Exhausted and overwhelmed by today's lesson with Charlie, Angel and I decided to go upstairs to our room. However, I decided to stop by the bar and grab my whiskey while Angel went across the street to grab his drugs. Once we made it upstairs to our room we sat out on our balcony and Angel immediately lined up his PHP and snorted it up in the typical fashion. I leaned back in my chair and drank from my whiskey. I was drinking more than usual and then Angel grew concerned, "hey Husky, maybe you ought to slow down a bit?"

I looked at him and sneered, "maybe you ought to slow down on snorting?" He shrugged the comment off, "okay, fair enough. Do you at least want to talk about what's bothering you?" I sighed and took another swig of my whiskey, "I don't think I can do this." Angel's eyes widened and his face turned a sickly green, "what is it that you can't do?"

I let out a sigh, "this whole redemption thing." Angel lets out a sigh of relief, "shit you almost gave me a heart attack." I looked at him with a confused expression, "how so?" He shook his head, "it's going to sound stupid but, I thought you were about to break up with me or something." Unable to compose myself I burst into laughter.

Angel looking cute yet sassy crosses his arms and makes a pouty face, "the fuck is so funny?" I wiped a tear from my eye, "baby... where in the Heavens did you get an idea like that?" He turned his back to me clearly embarrassed, "I told you it was stupid." I set down my whiskey and walked over to him and wrapped my arms around him and shielded him with my wings before kissing him on the cheek, "I'm sorry if I embarrassed you, Tony." He looked up at me and smiled before kissing me on the lips, "hmmm... I guess I can let you off with a warning this time."

I chucked and hugged him tightly before walking back over to my chair and grabbing my whiskey. Though instead of drinking it like I normally do I just sort of stared at it as though I was in a trance. "Umm... Honey, you're disassociating again." I shook my head, "sorry, I've just got a lot on my mind right now with the whole redemption thing and just the idea of committing to change." Angel looks over to me and lets out a sigh, "yeah, I know how you feel.

Battling with any addiction is rough but we have to try to look at the end goal and what we want to achieve from rehabilitation." I looked at him apprehensively. He responded already knowing what I was thinking, "yeah I know it's easier said than done and believe me, we're both going to fucking struggle. Hell, I'm willing to bet that one or both of us will relapse along the way but it wouldn't be a journey if we didn't slip up along the way." I nodded my head and took a swig from my bottle, "yeah, I guess you have a point.

I'm just a bit worried I guess. I don't think you're going to like the person I become when I start going through the severe withdrawals. I get pretty nasty and I just don't want to hurt you in the process." I let out a sigh and looked down at my bottle, "but I do have some reasons for why I would want to change at the same time." He raised an eyebrow at me and reaches for the bottle of whiskey.

I hand it over to him and he takes a swig from it, "and what reason would that be?" I got up and walked over to him turning my golden eyes to meet his, "well, you for starters." He gets up and wraps his arms around my waist and neck and kisses me, "you know you don't have to change for me, right? I love you for who you are, with or without addictions." I looked up into his eyes and cup the sides of his face and pulled his lips down to mine, "I know, but you matter more to me than the alcohol and if I continue on this path I know that it'll only be a matter of time before I let you down.

I don't want to hurt you like that. You deserve better." He places a hand on my cheek. I leaned my head into his touch and placed my hand on his, "Husk, you don't need to put so much pressure on yourself. You could NEVER be as terrible as the other men I've been with.

Not even close. If you're going to make changes, I want you to do it for you and I want you to WANT to change. I don't want you to feel forced into it." I let out a heavy sigh and looked out to the side. In that moment I couldn't help but to feel conflicted and confused.

"Just think about it, mio caro," he says turning my gaze to meet his. I take his hand in mine and kiss the back of it before pressing my forehead to his and closing my eyes, "I will, I promise." After a while we cleaned up the patio and go back inside and laid down on the bed to take a nap. Fat Nuggets climbs and wedges himself between Angel and I's belly. I watched Angel as he laid there sleeping peacefully.

As I promised, I thought about our conversation from earlier. Like Charlie had said in her lesson, I tried to look deep within myself and tried to evaluate what it was that I TRULY wanted. Initially this was a hard and uncomfortable thing for me to do because it's been so long since I've actually thought about myself and my long term goals. I spent so much of my life drowning things out because I had become accustomed to not having any real control over the situations I've been in. I had given up on trying a long time ago.

For the first time in decades I actually thought about all of the things I had lost due to my addictions; the main thing being my children. A tear fell from that thought and I wiped my eye. I felt so much pain from my wife leaving me alone to raise two small children on my own that I had attempted to drown the pain out. It was such a difficult time and society was not very helpful in supporting single parents back at that time. It was frowned upon for fathers to take on the motherly roles of child rearing and in addition to that I still had to make money somehow so that I could feed them.

As a result I had to pick up odd jobs where I could work from home. At that point in my life I was just lucky enough to be able to keep a house over there heads much less, feed them. My gambling addiction had at times helped me to feed my children... until it didn't. I brushed away the tears that kept streaming down my face but more just kept coming down and replacing ones that were gone. When my winning streak ran out... that's when I lost everything.

I began drinking even heavier than before in an effort to drown out my struggles and pain...but it was never enough. Although I knew in my heart that my drinking and gambling was out of control, I still couldn't bring myself to stop. It became like a cancer that spread throughout my body until it consumed every last bit of me. Before I knew it, I was failing to make money at even the side hustles that I had. It didn't help that I found myself spending a lot of what I did earn on alcohol.

At around that time, the unthinkable happened. I began to struggle to meet my children's basic needs. They barely had food to eat and I could barely afford to cloth them. Hell at this point, I could barely even care for myself much less anyone else. So I made the heartbreaking decision to call social services to come get my children and put them up for adoption.

In my shame and guilt, I told the social workers that I wanted them to have a closed adoption. I didn't want them to see how much of a bum and a loser I had become. It was pathetic really that I couldn't even provide for them or just be a father to them in general. It wasn't too long after that when I lost my home and started living on the streets. I had become the embodiment of my demonic name.

A husk. An empty, hollow shell of a man. Over the years I suffered living on the streets of Las Vegas until I finally reached a point where I just wanted my existence to end. In 1970, I ended my life by drowning myself in a fountain in the park. Shortly after I woke up in Hell. At this point I was sniffing my nose and crying a bit louder than I wanted to and then I saw Angel blink open his eyes and he looked at me worried when he noticed that I had been crying.

I turned my back to him feeling ashamed that he had seen me at my most vulnerable moment since I've been in Hell. He moved Fat Nuggets to the other side of him and just wrapped his arms around me and held me tightly before whispering in my ear, "it's okay to cry baby. You don't have to talk about it if you don't want to. If it'll help, just hold on to me and I'll be your rock, okay?" I turned back around to face him and nodded my head before sobbing into his chest uncontrollably.