I Faced The Land Across Cold Waters and Yet Turned Away

A long six weeks of dealing with a unmedicated snap of the mind, the fallout and consequences in that haunted City By The Sea, and a naked revelation of clinical depression that had been hidden by imprisonment in a dark empty land, now lit in stark abjection.

There were two choices. To mindlessly pursue a misstep of timing against confounding odds, or to withdraw to a terrible place to regroup and recoup.
BUT. Our hero insisted upon a caveat. His time of retrial in the land of empty despair was limited to six months. A deal with the soulless cosmos: a reforging of the self, in return for another opportunity.
The universe is well known to renege on agreements made by its silent consent with it but our hero called upon the Great Balance, that Law of Cycles, to avenge his oath. Now, that Arbiter of All Vows, Time, shall decide redress.

Actually there was a third choice. I pondered it long and deep. It was the Final Choice from which no others can follow. In then end, I decided against it. Life may be short, nasty and brutish but it is the single flicker allowed us in the immense eternity of darkness. I thought I'd play the hand as there's always plenty of time to fold later, and often the choice is taken from you anyway.

So. Six months. I intend to rebuild my body from the ground up--I'm in a good place to start. I'm rail thin from the last six months of running and a month of near starved endless walking the hills of San Francisco.
I'm just a collection of wire hangers to frame lean muscle on. I quit drinking. I don't even need my little crossed-off-days calendar I used when I quit in March. I simply am stopping. I had my last drink with a good friend in a bar in San Francisco Sept 26 and I swore than I would not drink again until it was another one shared with again with some good friend.
No swilling by myself in the darkness of winter in a lonely place.

I came so close to a one-way ticket to Bangkok to drink myself to death. I'd be there now, guzzling Changs and taking pills. Kind of miss that parallel universe: it would have been something to behold. But frankly, I'm looking forward to running in the cold of winter under overcast skies.
I almost fear spring as I will not want to reexperience the terrible heat of this summer; I may go to the southern hemisphere to dodge summer altogether. Funny, I always thought I would do the opposite if given the chance.
Lot of things changing like that. Things that I thought I would always desire, always enjoy, always seek out, all my pole stars shifting in their orbits to be replaced by inexplicable stars I never imagined would guide my course.
It is a strange and unsettling wind that turns the ship of destiny in a new direction.