Almost Conquered

Here we go again, another relapse. Why is it so hard to be good and so easy to spiral out of control. 8 months after going to my first Holiday Inn rehab, 28 days, really? Just an extended vacation to curb the withdrawal and start mixing the concrete that you will use for your foundation and then graduation! The excitement of being whole again, the gratitude for friends and family. Inspiration comes back, laughter comes back, and what is this..... Emotions..... why does it feel so good to cry and why are they so elevated? Why am I all of a sudden this easily read open book to whomever would like to read it? Actually you know what, I don’t care because this is my fresh start, my new beginning. I was once a prisoner in hell that suddenly escaped and now I am running as fast as I can away from it all.

Everyone I invited came to my graduation. I was excited, I felt good, looked good. I was full of energy and had a lot to say, a lot to be grateful for and more importantly, I was ready to be the father I knew my son deserved. My name was announced and everyone cheered and clapped as I walked on stage. I shook my counselor's hand and pulled him in for a hug; I mean, what else do you do to someone that has helped you transform yourself into the newest upgrade of yourself. He was and will always be family, just family where you forget their name, and I wonder if he would even remember who I am today? Anyways, my friends and family joined on stage after my speech, we are laughing and joking around, hugging and kissing, I have tears of joy filling up in my eyes. I grabbed my 3 year old son and I squeeze him tightly and I tell him how much I love him and how much I missed him and I that I will never be away from him like this again. Sigh.... I got a glimpse of my mom when I was hugging my son and she gave me a look that I have never seen before, a look I’ve never been given by anyone. It’s hard to describe, but it was the warmest, most proudest, and most pure look of appreciation, like I have finally ARRIVED.

Let’s back up just a little and I will give you some key notes, a little family history, a little knowledge leading up to my mirage of metamorphosing.

Typically, like all stories like this, my parents divorced when I was young. I want to say I was around 5 years old and I still remember the last fight they got into. Not the last fight, but the last fight that stated they were getting divorced and the one that kicked my dad out of our apartment for good. My mother is a very strong willed woman, fierce, someone you never want to cross. My mom can love hard but can hate harder. She is a very dominant woman that always knew how to provide for her 4 children. Now, I only have an older sister and a younger sister, but the men my mother dated after my father were always less than men and a smidge above children. They were riding a roller coaster built by my mother that promised them the greatest ride of their life as long as they followed all of the ride's rules, and knew that the rules could be changed at anytime, they needed to make sure the kids were always on the ride and know the creator of the ride had no rules and could end the ride at anytime. These men fell hard for my mother. So hard they would all eventually not have a job, they would be taking us to school and picking us up, and whatever mood she was in dictated how they could or would behave. It was sad, sad for them and also sad for me to see the manipulation that a woman could have over so many men. It’s crazy because I just got out of a relationship with a woman who had the same dominant gene my mother had, and I was addicted to it but that relationship recently ended, that’s for another story. But point is, before my relationship, I never understood why a man would fall to his knees, but to find a successful, strong, independent woman is rare, and they have this energy that takes pressures off the old male stigma of what it is to be a man. Anyways, I feel for them now, but back then I thought they were all weak. Shows what you can learn once you grow up.

My mom excelled in a men’s dominated insurance field in the early 90s, rising to the top quickly. I remember living in apartment after apartment, to renting houses to owning our first house. My mom would come home from work with brand new jet skis, brand new SUV. On our 16th birthdays, we got to pick out what car we wanted. My mom purchased a new corvette when the new body style came out and she let me go to prom in it. We would go on family vacations all the time. My sisters and I went from public school to catholic school. The life was extraordinary with one thing lacking, my mom. I remember going to work with my mom for the first time in their new acquired office building. The parking lot was under this eight story building. We took the elevator to the eighth floor and when we got out, everyone would greet my mom, and then look at me and smile and say it was great to meet me. It was an amazing feeling, the power, I had nothing to do with that place but I still held power. I remember the company had a close knit group of friends with the higher ups. The owner and his two sons, and my mom and some others that started originally with the company. There were bowling leagues, golf tournaments, Christmas parties, it was a life I enjoyed being a part of. A life where you felt like you belonged, where you had people that you thought cared about you. But that all ended suddenly one year with the truth of how scummy everyone was and the drugs and sex and the sexual harassment that took place. The Power that controlled and manipulated so many, the distrust, the save yourself mentality. The true colors of everyone was uncovered and the last time I saw any of them was in a courtroom with my sisters listening to the filth my mom had to deal with and went through. It was discouraging and it was a sad day for me. It was hard to know that she was put through some horrible things because she was a woman in a male dominated industry. My mother prevailed though; as a tough New Yorker woman would, she left and started her own company that is still going to this day while the other company was dismantled and buried within a couple years after the trial.

