I am so sorry. It sucks. Thank God there are people who are willing to just talk and listen without knowing how it works, because I think maybe that's how God speaks. Good luck.

You write so well about what I believe is our common affliction! Your note on prayer was also wonderful, not to mention the soccer team. Thank you so much!

Great piece, Gerard! I've watched that demon too. I'm the only one from my family who--thank God--did not become an alcoholic, a drug addict or both. Four suicides and a murder later, there are only three of us left. My younger sister is hanging on by her fingernails. My older sister picked up her white chip at an AA meeting 18 years ago and never drank or used again. She gives all credit to God.

BTW, I am puzzled by the phone call part, how it would have been a problem if you had stayed an extra night.

Seems to me that carpenters speak wisdom at times. There was another one a while back, as I recall ......

Your writing is amazing. Keep coming back.

I'm not convinced an individual can walk away from this demon until the pain of continuing exceeds the pain of quitting.

Be grateful; for some this doesn't happen until they're drawing their dying breath. Your friend the carpenter seems to have that gratitude.

You're writing is amazing. In my comments on this post, I say that slaying demons is required for manhood.

Anyone can grow old. Until you've slain a demon, you're a boy, not a man.

As one who has been riden by the many faced Demons, there is salvation for those who choose to find it. All you have to do is ask....

The Hobo

Call me Ishmael. And there's more. I don't know how you do it - must be the poet in you, but you set everything to resonating.

What a gift you have, Gerard! I've been reading you for more than a decade and it's a joy to see re-postings like this one. Perhaps less of a joy to have lost some of my own comfortable delusions in the intervening decade, alas.

I too share the affliction. I have been reading you almost daily for a few years now and oft times suspected. I met a man like your carpenter 27 blessed years ago, and although I never got through the bible new or old testament I did get through a pretty important volume and still pick up a "newbie" for a cup of Joe after a meeting. One thing the man I met 27 years ago taught me, he always said "measure twice, cut once".

It wouldn't hurt to add this to your rotation of items that you republish yearly. When it was first published, I wouldn't have understood it. I do, now. Some of the people who have dealt with the demon have a saying: Normies don't get it. Or, don't understand it.

Just giving an appreciative nod to the use of "vulpine." What a word.

Powerful stuff, Gerard. You didn't write anything (that I could detect) about the fear one feels when unhitching themselves from the one whom the demon rides. Did you mean to leave that part out?

Lol, Abigail, that's the big one isn't it?