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Two years ago today, after hours of protest, they finally let me leave the hospital. It was a few days after I’d gotten back from the awful Chicago trip with O-L-B, and I had dealt with it by drinking too much, and drunk dialing. I had tickets to Billy Joel, Last Play At Shea (Awesome, because Billy Joel is…was my favorite ever)

But me, being me, and being fully on board with Self Destructive Behavior, fucked it up. I wound up black out drunk and being transported to some hospital in Queens via ambulance. Kristen – a high school/college friend of mine, still has not spoken to me, other than acknowledging I was alive, since witnessing it. I still feel sickly guilty about my behavior, about the stupid thing I did in reaction to a bad situation, and also, still, how I managed to miss Billy Joel’s last play at Shea.

For the most part, I still can’t listen to Billy Joel, who I have loved since childhood. His music has imbued every Important Moment of my life, and I can’t listen to him. That still breaks my heart, that still is the coldest reminder of the destruction I caused to me and my loved ones while at the depths of Depression.

The morning after, (that past night, I had apparently drunk dialed my own mother, so deep was my cry for help) I boarded the bus to Jersey and came home. That, in many ways, remains the worst day of my life, although if we’re competing, it may be second only to March 18, 2009, which I’ve still not written about here.

I made a lot of drunken phone calls the night I was in the hospital. To O-L-B, and also to Dru, the other Libertarian boy I had stupidly gotten myself entangled with.

The whole week leading up to that incident was so awful. I was hurtling toward it, what with my stupid decision to drive to Chicago with O-L-B and then, to share a room with him.

Thank god for David. Thank god for this random Internet-Stranger-Friend, who had already saved my life months before, when he acknowledged the validity of my feelings, and recognized that yeah, I had a problem, and I wasn’t crazy to think so. Last night, I was out with other people from Message-Board-of-Note, and it reminded me how incredibly grateful I am to have found this internet community, that by all rights, I shouldn’t be a part of. I rarely, if ever, posted on H&R. It is by fate, coincidence, whatever you want to call it that I wound up on Message Board of Note, that I wound up driving to Connecticut with O-L-B as my passenger, and meeting David in person, and then, that Thanksgiving. Well, there was that Thanksgiving.

I have this text message, from that date, two years ago saved. I remember what I wrote. I was waiting for the bus in Port Authority, and I lamented “I just don’t feel like I have anything to get better for.” That text message isn’t saved. But I remember it, because I remember so distinctly what it was to feel that way.

David’s reply: “You have yourself to get better for jackass. What else would need?”

I did get better. It took awhile, but damnit, I Got Better. It was the easiest and hardest thing that I have ever had to do in my life. Staying Better is just as hard. I don’t think I could have done it, were it not for the perfect combination of job/awesome boss, my amazing AMAZING, Internet-Stranger-Friends, and my old friends.

But that text message stands out to me. That day was horrible, and that week had been horrible, and David answered my texts/calls, even though he knew that it was me for was doing the fucking up, he looked past that and still said “You have a lot of good qualities. It’s a pity you’re willing to overlook them and dwell on your flaws”

Lately, I’ve been managing to listen to the song “Vienna,” one of my favorite Billy Joel songs, which is oh-so-appropriate for my current situation. Because, I got better. Not right away, and not easily, and not without my hand being forced, but I got better.

And even though I can’t listen to most of my former favorite songs, I think that may still be the coolest thing I’ve ever done.