There is security in the future

I wrote this in the wake of the Earthquake in Mexico, the hurricane in Florida, the fires a few miles away from where I live in Oregon, the election of Trump and the recent threats from North Korea. Our collective unconscious is uneasy, there is constant conflict at our jobs, homes and in society as a whole. Acknowledge these reasons we are at unease and please try to remember that “There is Security in the Future” and keep your heads up. One kind act can have a ripple effect so instead of focusing on how unsettled you feel do something kind for someone else. Soon enough the hostility will rise and we will have peace again.

For the addict who still suffers

Dwight Swain who wrote “Techniques of the Selling Writer” outlined a formula for creating a perfect scene: Conflict, Disaster, Resolution. In sociology I learned that we also live by scenes. As human beings our life structure goes “Security, Chaos, Adjustment”. This is God’s general plot structure and it repeats over and over again.

Tonight, I was thinking about the story line of an addict. I believe as addicts we try to speed up the process; Get home from a stressful day and have a beer…you’re already on your way to adjustment and a bottle later you’re full on feeling the absence of chaos and the warm illusion of security. Meanwhile, however, you’re problems are out in the parking lot doing push-ups. When you wake up the next day you’re slammed with stress. You’ve got a hangover, maybe some guilt, regret and all the original problems you had before. And every time you force security you put the chaos into a gigantic pile that starts to compound. Soon you look like a chaos horder as you’re life is so cluttered by the stuff you can’t move. This is when life becomes unmanageable: when you’re surrounded by chaos no human being can possibly exist with day to day and the only way to get a shred of security is to drink constantly. It’s also hard to make connections when you have shit piles on all sides. I know because I was there.

In my story line I was a wild partier, a reactionary girlfriend, a thoughtless criminal and always a clown. There are moments of entertainment and suspense in my book. Moments where one might cry and scream “No, don’t do that!” because the actions are obvious, but I still made the bad decision anyway. It will be a disaster at times where the reader would want to speed past years of the same mindless sex, blackouts, cackling laughter and egotistical bullshit. Certainly, there are many things that would make a publisher cringe. I’d like to think there are some twists, but the predictability lies in always seeming to make the worst decision possible.

The one redeeming factor to my story might be the end. The biggest twist might be that I actually piece by piece removed the gigantic landfill that had accrued all around me, built a better foundation and maybe even a mansion of hope. I am newly sober, four months, and chaos still swarms around me, but I often say to myself the mantra: There is security in the future. God’s plot line may be sped up or slowed down, but it cannot be manipulated. There will always be security in the future.