Big Mistake

Simon Says: When things go downhill they seem to go fast. I had two years of sobriety and was attending AA faithfully. Then Facebook happened. I managed to connect up with my very first girlfriend from when I was 12 years old. Back then it was 1970 during the Vietnam War. Both our fathers were Army and Vietnam Vets. We were stationed on a little island called Okinawa which is a part of Japan. I lived there three different times for a total of nine years. It seemed all us kids were always coming and going which is the way of the military. Military brats were a different sort, especially during the Vietnam war and the draft. Fathers coming home on leave and crazy as hell, which in turn made us kids a little crazy. Where I was living in Okinawa there was no age limit on alcohol sales so we started drinking very young and matured at a rate that exceeded that of our civilian counterparts in the States. Well, anyway, my girlfriends name was Cheryl who had a twin sister Charlotte. I started out with Charlotte but ended up with Cheryl. We were doing things that 17, 18 year old kids do. The war was ending and as we moved back to the States we lost touch. Then Facebook happened and Cheryl and I started talking again. She lived in Tennessee and I was here in Minnesota. It had been 35 years since Okinawa and I was thinking I was talking to that same little girl I knew when I was a kid. Nothing could be farther from the truth. We got to talking about personal things and she began telling me about how her boyfriend was physically and mentally abusive to her. I told her she should come to Minnesota because the social services here are excellent and she would be able to get help dealing with all the stress she had been living with. She agreed to come here for help and I agreed to help her out. What a mistake, I guess I wasn't thinking clearly myself for some reason and the shit hit the fan. I started drinking again and trying to take my regular medication at the same time. Needless to say things didn't go to well. Cheryl was a raving maniac. Got me kicked out of two hotels because she was just acting crazy and bothering the other guests. She was totally out of her mind, asking strangers if they knew where she could buy some weed, having strangers bring her home from the bar which I plead with her not to go to. One day the cops came to the hotel to check on her welfare and the next thing I know I'm getting kicked out of another hotel. Anyway, she took a bunch of my pills and drank them down with vodka and I thought she was going to die or something so I brought her to the ER at Fairview and left her there, never to see or hear from her again. I just had to let her go if I was going to survive. Understand that this is the short version of the story, there was a lot I left out because this could turn out to be a book if I included everything. What happened here was half my fault and I do feel very bad for abandoning Cheryl the way I did. I just want you to know some of the things I've been up to over the past year or so while I was not making entries to my blog. Believe me there's a lot more I want to tell before I get caught up with what's currently happening.