Day 12

Well, I am closing in on two weeks without a drink and I have never felt better. Except of course the looming legal issues that I will have to face, but I will just have to take responsibility for my actions and move on with my life. It's funny, but the more I think about how I used to be the more I realize how messed up my priorities truly were.

The last 13 years have really been just one giant party for me. Now don't get me wrong I don't mean that it has been all fun and games, far from it. I just mean that I was always constantly looking for the next party. During the week all I could think about was where I was going to go drinking and with whom, and how many woman I could hook up with. I am 30 years old thinking and acting like a damn college frat boy!! How pathetic. So, now with this new life of sobriety that I have discovered I have decided to focus my energies on more useful endeavours.

I have always enjoyed working out and sports, so why not combine the two and make a career out of it? I have decided that if the Army doesn't kick me out that gives me a little over two years to get prepared and take the necessary classes, so that when I do get out I will be ready to start this new journey. And hopefully, maybe one day, I could even become affiliated with a pro sports team and help to train them. Who knows? Anything is possible. Anyway just something that I have been thinking about. Well, it has been a few days since I wrote about my past, so I guess I will write a little more about it now. I left off where I had just moved to Italy.

I moved to Italy when I was just entering the 8th grade. My father was still flying Chinooks and we were stationed at Aviano Air Base in northern Italy. And let me tell you, it really is true what you see in movies and TV, Italy really is one of the most beautiful countries in the world. And when I was living there everybody didn't hate Americans like they do today. We lived in a huge house about a half hour outside of base, and it was surrounded with rose bushes. I remember that vividly, because I had to mow the lawn, and the lawn was huge. Anyway, it was during this time that we started going to a local church and my mother finally got my father to attend and he became very involved. I think that he did this as a way to help save the marriage. So, during the first year everything seemed to be going great, then came Desert Storm.

If you recall, Desert Storm didn't last that long, so my father was never deployed to go to Iraq, but one of the side affects, that not too many people remember, was a mission called Operation Provide Comfort. This was where the military was sent in to provide food and medical and other kinds of assistance to all the Kurdish refugees that were living on the Iraq-Turkey border. So, my father's Chinooks were called into action. They were there for six months.

When my father left he was a little overweight, but given the heat and poor food my father came back from the deployment weighing about 30 pounds less and having a six-pack, for the first time since he was a kid. Anyway, he also came back with rumors of infidelity and he had lost his religion. This was when things really got bad between my parents. I vividly remember, The Fight, the one that ended the marriage.

My room was downstairs and down the hall from my parents, and one night I heard my dad yelling, which wasn't out of the ordinary, but I also heard my mother yelling back, which was. So, I went to see what was going on. I can't remember what was said but I do remember hearing my Dad curse at my Mom for the first time, and I remember my Mom drinking an entire bottle of wine and getting drunk. I have never seen my Mom drink before this night. She got so drunk that she started running down the road barefoot to get away from my Dad, and I had to go get her and make her come home. I don't really remember much else, I think that the details of that night will probably never resurface. The next week my brother and I moved out to an apartment with my Dad, in the heart of downtown Aviano.