My favorite quote is from actress, alcholic, drug addict, clinically depressed, bipolar Carrie Fisher, who said. "Losing your mind is a terrible thing but once it's gone it's fine. Completely fine, because there is no longer a part of you that knows the rest of you is missing" I kept waiting for the part of me that KNEW the rest of me was missing to die off so I could embrace the coma and find peace in my mind.

What I figured out is the part that would give up, that knew there was indeed something missing was my spirit. My mind gave up long ago but the spirit just wouldn't freaking relent. I have no human reason to come up with that explains how I found the nerve and strength to try to salvage this trip of mine, in this body on the third rock from the sun but it happened.

My gambling friend Kay was terribly terribly ill for a good period and the doctors couldn't find out what was wrong with her. She said she made a promise that if she ever felt well enough to return to the land of living she would go and not stop, that is what she vowed to do. She got better and she is a crazy ,cyclonic force of life to be reckoned with today. I think the biggest perk of coming back for the edge of darkest dark, is this overwhelming gratitude just to be here at the party- Invited, honored, grateful guests. I can't imagine what the story , my story, would have been had I got the thing i prayed for countless times, literally in hot water up to my neck in a garden tub so large you could have misplaced a Volvo in it. My desperate nekkid prayer was to let me out of the mess or let me surrender the part that knew the rest of me was missing.

I see people, displaced, disenfranchised, discombobulated and detached. They have no part of them left that knows the other part is missing and it does NOT look like the respite I sought.They, these men without homes or attachment, wander in the NA hall which is down from the Rescue Mission, for a free cup of coffee. Skin so beaten by the cruel rays of sun it's like thick untreated cheap South American leather. Fingers, darkened to the point of looking like old cigars, hair untended, unkempt and defiant. They walk in and make eye contact with no one, Sometimes they consciously or unconsciously run their ruddy fingers across their wild hair as if there might still be a thread of a person inside that once knew a social grace. Some mutter or sometimes shout at the voices in their own heads but mostly, they just remind me that sometimes there is the most beautiful grace of all is unanswered prayer.

I talked to a homeless man in the hall a couple of years ago, it was springtime and the storms had been occurring regularly we get in April and May here. I don't know how he got from Texarkana to Longview but he came for Mother's Day. His mother was buried in the cemetery behind Krogers and he had slept the night before our conversation, on what he called his mother's land- which was just big enough for the box she was buried in, underneath him in the cemetery behind the Kroger. The meeting started , he got one more cup of coffee and then he returned to wherever people go when they disappear. It rained again that night and I thought about him looking to make a connection with something, anything, even it was a plot of dirt and a headstone marking the life and death of his mother. Perhaps all he was sure of was he was once this woman's son.

He told his story with out emotion, it was just matter of fact, he was completely removed and unaware of the tragedy and depth of his accounting. He showed me, and people all around show me exactly what it looks like when " there is no longer a part of you left that knows the rest of you is missing" really looks like. It didn't and doesn't seem like a solution to me today, the killing of the "kwowing" of my "being". Frankly, I don't think I even ever really came close to it. There was always this crazy tiny voice, perhaps the voice of God, perhaps the voice of Mrs. Butterworth, who knows, but something kept whispering, and though I wasn't aware I was listening it kept stating " the story need not end today,the story need not end here."

The author of my favorite quote is still here too. She speaks and she writes in a voice I understand, a wisdom I too have earned from my dance with the "darkest dark". She writes in gratitude and with a humor that all can appreciate but only those who have tried repeatedly to disappear within ourselves forever truly can breath in fully.

I say a prayer for the people so locked up in themselves, that fail to recognize any part of themselves any longer. It's so easy to get lost and so very hard to fight your way back. It's a fight worth fighting. I haven't been trapped in my own thoughts in a long time. I know longer try to "think" myself to sleep at night, but most miraculous is, I know who I am today and I know the sound of my own voice and I like the sound of it. I LIKE the truth as i have unearthed it for myself, to blaze a streak across my computer screen and hopefully shine the light from it into the God awful "Darkest of Darks" in some other poor son of a bitches life who surrendered to the wrong thing.

