The Thing.

“We bring in a good income, and there are trap houses galore about 10 minutes away. What keeps you from going there and buying drugs?”

“Not seeing the stressed out look on my family’s faces helps.” He tells me in a text.

Wow. It happened. Myrick, who fought addiction for more than 14 years, found his deterrent. He found the one thing that helps him take that hard earned income and spend it on fishing gear instead of meth. He found the thing he thought he would never find, and funny that it was right in front of him the whole time. A mixture of mental health issues, a not-so-perfect upbringing, and a self-inflicted life of bullshit as an adult caused Myrick to think there wouldn’t ever be anything as good as how being high felt. Being high allowed him to forget the pain of all of it, allowed him to not care, it allowed him to convince himself that everyone in his life was better off without him. He sat on a street corner with a needle in his arm, trying to kill the guilt he felt from sitting on the street corner with a needle in his arm. He never checked to see if any of us were still looking.

Oh, wait, there were a couple of times he reached out to his family, to his father and brother, and no, they weren’t looking, or at the very least, they didn’t look at him so they wouldn’t have to feel somewhat responsible for letting him just fade away, despite the blood pumping through all their veins being the same blood. Eventually, Myrick’s come-up would cause them to cut him off completely, but that’s for another blog, this one is salt free.

After those couple of failed times reaching out, he closed down, so it would be a decade and a half before he would bring the walls down long enough to see that the “thing” happens. You can’t stop it, if he really wanted to be the person I knew he was, he was going to have to bring the walls down and let someone in.

The problem was, the few times he tried, it didn’t work. But, my philosophy is, “never stop trying, even if you never accomplish it, you never quit”. Somehow, that’s the one thing in 14 years Myrick chose to listen to. It took almost 7 years to get the rest to stick, but it did, because he didn’t just want to get clean and live right for me, or his kids, or his friends, and damn sure not for his family; it was for himself. He decided through a freak blessing from God that he wanted to look at me, he wanted to look at his kids , and he wanted to see secure, he wanted to see content, happy, safe, and loved to name a few. He never wanted to look at us and see stress and fear again. That was, and still is, his reason.

Of course, life, self, family, God, all that; it’s important, don’t get me wrong, but that “thing”, will be the thing that will keep you clean. It will literally take on the whole task. Despite the massive reasons you SHOULD stay clean, this one little piece of your life will make you WANT to stay clean.

My “thing” is mornings. For as long as I can remember, I wake up in the morning with a fear, and I’m not sure of what. It is the worst feeling. Transitioning from sleeping to waking up, there is this lonely, distant, creepy place I go, and most mornings, it brings me to tears. It takes me a second to gather myself and look around at where I really am. For the most part, it’s gotten a lot easier to snap out of it as I get older. When I was using, there was that “morning fear”, on top of most mornings being dope sick, which alone brings mental challenges, as well as physical challenges. It’s what I hated most about using, those mornings where I came so close to losing the will to live. I was, I am still, a fighter, but those mornings took all my fight away from me. I have 3 beautiful children, an amazing fiancé, my life is everything I’ve ever wanted and dreamed of, yet, my “break glass in case of emergency” is my mornings. Waking up instantly knowing that fear is unfounded and being able to look around at my life and battle that fear with reality is a freedom I have not been able to enjoy until after I got clean back in 2015, and I love it too much to ever give it back, so I stay clean.

I’m no longer dope sick in the morning, I haven’t been in almost 4 years, and I work on making my mornings something to look forward to. In the end, I got clean for all those big things; me, my kids, my man, my life, God, but those beautiful mornings are my emergency inhaler, if you will.

Just like Myrick, you probably don’t see this being the way things go for you, and of course, you’re “thing” will be different, maybe bigger, maybe even smaller, but you have one already, it just hasn’t become the “thing” that keeps you clean yet. In early recovery it is so important to pay attention to every little thing that makes you feel validated for this huge step you’ve taken to get clean. Those things that make you feel human that could go unnoticed; my mornings, Myrick seeing a content look on his family’s face, it could be finally having a good relationship with a sibling, being able to decorate your apartment because you’re not spending all your money on dope, cooking a new meal once a week because you finally have your appetite back, working out, walking, playing, gardening, meditating; literally anything can be your “thing” that keeps you clean. One day you will stop and think to yourself that you are so glad you don’t get high anymore because of (your “thing” that keeps you clean)and you’ll have found it, so again, PAY ATTENTION TO YOU.

Now, for all my “glass half empty” recovery beasts out there, I am not saying that because I have good mornings now, I’m clean, but if there wasn’t that, I wouldn’t be. I’m also not recommending that if you don’t find your “thing”, you will never be able to recover. What I am saying, is in unison with your recovery tools, be it meetings, classes, methadone, shots, weed, whatever your recovery toolbox holds, finding that one little thing you can really appreciate personally since you’ve gotten clean is a strong enhancement to the recovery process.

