The Journey of Connection: A Reflection on Choices and Change

A Meeting of Souls

I met David the day before I started drinking after years, then months. That's not his name. I've changed it, and I've changed it to mine, because of what I'm about to tell you.

He wanted a cigarette. I only had a vape, so I shared it. He was disheveled, standing out in that heat. He talked — about his girl, about hating being in Española, about how you have to watch out for people here because people are no good. He had scratches on his neck. He told me she goes after him when she's high.

I asked if he wanted water. He wouldn't come into the Walgreens with me — banned for stealing. So I went in alone and came out with two big bottles of Fiji, which was the best water they had. I don't know why that mattered to me. It did.

He said he wanted to get healthy again, start working out. I told him he should. Then I went home.

Transformation in the Morning Light

The next day, I saw him again. He looked sharp. Cleaned up, put together, a different man than the one from the afternoon before. He told me I looked good — healthy. I think he'd seen something in me the day before and gone and done something about it overnight.

I had a bottle of Fireball in the car. I'd bought it that morning for no reason I could name. Wasn't even thinking.

He asked me to buy him some booze. We went to Food King and Central Market. I got him a couple of beers, a huge sandwich, a kombucha because I wanted him to try one. We hung out and talked. His girl walked by, they spoke, and he said he was going with her. Before he left, he told me, "God bless you."

Then I went home and worked on the car.

A Day of Reckoning

On the Fourth of July, I got it running. I drank the whole day.

On the fifth, I was in withdrawal — not from the alcohol, but from something else I'd been trying to get off of. I went out looking for more to drink, and nothing was open. That's when I saw them on the side of the road.

I pulled over. I want to be honest about why. Part of it was that they needed a ride. But part of it was that I'd told David I was working on this car, and now it ran, and I wanted him to see it.

We found a store that was open. I bought him a six-pack of Modelo and got myself Bud Light. I cracked mine while I was driving.

Then his girlfriend lit up a crack pipe in the back seat.

David was chill about it. He was waiting on his beer. And I want to be clear that what went through me in that second was not moral. I had an open beer between my legs. I wasn't in a position to be anyone's judge.

What went through me was the dream.

The Weight of Dreams

Ecclesia-Terra has been in the works a long time. Longer than the car, longer than this year, longer than I've had anything real to show for it. It's the thing that kept me alive through stretches where nothing else was doing that job. And I was finally here — finally close enough to make it real — and I had it in a car with an open container and a crack pipe going in the back and cops all down the road ahead of us.

It would have cost me everything. And I don't think I make it if that happens. I dropped them off and drove straight home.

Somewhere in that drive, I surrendered.

That's the only word for it. Not decided. Not resolved. I'd decided plenty of times. This was different — it was the thing you do when you've finally run out of the argument that you've got it handled.

A New Beginning

I called Sophia and told her I was done. I told her to check on me even if I didn't want to talk. She did. I stayed in bed and slept as much as a body in withdrawal will let you sleep. I didn't drink that day. Or the next. Or the next.

Then the Vet Center. Then meetings. Then my therapist, and I told her all of it. Then a sponsor named Carl — which is the same name as my sponsor back in Miami, and I don't know what to do with that except notice it.

The Cycle of Connection

I saw them again yesterday.

They needed a ride to Walmart. I said hop in — and I'll admit part of me was cautious this time, in a way I hadn't been in July. I told them to behave in the car. Then I told them I was sober now, that I'm going to meetings, that this is what I'm doing.

Later, David said something about a fifth of vodka in the back, and his girlfriend cut him off: Are you not listening? He said he's sober.

She's the one who lit the pipe that night. She's the one who corrected him for me. Then she offered me two prints, out of nowhere. Told me to pick one. I looked at them and chose the one with a woman sleeping in the night sky above a lit-up city, a gold moon beside her.

I chose it because of the moon and the feminine. Because it reminded me of Sophia, and of something else I saw once, in another bad season, that I've never fully been able to explain.

Reflections on Help and Healing

Here's what I keep turning over. I thought I was the one helping him. Buying the water, the sandwich, telling him yeah, go work out again. But he's the one who showed up cleaned up the next morning because he'd seen something in me. And he blessed me the day before I fell. And his girlfriend, who had the pipe going in my back seat, handed me the image of the divine feminine in the same car where I gave up.

I don't have a clean way to say what that is. I know what I saw when I looked at David, though. I saw somebody who wanted help and wasn't going to get it from me that day, because I didn't have it to give. And I saw a younger version of myself — the one who'd have been in that seat if the car hadn't started, if the timing had stayed one tooth off, if the thing I'd been building my whole life had finally slipped out of reach.

I drank every day for two years during Covid. I know what chronic looks like from inside. I know the arithmetic of wanting to be happy for just the length of one afternoon.

So when he asked me for booze, I bought it. And when he needed a ride, I gave it. And yesterday I told him the truth about where I'm at, and he took my number. I told them both to take care of themselves and drove off.

The best water they had. That's still the part I think about. Not the beer I bought him — anybody can buy a man a beer. I went into that Walgreens with a whole cooler to choose from and came out with the most expensive water on the shelf for a man who wasn't going to remember it.

Some part of me knew what he was worth before I knew what I was.

The Essence of Connection

In the end, it is the connections we forge that shape us. Each encounter holds the potential for transformation. Each moment is a thread in the tapestry of our lives. We are all stewards of our stories, weaving together the fabric of existence.

Let us cherish these moments, for they are the essence of our humanity. Let us nurture the land, the culture, and the connections we hold dear. In doing so, we honor not only ourselves but the generations that will follow.

And in this journey, we find healing — for ourselves and for the world around us.