Hopelessness

Growing Up, I had what most would call a good family. I had parents that loved me, an older brother that looked out for me, a home, and a good school to go too. Though my family did it’s best to help steer me in the right direction, after a big move to another part of the country, I rejected what they were trying to do for me.
I got into drugs and alcohol and lived my life for what felt good at the time.
Years of doing things my way, and narrowly escaping consequences in school and from the law, I was empty inside. At that time, My father was diagnosed with Colon cancer…
My emptiness led to outright despair as I watched a man I had always admired for doing the right thing, and being a great example, have his life ripped apart. The only word that can express how I felt at that point was a dark foreboding. Hopelessness ultimately overcame my life.

After he finished chemo, he started drinking pretty heavily. I reached my lowest point when, six months into this cycle, my dad killed himself….
Just a note about me, I’ve never been one to pick myself up by the bootstraps. I’ve always been the one, when, the going got rough, I got out. My life up to that point, I’d gotten by off of natural talent or charm. There was nothing in me at that point, that prepared me for the road ahead…
​I can hardly remember the first six months after my dad passed. It filled with days of not wanting to get out of bed and nights of avoiding it and sleeplessness. I was rarely rested and was pretty useless at work. My life, and my worldview, everything I knew was struck and destroyed.
I remember the night when things began to change… I had attempted to put myself back together. I read books on self-help, on religion, what I could find about being an average human adult. I knew I needed to be one, and knew I wasn’t one at the time. I had reached the end of myself again. I got to the place where I knew I couldn’t do it any longer. I asked for help, and I was ready to receive it.
Things didn’t change overnight, it wasn’t magically fixed in the morning. But the process began one day at a time, of being rebuilt, and reprogramed. Out of the ashes of life, I had tried to build, my new life began, one day at a time. It wasn’t easy, and it was quite long to get to where I was even functional. It’s not that I have arrived, but you wouldn’t even recognize me from where I was to where I am today.