'Do NOT SURRENDER DOROTHY!"

As my dear kindred likes to say, "That is all, carry on"! You know i don't have the ability to see my typos and errors hope it still reads ok. I'm a writer that prefers content over the crossing of the T's and the dotting of the I's. But that's just me.

This is a true, true testament to recovery and the changes it brings about. My whole life, I have never wanted too many "things". I didn't want belongings. I left a few apartments full of everything I owned and just took my clothes when I felt it was time to go. I've never found that possessions made me feel like most others do with "their stuff". I got no identity from the things I owned or the car I drove/drive. In fact there have been times when I gave away or threw away stuff when I felt like I had to much "stuff".

When I moved into my apartment I had basically a bed, a tv and a computer and some clothes. Five months into it, I have a love seat by a great great maker, and things I have picked up that I connected with on some level. A couple weeks ago I had a moment of panic when I was leaving because i realized, I had "things" and I really liked them. When I got my new TV my mom mentioned checking into renters insurance. My first inclination was, I don't have anything worth insuring. Finally a couple of days ago it dawned on me, if someone in my 8 unit vintage complex burned this place down by accident, I would have to start all over.

I love my tiny apartment and every piece of furniture, wall hangings and yes, FABRIC that covers the pine paneled great wall of Gladewater. I got renters insurance today. Me, the guy wanted to own nothing, to be responsible for nothing, to "never own more than I can fit in the back of a Chevette Hatchback" got insurance on MY STUFF. At least this way if the worst happens, I won't have to start with nothing again. I have grown accustomed to how my "home rises up to meet me" when I open the front door.

I told Stephanie tonight via text the twist and turn of life make it interesting. Don't know whether this is a twist or a turn but it is yet another surprising element of living a recovered life. God, what next, a baby?

I think that, at least in the western culture we are so preconditioned to "happily ever after" that anything that doesn't end with bow on it when the credits begin to roll is viewed as a failure. The stark sobering reality is more often than not, things don't go or end the way we plan them to in our head. When that happens does it mean there is absolutely no value left it in?
How can someone be married or married 20 or 30 years and see that time as a failure? Or how could someone be clean and sober for 15 years and feel like they failed recovery? The real life story will rarely if ever live up to the fantasy forever and ever after. My observation is that our human lives are comprised of endless stops and starts. My fav. cousin has had more real life tragedy than any one person I have known and she said an interesting thing as just an afterthought tacking it on to our conversation. "Life is just a string of experiences strung together by our hearts".
If I can focus on the fact that my life is a collection of experiences with very few linear narratives, I am much less apt to label anything as an epic failure. When I see and remember, it is the string of events and experiences that make up my life. There will be no one story I attach to that will ultimately put the stamp of success or failure on my entire time on the planet as a human. Some stories we live are short stories, some great loves, as Carrie Bradshaw bemoans in "Sex in The City" are not sweeping epic novels.
To live a fulfilling life I have to somehow learn to absorb all the life from the short bursts of life as it happens. I must extract all the joy, love, sadness, hurt, happiness and hope in the smallest of moments and let go of the screwed up Disney tales that we all live happily ever after with no effort on our part. If we are the luckiest of " luckies" , the only thing that will be with us the entire trajectory of our lifespan are one or two family members or one good friend. All the rest of the stories that will unfold will neither value our worthiness no will it devalue you the worth of our time here.
I wish I had known earlier when I saw clearly that something was NOT going to last or work out like I hoped , that is didn't mean that the thing was a failure, it was just one of the many occurrences in life that presents itself then fades away for whatever reason and the only common thread between them all it the string my heart strings them together with. We must let the story end so the new one can begin. "Let it GO, let it gooooo".

I'm not in love, just forget it, it's just a silly phase I'm going through....

