Who even is Javier Nelson?

Dating all the way back to 2006, this blog is almost twenty years old. Throughout that time I've often thought of why I write. What drives me to put these words on this computer? Who do I think is going to read this? What kind of dysfunction do I have to think this is even worth reading? 

This compulsion of mine is partly the same as any writer who self publishes: stroking one's ego. And maybe I do need to stroke it from time to time; take it out of the closet and show myself and the world I'm still coherent. While I have it out, why not see what the old girl can do. 

I remember the first time someone told me they appreciated the words I'd written. Not a teacher or professor or anyone engaged in actively coaxing out words, but someone off the street. Someone who had no dog in the fight, so to speak. Astonishingly, or not, I befriended the fellow. We drank, ate, smoked cigars, and enjoyed a few evenings of revelry and reminiscences of high school. I can't recall much friendship before the compliments. Nothing gay here, simply one dude who liked another dude's words and some bonding.

I've been asked what I write about. Well, almost everything I've ever typed is here aside from papers and such from school. If you take the time to read it all you'll quickly discover that it is a roller coaster of addiction, trauma, narcissism, racism, sexism, many other -isms, many -phobias, and I would like to hope, most importantly, hope. If you end up in the sewer, make sure you're looking at the stars, eh?

I don't even think that's a saying although it reminds me of Edgar Allen Poe. I feel like he was drunk in a gutter at some point, possibly at his death. Which is a pleasant segue into how I've been feeling lately. Like a dead alcoholic who may or may not have his corpse facing the stars. Although most likely it was overcast that night.

The reason, of course, is heartache. Or rather, I think it's more of a headache. I've picked up the habit lately of wearing bandannas. [Since I'm having difficulty finding the footnotes on this editor, I'm including parenthetical(s) and making the font smaller like this. The point of this note is to inform the reader I believe there to be fewer N's in that word than what appears here, I'm only begrudgingly accepting the spell check and lazily not looking it up. I feel it's important to lazily not look things up while I write so as to either write around the block or simply put some placeholder in like this to return to later.] I think it's because I write phrases like "I think" far more often than "I feel" and this is in a largely autobiographical medium. Aside from the obvious obfuscation surrounding identity: Who even is Javier Nelson?

Javier Nelson was born from shame. One drunken night I was surfing facebook and encountered some wall shenanigans that incited an insecurity or two and I wrote some embarrassing rant like the ones you can find in the archives and was mortified in the morning, again. It had become a habit born of loneliness and inebriation to browse facebook or instant messenger (in those days) for anyone willing to listen. Or share something of interest, but never to share something where I didn't immediately or secondarily benefit in some way.

The depths of the night combined with a dash of frustration brought back from a bar strike out or whatever dead end decision led me to be drunk and alone at 2AM. It was only much later in life that I would discover the delights of daytime drunk dialing, at this stage it was a lot darker and less refined. I still had a lot of anger issues, I see that now. This storm of darkness collided with the alcohol and fireworks went off all over friends' facebook walls. This was in the early days of facebook when it was only friends, unless mom or dad worked at a specific set of universities, facebook just wasn't a thing. The internet was much different back then, but suffice to say that it'd be far more devastating if I had those problems with the technological access of today.

I felt embarrassed by an especially outrageous public post (which was also not even a thing at the time, you just had friends that could see your wall or people that weren't your friends). I just said "Fuck it" and deleted the whole thing. I went through and deleted everything I could and nuked the account. I don't remember if I used my a university email for my grand emergence or if I actually waited for a more open facebook, but Javier Nelson rose from the ashes of this embarrassment I can't even remember now and a stubbornness to go back to the old ways or the old me. 

This may have initially been a time of sobriety or not, but Javier Nelson never had much to say about anything other than alcohol or alcohol related activities or activities after the alcohol. At any rate, a casual read through of the archives can easily confirm the themes of addiction, trauma, and poorly coping.

I guess I still don't have much to say about it because it's only now that I've turned 40 where I truly understand what the -ism part of alcohol means. Which is why my head hurts so much, my personal journey lately has taken me from bible summaries to farming to being kind of an arborist with a bunch of extra steps. I drive a company vehicle either way and I have much to be proud of, aside from the aforementioned heartache, or headache, which is what ultimately brings us here. 

My writing hiatus was largely due to finally finding my muse. She made me realize that you can look for love your whole life and never really know what it is that you're looking for. Love is inspiration, to be your best. Love is hope, for the future. Love is a reason to get out of bed in the morning and motivation to get you to go straight home after work, instead of the bar. 

The last time I've ever had any type of disposable income, it mostly went to support the Primanti family and all the good work they do with their charitable eatery in the South Side on Carson street. Also a large number of the south side charities, some call them "cantinas", or sometimes "bars", but that was all behind me for a while because I was kind of depressed and living in a tent with only enough money to afford the occasional bottle of spirits.

My muse also made me realize that I didn't need to write to express my frustrations. I could get triggered by my insecurities and take out my frustrations on her, but that wasn't the way it was at first. First was the passion, the ecstasy, heights of love and loving and being loved in return. In the span of 37 years I've only ever been loved a handful of times. Romantically, I really can't say if that's true because emotions are strange and I just made the mistake of including all of my 37 years which has a lot of overly emotional teens and twenties and a long history of an internet diagnosis of autism, or something. 