Once my father left the apartment that night when I was 5, my father was forever gone. I’m not saying we never saw him again, but I am saying we lost a father that night and he was replaced with a friend. My father lost his job, moved in with a random girl who became his girlfriend who hated children. The court documents stated he could have us every other weekend, which was a hassle since his girlfriend didn’t want us there and he never really had a stable job and the commute back and forth was too much. I’d say there would be months that would go by that we wouldn’t hear from him. I remember a couple times the phone would ring and my mom would answer and then hang up saying you dad is in jail. See my dad has a huge heart, the biggest heart out of everyone I’ve known but he also has a ton of issues he never got to work on which would lead him to make decisions that seem harmless at first but would spiral out of control with an end result of the law. I truly love my best friend dad and I know if he could do more or better he would, it’s just not in him to always make to correct decision and now I am faced with the same challenges. I see so much of myself in my dad, and I also see them in my son which scares the hell out of me. Are we predestined for success or failure by our genes? I believe a lot has to do with that but I also believe you can work things out and become better and more equipped to handle certain situations when they arrive. I feel that as of today, I would make better decisions than my dad would only because I had the privilege of going to rehab and work on myself. Now with me truly believing this, I have my son meeting with a counselor so I can pray that when he has certain decisions to make, he will be better equipped then the both of us. I tend to break a cycle of failure and I will do anything possible to provide my son with a life that shows promise. A life that it doesn’t take forever to be good and easy to spiral out of control. I want it to be the opposite style of the life my dad and I had.

Yes, I believe I was raised with every opportunity to succeed. I never had a need or want, and my mom provided more than we could have ever wished for, the only thing we were really wishing for was more time with our mom. Work was her life and she had a company to run. I understood that and instead of me making the great choices in life, I always chose the selfish one. My mom was on business trips all the time so our house was the party house in high school. I took advantage of my situation and I was taken advantage of because of my situation and I realize now what I put my mom through back then and even now because of my selfish behavior.

Fast forward:

Now my son was an accident; no way does that mean that I don’t care for him or love him differently, it just means that I was not planning on having a child and I definitely wasn’t planning on having a child with the girlfriend I was with. Now we discussed our options and we were both on the same page with terminating the pregnancy but something strange happened. Somewhere deep inside of me gave me this strong feeling of assurance and made me feel comfortable and very confident when I told her, “Let’s have this baby.” It’s weird to think about it now, especially with how selfish I was, or still am.......but I’ve recognized it and I’m working a lot on it, like daily. But to feel that confident in making a real life changing decision, felt amazing. I had no doubt that this was going to be my child, one and done and I was ready....... My son’s mother and I stayed together as long as I could which was a year and half after he was born. I was living with my younger sister while she moved to her father's. We decided on a split schedule with our son and to this day maintain the same schedule while never going to court. While living with my sister, I started to rekindle my relationship with my high school sweetheart. My son grew extremely fond of her and everything just seemed to work, or click as some would say; everything except my happiness. I was working with a landscape company at the time but I was also taking pills, a lot of pills. It eventually caught up with me and my mom offered to pay for me to go to rehab. I was lost, broken, and ashamed of who I was. I accepted her offer. My high school sweetheart and mom drove me to my first rehab, the 28 day Holiday Inn excursion. Once I was admitted, they left after a long hug and words of encouragement, and they drove back home. I was coming off opiates, so I was in rare shape. I couldn’t sleep, but extremely exhausted. My stomach was empty but I wasn’t hungry. I cried a lot, and every thought that ran through my head was of disgrace of failure, of hurt I’ve caused, of just being worthless. I stayed in this detox room for 3 days and then finally was placed in a room where I had one roommate. Once I was able to start functioning normally, I started to engage in my classes, an follow through with my schedule. I met my counselor and my group and I started to participate. Within a couple days, I started to feel different. I went from hell to this opportunity of life again. I worked hard and I became someone that everyone knew. I always had a smile on my face and I was the annoying sober guy that had so much positivity that it pissed people off. I also got from people that were there multiple times before that I was too cocky and thought it was too easy and that I would relapse within months of me leaving. Now I listened to everything they said but it wasn’t stopping me from feeling so good, from me feeling like I got this. I ate everything up that rehab had to offer us. I went through the steps and I got my sponsor and life was amazing again. Then graduation day came.