I've had a long history of vivid dreams that stir up so much emotion that I am completely out of whack for a solid day afterwards. I'm pretty sure I have mentioned before that I have only been in love once in my life and that was when I was 18. For a quarter of a century my psyche brings that old love up in dreams and makes it feel as fresh as yesterday. It's been like losing that relationship over and over dozens of times again and again. As I started getting better, the dream has changed a bit. My old love shows up but I am not devastated and lonely and desperate for his love again. Night before last I dreamed about John. I was in mad love for him still in the dream and he was sick. He was dying and as madly in love with him as I was , he was madly in love with someone else. He had no place to go so I took him in and cared for him while he died. Me holding him wishing it were different but being ok with the fact he won't ever be able to love me like I love him. It was impossible to have the outcome I had secretly wanted all these years. When I woke up it made me think, my love for him was not lessened, it wasn't returned but my love was real. It just didn't look like the way I thought it was suppose to look like. Love not returned doesn't devalue the miracle of caring for someone. My love for many people who have gone is just as real, big and worthy of awe as when I had those people to love. Love never moves out of the heart, you don't have to be with me to marvel at this fantastic thing humans can experience. I didn't spend the day bummed out like the dream used to do to me. The Disney kid in me wants to believe that it will come again and we will have a happy ending but the self actualized spiritual me is grateful to just know the sensation once in my life. Whever I ever see him or hold his hand again , I am connected. It doesn't hurt like it used to. I know it's special because I had never felt that power before or sense, not even close. It was something special that I know my heart can be that full and alive.  I have compassion for those two messed up kids that tried to play house with no coping skills and budding drug addiction and alcohol. Maybe he was my first good drug. Like most drugs, the first high is always the one you chase, over and over.  I just thought it was a neat dream. I hope to love people regardless of if they can love me back in the way I wish they would, consistently.

Treatment is a LUXURY not a Necessity

I am in recovery for substance abuse and I work in or around the recovery field.  Every time a celebrity is whisked off to rehab it sends the message to substance abusers and the people who love them, that in order to recover from alcoholism and drug abuse you must go to treatment. In Texas, if you don’t have private pay insurance or you aren’t on probation or parole, or have a big private bankroll,  it is nearly impossible to go to a treatment center because we don’t have many with other funding options.

When Oak Haven closed in Marshall, it was the last house on the block of treatment centers in East Texas for people who did not fall into specialty niches that still have funding available. There is little to no funding to put “Joe or Susie Average “in treatment in Texas.

The good news is, and it is good news, for nearly 80 years AA has been saving lives and restoring drunks to wholeness. NA has been doing the same for over 61 years.

TREATMENT IS A LUXURY, not a necessity.

If a man or a woman can admit they can’t use successfully and their life is unmanageable, they can recover with meetings that take place several times a day. every day of the week for no cost. No insurance necessary.

I have had my phone number attached to several information lines for NA and AA for years. I get calls from people who are at the end of their ropes and they have no idea what can be done.

Here is the straight dope about Alcoholism and Addiction recovery. If you are an addict or alcoholic, it only gets worse. It will end with “Jails, institutions or death”. End of story. You drag everyone that dares to keep loving you right through the gates of torment and hell.

Treatment facilities are a great place to get a lot of information quickly, but ultimately you go to AA or NA meetings on your own volition, if you stay sober.

Some calls I get or got, were from Grandparents raising their grandkids, parents at wits end over their kids drug abuse, spouses, lovers and friends who’s own lives are in shambles because they love a drunk or dope head.

More good news here, those people can regain their lives and sanity in two programs called Alanon and Naranon. These are family groups that work in conjunction with the 12 Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous. Addiction is a family disease, and if you love an addict and your life has been wrecked by their drug abuse, YOU can regain sanity in your life whether or not your alcoholic or addict ever recovers.