One of the reasons my teen years were so wrecked was because my Pap died when I was a but a youth and left me with a shitty dad. I had to tell my dad he was a loser when I was 22 and then I went out for a pack of cigarettes and some scratchers and never looked back. I was definitely sober when I did that, but I may have been hungover. This stuff happened so long ago it's hard to remember, but it's important to inform ourselves of who we are by what we've done and where we've been.

I owe my whole future to a beautiful woman whom I loved and loved me back. True love too, not the kind you find at the bottom of a bottle or the end of a bar, the kind you want to find at the end of the day, everyday instead of the bottle. The kind of love that makes life easy. Makes decisions easy, just do whatever leads to the happily ever after. The kind of love that pushes and pulls when you need it, not just when you want it. The kind of love that's everything I've ever wanted and billions of things I had no idea I needed. Basically, it took me a while but I hit the love and life lottery with one of those scratchers. I was ready to cash it in for the mega millions jackpot but instead, as she so eloquently put it, I "shit all over the whole house, and both of us" and then I gave her a high five with a bunch of shit in my hand and it "got all over both of us and in our faces and mouths". Quite understandably so, she's disgusted. I'm also disgusted but I'm the one that metaphorically shit the whole house instead of just the bed or however the phrase goes. Coining phrases is just another reason I love her.

However, it was due to my inability to let her help me fight my demons that I shit the whole house and got it in our mouths and, I assume, hair and all of our stuff. Also in the fish tanks and on the cats and there's usually a fan running somewhere. The metaphor is a powerful one, which makes sense because our love was so potent and the destruction so devastating. 

It wasn't even like we weren't aware I had a drinking problem, I sent her a link here to this compendium of cathartic alcoholism. Which made it so no one was overly surprised when I was secretly consuming alcohol. Which, also not surprisingly, I had either before or after this event ridiculed a neighbor for doing the same exact thing.

Essentially, everything I'd written with or without an alcohol reference (and if you look through, there's far more of those than should make anyone comfortable) was in some way probably influenced by alcohol. Because I was an alcoholic. It's not defined by physical dependence but by the negative effects the use of alcohol has on one's life. 

I drank. I lied. I cheated. 

I don't know if that's all part of the theme of this blog but the first part definitely fits the bill. I also disrespected, but that was the whole time because I'm an asshole and don't value properly that which I should. I did not listen to love. I listened to the demons we both knew I had and had both tried to actively work on, her more than I! Her gut feelings (she is far more intuitive than myself) always work on overdrive. On instinct she can pull over and find a cat in need. She has supernatural hearing for all old people that fall over. She has the patience to spend three years with an old man while he continually fails to defeat alcohol or the its grip. But it doesn't really have a firm grasp, it just has deep roots. And shame and embarrassment and Javier Nelson. 

I can't say for sure whether this whole Javier journey started as a nom de plume or guerre: pen name or war name. I definitely fought some demons with Javier Nelson, but I think in the process, I definitely created a few more. There exists this catalog (of sorts) of events and it is also my recollection of stuff, but what else have we accomplished other than scapegoating alcoholism and mental illness?

I call her my muse earlier and yet there's no outpouring here. Or elsewhere, I assure you I only took the time off here because I felt like I had control over my life and didn't need the therapy. Well, I do. I also didn't have the need to write because I had other notions on my mind: farms, trees, pigs, goats, cats, and most importantly kids. All these things have one thing in common: life and love and hope and all that for which we seek in life. I have no words to describe what happens when you find your purpose in life, which is why I didn't write much once I'd found mine. 

I did. I did things for her, for us. Or, at least I thought that's how to love back, you see another theme here is the desire for but the lack of, actual love. I had a bit of luck once in my twenties but nothing like the glory and purity of the mega jackpot super win I just burned away. 

Of course I want her back, of course I hope she could forgive me. I don't know if she could, I took a vulnerable little bird and pretended to take care of it for a period of time then threw it on the ground and let the cat play with it for a while. Maybe the creature survived but say she's able to get back to safety, she's never going to want to deal with the person that nearly did a cold ass murder. So I guess another theme is loss.

I'm a thousand percent better now than when she met me and it is because she gave me purpose. 37 years of essentially floating through life with alcohol as a crutch changed me nearly completely. Obviously I still kept my crutch, but I went from homeless adjacent to home owner adjacent, finally, after 40 years. I don't own a home but I do have multiple certifications and many minor accolades to the credit of my muse. We created a breakeven profit pig farm on a farm we got kicked off (also because of me, which should be a separate entry eventually) but it was ultimately for the best ... or not, depending on where you stand, I suppose.

This is a rather anti-climactic conclusion but I still hope you enjoyed. I don't know what the future holds and I have no particularly hopeful words to share at this time about any of this. It feels pretty fucking bleak, and I think it is a weird sensation to know how things feel but that's something else I've learned from my muse over the last three years even though I'm still terrible at it: feeling feelings.