get it right. All I can do is what I can do, though. What I can do is give him what I've got. Even if I can't do anything other than change diapers and give him a shoulder to cry on, I can do it. The only problem is that it means going back to Boston.
I can't deal with that yet. I need to call my dealer first. My daytripper definitely just wore off and I'm out.