My girlfriend and I decided we would go to her family cabin after graduation day with my son. We planned on staying there for a couple nights to be together as a family. On that trip is where it hit me, those people that have been there multiple time were trying to tell that they did not prepare me for how fast life was still going and even though I took a break, life did not. I remember my son being loud and we were driving and cars were flying past us and my girlfriend was talking to me and it all just seemed like a blur. In rehab, everything was clear and slow and happy; outside of rehab was fast, unclear and many moving parts that were not controlled by anyone. We moved into our house when we got back from the cabin and we started our life together. She worked and I worked. We had friends we would hangout with and functions we would go to. I had what I thought I wanted but still something was wrong with me. I remember getting depressed, withdrawing from everyone. I got itchy, real itchy and it would drive me crazy. I was losing myself again until one day, someone gave me some Vicodin. 10 minutes after I swallowed them I got this warm fuzzy feeling, and then it hit me. Everything made sense again, things were clearer, I stopped itching, nothing annoyed me and I was back into the swing of things. I enjoyed work, I enjoyed my family and I enjoyed being a boyfriend again. Everything in my shitty mind was great except I was running out of money. Instead of stopping, I looked for something cheaper, and that’s when I found black tar heroine. Now, I was always scared of the stories I’ve heard about this stuff and never could I use it the way it was intended to be used, so I learned to smoke it, a lot of it. Once you start smoking heroine, then you need to find an upper, so I started getting crystal. So now I’m doing heroine to feel good, crystal to function, all while putting on this act that I’m still in recovery and my life is fantastic. Well that all came crashing down, my girlfriend found the burnt foil in the guest bathroom. I was watching TV, high as I just got done smoking some, when the foil hit me in the head. Once I realized what it was, I ran in the bathroom and looked under the towels and noticed it was gone. I was fucked, I was caught, I was right where I started 8 months ago. I was ashamed, I was lost and I was a disgrace to my family AGAIN and friends, and to my two most important people in my life, my son and my girlfriend. My girlfriend left and went to her parents and I took my son to his mom's and I went to my older sister's house as she was on vacation. Of course I was still getting high and I was trying to come up with excuses, or reasons why this happened and I couldn’t. I remember I even tried blaming it on low testosterone haha. I wanted to find a reason why I did what I did but couldn’t. I am this over thinker that could come up with a reason for anything but for this I just had to come to terms with I’m a failure. In my life, I have had so many opportunities to be great, to live an honorable healthy giving life, but I always gave into the selfish side of me and did whatever I wanted to do. My mom came over the next day and said she found a place for me. This place was extremely expensive but she knew people in the industry and I would be accepted on a scholarship. I agreed to go, now this was not a Holiday Inn rehab. This was a life changing, you have to commit to 90 days and typically people usually stay 6 months to a year. I had no other options but I knew I didn’t want to keep living the life I was so I committed, I committed to staying 6 months.