To recover or to be restored, made whole again, is available in your town or near your town. There are meetings online these days. You don’t have to spend another day in despair. The requirement for membership for both NA and AA is simply, you need to have the desire to quit. You don’t have to quit before you come. You can’t do it alone and most of us can’t. It is best to come with a clear head ,but the important thing is you keep coming back.

In this dark situation of chemicals, despair, and obliterated family relationships, there is a quiet promise of recovery from NA and AA.

YOU CANNOT USE THE EXCUSE I CAN’T AFFORD TREATMENT. For 80 years poor people, rich people, ugly people, pretty people, white people, black people, Chinese people, street walkers, preachers, football players, mothers, grandfathers, kids, Republicans, and Democrats have gotten sober and regained their spirits and the ability to love and be loved through the miracle of recovery in  AA/NA.  

I am a member of a 12 Step Organization but I am not speaking on behalf of them. I’m speaking solely from my experience as being a broken human who used chemicals for a peace of mind that never was sustainable or attainable. I regained life through a 12 step program.

East Texas Council on Drug Addiction and Alcoholism is a clearing house for all things dealing with addiction in Longview, for the addict or the person that loves an addict.   

Things don’t magically get better for people who don’t seek help, in fact they get so bad, the horror writer Stephen King couldn’t dream up the nightmares addiction rains down on people and their families..

The websites for AA and NA are

www.NA.org

www.AA.org

If you love an addict/alcoholic, these are important websites with life and sanity saving information just for YOU.

http://www.al-anon.alateen.org/home

http://www.etcada.com/

www.naranon.org

There is freedom for active addiction, there is freedom for those whose lives have been destroyed by the disease of alcoholism and addiction. It doesn’t get better on its own, it won’t just go away. Recovery is possible and you don’t have to pay 10 thousand dollars a month to learn what is shared freely in AA and NA.

There is a way out of the darkness. Restoration to wholeness and sanity is completely possible and doable. You have nothing to lose and everything to gain. Misinformation regarding inpatient or outpatient treatment is killing people and letting families suffer needlessly. Recovery is hard, but active alcoholism and addiction is harder by far..

Clint G.

Anonymous Recovering
Alcoholic Addict

There are times when I hear someone speak at NA or AA that says something that alters my paradigm forever. Saturday morning a man was talking about how in recovery he revisited a lot of painful things in order to forgive the players that caused him pain. He had a bad relationship with his father and he said he would get so hurt every year when July 4th came and he begged his dad to take him to the Fireworks Display in town.

Every year he would beg and beg but his father would never take him. He was hurt and angry and it followed him into adulthood. When his dad died , he was in recovery and able to speak about the pains he carried with him he was talking to his aunt - (his dad's sister) about how it hurt him every year his dad wouldn't take him to the fire works.
His aunt listened and began to speak. "When your dad came home for World War II we went to a huge victory celebration. We ate, danced, laughed. Dark came and they had a huge firework show. I turned to your father to comment on them and he wasn't there. We started to look for him and we could find him no where. Finally of a friend told us we needed to go to help your father in the restroom. There we found him curled up in a ball in the corner next to the toilet. He was shaking and crying and out of his mind. He was Shell-Shocked and no one knew it." It's the term they used before PTSD, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

It's what I say alot, "you just don't know what monsters are 2 inches away from the people you come in contact with, we don't know what horror is chasing
the folks we meet"

All those years of resentment, were instantly re-framed and forgiven for the guy at AA and it was replaced with understanding, forgiveness and compassion. If you have never had the experience where resentment is removed and forgiveness happens, when the river of life and love flows into the compartment that had been filled with pain and hurt, I urge you to think about letting a resentment go and experiencing it. We don't set the people that hurt us free, we set ourselves free.

