(AUTHOR”S NOTE: This piece was started in the first two weeks of my arrival in North Carolina. Since then, I have had several visits to the Doctor & with therapists. All without ill endings. It does not get easier: to go to see these professionals. But I want to be – & remain – better.)

What is it about going to a Doctor’s office?

I get nervous. Not about them finding things wrong with me. Hell, I KNOW things are wrong with me. The depression, the horrible ADHD with its “unfocused” side effects, the anxiety (exacerbated by anyone wearing a white coat & pens in their pockets).

All of it!

So, yes: I have a Doctor’s appt. today.

Why in the hell am I doing this?

I am doing it because My Special Lady friend wants me to do it.

She wants me to be healthy. She wants me to have the right Medications. She wants me at my best.

How long has it been since someone cared so much for my health? Someone that was actually associating with me?

Let me put it this way: There was The Red-Headed Demon. She did not like my drinking. She knew I drank too much – WAY too much!

Her bright idea: Me To Stop Drinking! Seems logical, does it not? But I liked the BUZZ. Any kind of Buzz or High or Whatever you want to call it.

“Just smoke CRACK, like me,” she said.

That’s right! That was her answer to my drinking problems: smoke crack.

The thought of it made me feel wrong. Like I was on some Higher Under-the-Influence Moral ground. I would drink mouthwash, for Christ’s sake, to keep from getting sick. The minty buzz I got from it was not that bad. But, my God, that will make you sick, in its own individualistic way.

(This is something I will have to tell My Doctor: my drug intake history. Not looking forward to that. And it’s a subject I NEVER look forward to discussing. Same with drinking. I’m over it! Don’t have the patience or interest to rehash how horrible some of those times were. And I was forced to talk about it extensively. It feels like that bad movie that always seems to be playing on the same channel. And, for reasons unknown, we watch it.)

Cheap & Dirty & Wrong are finished.

Time to feel good. My medications… my supplements…. my relations to those I love…. talking to you, Dear Reader, is a far better thing than anything I can smoke, or drink, or snort.

Growth is supposed to be Hard & Panful.

Pray for me that the Doctor’s Visit is not as bad I am making it out to be.

Uncomfortable?

Yes.

But I can do it. My support will be right there, next to me.

And, on the bright side, I’ve already met the Doctor, socially. He is friends with M. S. L. F. Everything has been falling into place well, here, in Taylorsville, North Carolina.