I have been out of that rehab for 6 years now. It was challenging, it was hard to be away from my son that long. I can honestly say I haven’t done opiates since that place found me. I can’t say once I got out that I was healed or whole again but I do know that staying away from it that long helped train my thinking process. My life started back up and before I knew it, I had a great job, I was healthy and working out. I was paying all my bills and even though she will always have a place in my heart; my high school sweetheart and I didn’t get back together after this episode and I still keep in touch but I knew I couldn’t pursue her anymore because of all the pain I’ve put her through. I know I was her greatest love as she was mine but I also know I was her biggest heart break as well and I could imagine her going through another stupid one of my episodes. I’m happy to say that she did find someone and they got married and honestly from the bottom of my heart I couldn’t be happier. I know she deserves a great life and the man she married I honestly believe he will give that to her. Now as for me, I finally met someone as well. It was the most random meeting ever and we would talk about how we would have missed each other if just one second of our days would have changed. It was mind blowing and exciting, and something I longed for. The feeling I felt were never felt before. The chemistry we had, our energies meshed and we made sure to do everything different than we ever did in previous relationships. We both had kids but didn’t meet them for almost a year. We decided that we wanted to build something between us first to see where it would go and if it sustained then we would bring our children into it and we did. After a year and a half my son and I moved out to her city as she was already rooted in with friends and a school. I didn’t mind driving to come back and see my family and friends because I knew this was something special, something people wait their entire lives to find and no matter what obstacles were in our way, we would climb over them as a family. I guess that’s what happens when someone with an addiction problems find something too good to be true. They invest everything they have into it. They adapt, they change, they do everything in their own power to make sure everyone is taken care of that they forget about the most important person. Themselves. Over a course of almost 4 years, I lost myself. I wanted to make so much money that she didn’t need to work that I left my good paying job. I would never invite her to my family functions just so I would have to hear an excuse of why she couldn’t come. So busy but I would come home to her never leaving the bed. I finally figured out that the only real thing we had was sex. Our sex was off the chart and I’m just learning now that it was off the chart because everything else we had had to be her way or it was a fight. Here I was ready to commit to someone that was able to manipulate the situation into anything she wanted. That’s when I realized, I was dating someone like my mother except she wanted to be the stay at home spouse not the successful spouse. I was spiraling out of control but this time I did not turn to drugs for the answer, haha, I turned to golf. I literally went golfing ever day. Everyday I golfed in hopes of two things; one that I would find peace within myself and become content with the situation that I found myself in and the second, to see if she would come around and see how much I really meant to her. Well let me tell you the outcome. I spent all my money golfing and have found debt I’ve never seen before. We broke up 2 months ago and I haven’t heard from her once. I feel pathetic because I still lay at night wondering if she even thinks of me, knowing that she doesn’t because she has to find the next to take care of her. Well the valuable lessons that I have learned are these; doesn’t matter how old you are, your heart will get broken eventually. If things are too good to be true, then they are. You could be the greatest person in the room but not everyone has great eyesight. When it really comes down to it, you need to be selfish and always do what’s right for you, no one else. Try to always do the next right thing because you never know what wrong move puts you back to square one. Life can look amazing on the outside but on the inside it looks black. People are never what they say, but always how they act.

Now, even though I thought my life was finally all figured out I get thrown down a couple flights of stairs but I picked myself up and gradually just now started walking up those stairs again because I know deep down inside everything happens for a reason and I know in a year I will be laughing about the feelings I’m having today. So no matter what anyone one is going through, just know that if you are not on the correct path that life has for you, no matter how great it seems, if you don’t make the move to change it, life will somehow change it for you. We all have lessons to learn and if we don’t learn them then life will continue to put us in positions to lean these lessons. So my advice is to take every setback as an opportunity to grow. Find the mistakes that you made, not what others have made and make a mental note to fix it or do something different the next time it comes up. I feel that I have been put in a lot of situations where I know what I should do but I end up doing the opposite and that is why I am almost living the life of my dreams. Soon though, I know it will happen soon.