Well, I’m forty. It all happened so quickly. It seems like just
ten years ago I was pissing and shitting in my pants; probably because it was.
The day before my 30th birthday I was at the local bar and I had a quick necessity to defecate. The bathroom was occupied, and so was the ladies. I decided I could make it home so I grabbed some bar napkins and headed out. About half way there, I felt it come out. It was liquid because of my sophisticated diet of malt and hops, and there was a good chunk knocking at my already lubricated door. I stopped in the middle of the road. I knew if I took one more step, I would shit even more down my leg. And then it happened, and I just let it go. There was a point where I knew I could make it the rest of the way home, so I cut it off and walked with both a stagger and a limp up my stairs and into the laundry room where I took off my pants and went directly into the bathroom to finish then take a quick shower. In less than ten minutes I was back at the bar with a different pair of pants, nobody asked why.
On my 30th birthday, I lived in the southeastern
Minnesota town of Lanesboro, and at 7:30am, my good friend came down from
Fountain with a wiffle-ball set and a case of beer for each of us so we could
open up the Parkway Pub at 8am, then play drunken alley baseball behind my
apartment building. The plan was a success, but I quickly became a puddle. Tequila
shots at the bar in the morning lead to an early afternoon nap every time. Although
I was generally in a blackout state at the end of any given day, before noon
was less common and I remember waking up in a fog with plenty of daylight to
spare, and I had the thought that it could still be my birthday. I needed to
celebrate.
I was in my apartment, so I knew I had to make it to one of
the local businesses that I was still allowed in to take a shit because I was all out of napkins. You see, back
in those days I didn’t care about anything other than gambling, drinking, and
weed. Accessories like toilet paper, toothpaste, and soap were not to be found
unless there was a special occasion. I also had no laundry detergent, so my
streaks and my spills were always visible from my last blackout, and I was in a
steady state of deterioration.
This wasn’t even my bottom. I lived like this for years and
I was wholly okay with my lifestyle. Other people seemed to like me, so I just
kept on living in that breaking-point state. For years I somehow survived
myself through drinking excessively, doing every drug I could find for free,
being broke on payday, and recklessly demolishing my image with local woman
with whom I would assuredly try to make time with in my stupors, which I would
always hear about later.
My early 30s were just like my mid to late 20s: somehow I
didn’t die. Finally, I destroyed myself enough to get back into hard drugs
which were the catalyst for my transformation, of which you have read so much
about over the years.
Today, I am living in my apotheosis. I don’t mean that I am
God-like, I’m simply stating that this is the greatest point in my life thus
far, and so long as I keep clean, follow a few simple suggestions, help others
who are like me, and try to be loving and tolerant to everybody I encounter, I
get to keep this life.
Imagine this: everything I have, the house, the car, the
girlfriend, the job, relationships with my family members, this great opportunity to be a role-model to two little girls,
everything that’s important to me, is just three years old. Maybe a few months
older than that, but this life started for me on September 8th,
2015, the day I walked out of prison. From then until now I have accumulated an
entire life of love, responsibility, and hope. And this is the best part:
anybody can do this.
If you have found the courage to look for help, to seek
hope, and have found this blog, you can do this, too. You are fully capable of
being a human, you are worthy of love, you can be honest without fear, and you
can have everything and anything you need. It will take a lot of work, and you
have to be open and honest or it will not work. You have to own your mistakes—all
of them. And you have to find something out there that is more powerful than
you and your addiction, and you have to believe that It can help you. You have
to clean up your past, pay debts, apologize, and maybe even shed a tear or two
in the process, and you can’t ever stop trying to be better. You have to try
every day to be the person you want people to see you as, even when they aren’t
looking. You can be a miracle.
When I was 30, I knew I would be dead by the time I was 40. I
lived in pain, and I loved nothing. I couldn’t. I couldn’t feel.
Now I smile. I laugh.
I live.
I love.