Yesterday I went to a noon NA meeting and a fellow came in that has popped in and out with his girlfriend for a few years. He is not tall and has longish Meatloaf like hair, she comes in an array of costumes but always some variation of white gogo boots, fishnets and hot pants. They looked like to me, a couple of characters Carol Burnett's crew would have dreamed up. Her hair, I think was always died a black that surpasses any descriptive words I can muster. Girl, it was BLACK. She was never unpleasant and I was always aware when I saw them I was seeing something that was too cartoonish to be real but there they were. When I saw them I always felt like I had spotted a unicorn or something mystical and mythical. They would pick up a white key tag or a few times they celebrated 30 days but would always drift away like one fancy white cloud on an otherwise cloudless day when the wind blew. I can't think of anything they ever said or did that was repugnant in the least. So the male part of the couple came into the meeting yesterday and shared that he was struggling. He had five days clean and he was having a hard time. 
I wondered where his girlfriend and cohort was. I had never seen one without the other, sort of like Laverne and Shirley or Lenny and Squiggy. I leaned over to my friend next to me and asked "I wonder where Elizabeth is", (not her real name out of respect for anonymity"). I figured she was sitting out some time in County. My friend Jamie said, "Do you remember the lady that was tossed out dead on the road a few months ago, that was her". 
My blood ran cold. I read the story of the body they found in/near Longview on the highway. I even read the headline a month later that they identified the woman's body. I did not however read the article. For over 24 hours now this has been eating at me. Even before drug addiction, I suspect she clearly did not have the faculties, most of us have. She had things stacked against her from the beginning, she had less to work with than most of my friends here on Facebook, yet she managed to find a way to survive until someone finally put an end to her. She even had long term companionship which most of my friends of FB will nod in agreement is no easy feat. What upsets me about this story, actually it's two things. First, someone thought she was disposable. Insignificant. Like a hostess twinkie wrapper tossed from a vheicle and left roadside, someone made the decision that her life mattered not. Maybe because she was an addict, maybe because she was so quirky or maybe she just trusted the wrong person for the wrong reason, this harmless cartoon of a woman was murdered and left on the road by someone who didn't know she had value simply because she was here. She existed and that gave her value.
The second thing that upsets me is that I read that article, heard it mentioned on the news and not one time did I STOP and think, that lady they found on the highway had someone somewhere that loved them. They mattered to someone somewhere. I was caught off guard by my own callousness. I'm shocked that it wasn't until I found out I knew the woman did the story have heft to me.
Some people are seen as disposable. It's why so many prostitutes and drug addicts are murdered and the police/communities don't blink. "Let them kill themselves out" is a term I actually heard with my own ears before.
The God of my understanding sees value, purpose and love in every living creature. I'm disappointed in myself on this one because I forgot that the stories I see and hear in and on news sources are based on real people, who are loved by real people and that pain is pain and pain demands respect. I love outcasts and I am at my best with misfits. I'm so sad that one of the misfits I've enjoyed from a far was snuffed out in such brutal form. She reminds me in death and in memory to notice people, to attend people, to value people simply because they exist. I hope to do better. I hope my ears don't get so used to hearing the stories I forget the stories are about human lives, real humans. I barely knew her but I'm sure someone loved her and I"m sorry for their loss. I'm sorry the world is unkind to people who don't fit the mold. I'm sorry some people fall through the cracks. I'm sorry I walk past of field of purple and forget to notice it sometimes, but I will try to do better and not for anyone's sake but my own. I don't want to exist in human form and not realize that every human has worth and we all deserve a certain amount of respect for just getting to the age that we are whatever that is. Today I will respect life and remember behind each tragedy they trot out and across the new screen, someone's mother weeps and someone's mother cries "Why?".

Unless you are a highly enlightened human, it is very hard not to assume whatever it is that is going on in your life , bad or good isnt going to stick around. . Something inside me tries to convince me that whatever it is is going to last forever. If its heartache, then the human part of me is certain in will never end. If it's lovely and fun I just don't think about the good time stopping, but it does. My mother has a tendancy to tell me "YOU NEVER" and "YOU ALWAYS".........blah blah blah.  Never and Always imply that something is constant and  unending.

