More of the story

Simon Says: OK, the only reason I'm telling these stories is to bring you up to speed as to what I've been doing for the last year or so. I'll get back to the present soon enough. I've only managed to be sober for the last six weeks or so and it ain’t easy. Every time I go off on a binge it gets a lot harder to come back. The anxiety and depression seem to hang with you for a lot longer. I'm trying to get back and I need to write to keep busy. Back when that Ralph character screwed me over and Cheryl and I had no where to go we ended up staying at a couple different hotels and I actually ended up renting an apartment in one of the hotels, the only hotel in Farmington. This hotel was a real dump but the apartment wasn’t to bad. I had a hard time controlling Cheryl and she ended up buying some weed from some kids that were also living in this hotel. They ripped her off and I got pissed. I ended up confronting them with a baseball bat and one of them clobbered me with a 40oz beer bottle. That's the last thing I remember until the cops brought me to Ramsey county detox. First they brought me to jail and charged me with assault. So while I'm in detox I ran into a woman, Vicki who was in rougher shape than I was as far as her situation. She was pretty, a little taller than me and had no where to go. Somehow we got to be friends and spent most of our time together while waiting to get out. While I'm waiting to get out of detox I find out that Cheryl got me evicted from my apartment. I don't know what she did but I was out. I had offered to rent Vicki a room in my apartment and now all three of us had nowhere to go. Vicki and I got released from detox about the same time and Cheryl picked us up, she was drunk and said she took all my anxiety pills (60mgs) clonazepam (klonopin). We didn't have anywhere to go so I decided to go to this hotel in Burnsville only to find out they wouldn't rent me a room there because Cheryl had gotten me kicked out of there maybe six weeks earlier. I didn't know I was banned from renting there for good so we went to a bar to think about what to do and while in the bar Cheryl gets into a fight with some other chick in the bathroom and this other chick is on her cell phone calling the cops. Meanwhile Cheryl is so fucked up that she can't walk and is crawling on the sidewalk outside of the bar. We have to leave fast because the cops are on their way so I scooped up Cheryl put her into the car and the three of us take off. Never did see the cops but I was worried about Cheryl because of all the klonopin she had taken and the way she was acting. That's when I decided to take her to the Fairview ER and that's the last time I saw her. I didn't want to leave her behind but I just couldn't handle all the drama and close calls with the police. To this day I don't know what happened to her; I hope she found her way back to Tennessee where she was from. Vicki and I hit it off and got another hotel room in Lakeville until the money ran out. Then we were broke and once again no where to go. At this point I've got no choice but try to go back to my place, after all the apartment is full of my furniture and all my stuff and food. Only problem is Ralph is there and he has an order of protection against me but I was desperate and figured I could convince him to drop the protection order and let me and Vicki stay there for a week or so until I got paid. I talked with Ralph and he said it would be cool so Vicki and I went to my place and everything seemed like it was going to be OK. We weren’t there for more than two hours before Ralph starts begging me to go to Walgreen's and get his medication because he's all out and needs it right away. Ralph doesn't drive so he's got no other way to get his medication. I really didn't want to go because Vicki and I had been drinking and I didn't want to take the risk of driving anywhere. Finally I cave in and agree to go get his medication. Ralph was setting me up. I went into Walgreen's and Vicki was passed out in the car. When I got to the Pharmacy counter they wouldn't let me pick up Ralph's meds which was weird because I've done it for him many times before. When I come out of Walgreen's there are three squad cars surrounding my car. They charged me with DWI and took me to Hastings Jail. They took Vicki back to Ramsey county detox. My car got impounded. I ended up having to walk from Hastings back to Eagan which took me all day. I went back to my place and of course Ralph was there acting all surprised and shit about what had happened. At the time I hadn't figured out what had happened but it didn't take me long to figure out that Ralph had set the whole thing up. I was drinking pretty heavy and I had made a deal with our neighbor to give me a ride to detox to get Vicki. Vicki called me about an hour before I was supposed to pick her up and I guess I was pretty out of it and she didn't think I was going to make it to pick her up. I did make it there to pick her up but I guess she was afraid I wasn't coming so she took off with some other people that got released the same time she did. I was about 10 minutes late but I had no idea where Vicki went. So we went back home where I was going to wait for her to call me but the call never came. By now I was really hitting the vodka hard and was out of my mind worrying about Vicki. All her things including her ID and purse were with me. I could tell Ralph was acting weird too and I was going to have to leave soon. It was only a couple of days left before I got paid when Ralph tried locking me out of the apartment, I can be a little crafty and it wasn't hard for me to get in. Ralph had asked me if I wouldn't mind taking my dog for a little walk because his social worker was coming to see him and he wanted some privacy. So I take my dog for a walk and when I come back the apartment is locked up tight and Ralph is nowhere to be found. I got in the apartment and Ralph stayed away for a day, he was at his girlfriends apartment across the parking lot the whole time hoping I would leave. The next day he he shows up, looks around a little and goes back to his girlfriends apartment. About an hour later the cops show up and tell me I've got to go, they said that they would give me another hour to get my things together and when they came back I had to be gone. That extra hour gave me time to give my dog away to the neighbor and drink about a half a gallon of vodka. I wanted to be brought to the hospital because I had no where else to go and when the cops came back that’s where they brought me. I ended up being detoxed in the ICU in Regions Hospital and then they moved me up to the fourth floor of the psych ward. The second day I was in the psych ward, guess who is admitted to the same floor, Vicki. We had a nice little psych ward reunion and hung together the whole time we were in there. Once again we got released at the same time and we were off to another adventure that I'll write about in my next post. I know all this sounds crazy as hell, but every bit of it is the truth.