Still in Toledo

12/13/09 Sunday
Well, I’m still in Toledo. We’ve gotten the trailer lights working and fixed a running light on the truck among many other things. Nate’s been busting his butt helping get this all together, I couldn’t have done it without him. I’m checking out of the hotel room today so am thus committing to get out of town. I’m torn about leaving for a couple of reasons. I never helped Suzie get everything done to receive the life insurance from her mom’s death a year ago. I know they desperately could use the money.

What bothers me more is my friend, who’s name I won’t use for obvious reasons. His addiction to and abuse of pain medication is real bad. I’ve helped him in so many ways and during the one time I was able to sit with him and have a conversation he told me repeatedly that I saved his life. But now I’m watching him die, watching him kill himself. I can help him and there is a hope I can save him but it requires a lot of time that I don’t have. So what do I do? His mental state is greatly deteriorated. Have you ever seen the Lord of the Rings movies? In it there is a character named Gollum who had one time possessed the ring, or perhaps the ring possessed him. He called the ring his “precious”. As I watched the movie I saw the parallels to drug addiction, how it drives one to depths where the overwhelming focus is on obtaining the drug with survival falling to second place. I tried to call my friend the other day but he didn’t answer. So I’ll worry and pray. He wasn’t too receptive to any hint he has a problem. I simply advised him to “Pace yourself” and he got upset, telling me that was an insult.

It’s almost 11:00 and I’m still trying to get out of this hotel room. The holdup is this laptop. Every time I try to download the pictures from my camera it freezes up. This is the third time I’ve shut it down. Nate called and is waiting for me so I’ll try and post this so y’all know how things are going.