 I was touchingly reminded this weekend that everything I know will end one day. It doesn't matter if something has been a certain way for 78 years or 78 minutes. The way of our world is constant change. Life, this thing that is fluttering strings of experiences strung together strictly by heartbeats moves closer to it's finality with every breath I take.

  I watched a tiny box roll right past me over the weekend that contained a small remnant of a hammering hurricane of a woman that once embodied a will and a determination that defied the size of it's container, a category 5 or F5 tornado of will.. Part amusement and  part consternation was experienced by everyone that knew her and loved her.. Honest to goodness as the shiny pretty box rolled by I thought to myself, "Our stories end" and it wasn't just a thought, it encompassed my whole gray headed being.

The point was hammered home to me, and more so than just a nebulous cautioning from a book that my time here , on this plane with these people all is subject to end without notices and BOOM!. Everything I know , everything I am familiar will is upended.

Instead of being a buzzard on my bed post , warning me of impending doom, I have noticed that presence of mind, awareness of the precarious state of being a temporary human just afforded me a clarity to feel more as it unfolds, to absorb everything about the present moment and savor it's flavor. To remember for myself and to gently remind others that "This too....shall pass". This isn't the place to sink roots into because our stories are told in forward motion so we must keep moving and not lose our momentum. This isn't the end of your story.

In my middle aged life I have seen so many things come and go. The Berlin Wall, the fall of Communism in Russia, Eastman Kodak the creator of modern photography fold it's company up. After 33 years of having a set of parents I have had a step mother for 16 years now, Blockbuster Video the BIGGEST video rental business there was for years is no more. Things end. So many endings.

Things end, seasons of productivity pass like the remnants of a summer garden in the deep winter. The trick for me is to absorb my life and all the bit players , enjoy it but not hold to tightly. One chapter will end and another will begin and one day the entire tale will be told. Our stories do and will end.

If you have a faith that has you preparing only for the afterlife, I ask you to stop and enjoy the life that God has given you here today. "Your' Soaking in It'. as a matter a fact. I love a country song by Trace Atkins

You're gonna miss this
You're gonna want this back
You're gonna wish these days hadn't gone by so fast
These are some good times
So take a good look around
You may not know it now
But you're gonna miss this


God, Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the different.

When I was a wooden puppet......

There is a childrens story about a wooden puppet that longed to be a real boy. If you were to boil my life down to a bite size capsule, it has been my long held desired to be a real boy too. The strings that held me weren't made of cotton, they were fear, anger, confusion, resentment, depression and substance abuse just to name a few of them. They so thoroughly convinced me that the human experience was not one I was going to have in this lifetime, I retreated without questioning. I watched people have lives and experience emotions that I couldn't conjure up on my own. In fact, the last time I was at Psych. Hospital that also treated addicted people they had us write a list of things we had not yet experienced but would like to.

 The first thing on my list was I wanted to burst into tears over pure joy. I'd seen it on TV and in Movies and more than anything I wanted to know just once what that felt like.I even asked the counselor if it was a real thing or not.  The second was I wanted to be able to regularly have emotional responses to sadness or beauty. Everyone else was listing things like trips to Europe and getting married. My whole list mostly was filled with this list of things of feelings and emotions and reactions that humans had that I had only witnessed.

I had a stash of VHS tapes then DVDs of moments other people had where they were moved or became over come with emotions. Award winners, Athletes in the Olympics who had their gold medal moments. I was unable for decades to produce any good feelings of my own so I bootlegged and hijacked the emotions of others. Just like Pinochio, I was not able to produce human emotion, the only difference was I was flesh and blood, and the ties that bound me couldn't simply be snipped.

A lot of things happened in the last four years (3.75). The universe was kind enough to intervene on my behalf once more. This last time when my head rose again above the water, instead of looking for the next wave, I took a deep breath and started moving. Something remarkable has happened to me specifically in the last few months, I have begun producing my own gold medal moments. Simple words can move me to tears, music can be so touching it sucks the air from my lungs. I've told people I have known a lifetime that I love them and not sound like a bad actor with a terrible script. I have been vulnerable to the point where words temporarily weren't available in public and I have spent hours with people and showed up as myself.

 I left know trail of bread crumbs so I can't be sure exactly how I got here, but that's fine, I don't need to know my way back there. I have laughed so hard the noise escaping from my mouth made me jump. After decades and decades of life behind the great divide, this life , these people, the love and joy are every bit as delicious as I knew somewhere deep in me they would be. I knew there was more but I couldn't find my way out of the dark.

 I spent the day with a friend on an important day in her life and I showed up. I showed up feeling and loving and fully present in my real boy body. I am grateful. I'm grateful most all of the time but I was especially grateful today for myself. People matter to me, peoples plights matters to me today. I am moved by a stranger with everything they own in sacks walking down Highway 80 because I know what it feels like to be walking and have no where to walk to. I know the steps I took to reclaim my spirit but I have know idea how I got from there to here. It's better than I ever knew it would be but every bit as good as I dared to dream it would be.  Movies and TV probably saved my life at some point and in movies because they offered escape. Somewhere in the hour our 90 minutes  the main character gets the resolution he sought, the credits roll, yet I find myself cry out for MORE. Please hold the credits.The story is JUST NOW getting good.

I realized something tonight while quick texting a friend. I am a survivor. I have the tale to tell of someone who found a way out of hell on earth. I have stood knee deep in rubble on the bombed out burnt up battle field of my life and somehow found how found a the strength to crawl out. When there was no color and no visible sign of life, I stumbled forward.

And do you know what that experience has provided me with? It's given my first hand experience to tell someone when they are standing knee deep in rubble of a bombed out burnt up battle field of THEIR life and tell them with absolute certainty that "this too shall pass". This isn't the end of your story. I am a survivor, SA-VIV-er. It's the thing you become when you get past the thing you thought would take you out for good. I have more than a theory from a book or some nebulous hypothesis. It will hurt a while, it will suck a while and you may bleed for a minute. You may take to your sick bed and curse the heavens above. Life is life and we are all dealt terrible blows, some seemingly more than others.

I'm surrounded by teenagers 40 hours a week and I feel so sorry for them sometimes, because all they know is all they know. They haven't had the benefit of existing long enough to see that most everything passes. I tell them all the time the 3 months your here in the terrible place won't even seem like a speed bump to you in the history of you life in a year. In 3 years this will be nothing but a bad summer camp you had to go to as a kid. Battle scars are badges of honor, scar tissue is the single stronges piece of flesh you have and it says I was here, I took that hit and I'm still standing.

I have a lot of faith in my ability to withstand the glancing blows of life today. I have steps to take to save my ass regardless of the mess that's on my face. All my life I thought I wanted to be blond with blue eyes and the star of the football team. HOnest to God truth, if I could excise all the painful event's of growing up and the pain of being 20 and trying to convince everyone I knew what I was doing, all the best qualities of me would be erased. I got character through all the events and circumstanced I would have deleted at one point if given a magic wish.

Antiques have value because they have withstood the test of time. Repaint a 100 year old table or polish the patina off a 200 year old statue and you have rendered it valueless. The shit storms of life and our first hand eye witness report on how we got through it is so much more valuable to man kind than an unproven idea from someone in a think tank or a book author. You get colon cancer, you find a colon cancer survivor, if you are a drug addict, you find someone who is an addict and recovered. Our individual experiences here on the planet is what makes us valuable, not where we got a degree from or what church we belong to. Our experience makes us invaluable.

We attain wisdom through poor decision making and living through hardships. So, I am a survivor. I may or may not have claimed that moniker before but tonight, as my perspective shifted suddenly I realized that I had done the unthinkable. I made it through to tell my story of treachery, despair, redemption and survival. Face the fear, the confusion, the anger and the depression. Your story does not end here and it's a story that needs to be told and told. "I found myself knew deep in rubble, in the bombed out burnt of field that was my life". I made my way out of the darkness and you can too.