When I asked Myrick that question, how he can live 10 minutes away from his drug of choice and not partake, there are a million other things I thought he would say. Fishing is a big love of his, as it was way back before drugs came into his life. Our relationship is thriving and I can count on both hands and feet the number of times each day I think to myself “I love that we…”, and for me, that is like a dream come true, having this kind of relationship with my celebrity crush, after going to war and coming out alive together, we still have a love most think doesn’t exist anymore. Myrick’s financial life (therefore OUR financial life, mwahaha) has grown at warp speed in leaps and bounds, getting into the union, making more money than he’s ever made, with benefits, being able to afford to take care of his family while I play a stay at home mom, buying a new car, affording family date-nights and holiday events, and just being able to be what he has always wanted to be since he could put a putty knife to a wall, a provider, a head of the household, the reason his family wants for nothing. Any of these things, huge and small, could be the “thing” if one was looking in from the outside, but simply, a genuine smile on my face when he gets home from work is what keeps him going, it keeps him clean. In turn, it reminds me why my mornings aren’t frightening; and they are worth waking up to because I am clean.

So there is a small glimpse into the recovery life of Myrick Mathews & Michelle Plummer, after settling into a normal, drug-free life, we have a lot of tips and tricks to share, so stay tuned to my blog!
Now go find your “thing”, you newly recovered beast, you.

Yay! Problems!

So, here you are in recovery, just killing it.  You’re making moves, going forward at unprecedented speeds, and just when you get comfortable with your speed, a wall.  A wall shows up out of nowhere, your a/c goes out, your car breaks down, you lose your phone, the kid needs a dentist, lay-off’s at work, the list of potential walls is endless.

What?  Did you think when you started your recovery life style, that life’s normal problems magically go away and it’s nothing but clean chips and atta-girls? If you are just starting off in recovery, or you keep failing miserably and you can’t figure out why it won’t stick, listen up.

YOU recover from YOUR drug/alcohol use.  Life does not recover.  Life does the same thing it’s always done, and that includes throwing shit in your game now and then.  Whether you are clean, using, never did a drug in your life, you will face problems from time to time.  No matter how rich you are, how famous you are, how in love you are, or how clean you are, that’s just life.  Those walls search us all out, and in recovery, the quote “it’s not the problem, it’s your attitude towards the problem, that produces the outcome.” has never been more of a fact than it will be from here on out.

Myrick has been making so many strides towards greatness, you can literally see the motivation in his eyes.  He came to New York and got clean, got a decent job, overcame legal issues, bought a car, and is currently joining the union, his goal for the last two years.  He even got a side job that paid a good little chunk, so he could float the family for the payless week in between jobs. He took the weekend to go bust out the side job to prove that his love for the trade is apparent in his work. He was able to get to that side job, about 2 hours away, and show them what he can do, but on day 3, the new car he was proudly driving to his side job, broke down.  He was an hour away from home at 5 am, on a Sunday.  He called and asked me to find a tow truck, which I did, and $300 later, he was home, safe and sound, as was our new car.

Of course, when Myrick is blessed, his family is blessed, and it’s a bonus for me to see him as his real self, and we are becoming the family that both of us imagined we could be, so, when the car broke down, of course I felt that too.  But this time, I kept that quote about your attitude in the front of my brain, so instead of stressing out, instead of crying, or relapsing, before we submitted to trying to numb the pain of a problem that probably every human being that drives has dealt with, we simply towed the car home, waited for a shop to open to give her a brand new CV joint, so we can once again be on our way. The option of letting our emotions take over was there, gleaming brighter than anything rational, so it took some skill to rise above our addict ways.

But something else was happening, I realized a few things.

First, we had the money in the bank to tow the car home; had this happened 5 years ago, Myrick would have been stuck because that money would have been spent on dope.  But, this wouldn’t have happened 5 years ago, because we didn’t have a car, and we sure didn’t have the mindset to accommodate a vehicle and the upkeep.  We didn’t even think we would have ever been here, in NY, dishing out tow truck money for a car we drive legally, so right off the bat, how can I not feel blessed?

How can I not feel blessed when, 5 years ago, I wasn’t setting appointments to put my car in the shop, I was standing in the middle of an intersection with a cardboard sign, begging for money, dodging cops, getting dope sick, missing my kids, wishing the ground would swallow me up to avoid the embarrassment.

 So, almost 4 years into recovery, I have learned normal, everyday problems, problems that pretty much everyone goes through, are, in their own way, blessings.  When you are using, those problems don’t even register, because you are completely consumed with not getting sick, and where your next shot is coming from, and more importantly,  when.  So, facing these problems for the first time in recovery, it would be easy to fall back into a panic, “oh God, my car broke, this is it, it’s all going to fall apart like it always does…”, but try to keep in mind that although yes, your car broke, life won’t all fall apart like it always does, because you are not in the same frame of mind as you always have been.  Once you are deep enough into recovery, it’s easy to lose track of the fact that your mindset and persona have been ever-changing, and if you would give yourself half a chance, the everyday, real life problems will be put in their proper place; these problems will be what reassures you that you are going in the right direction.

Myrick and I bounce off each other emotionally, so when Myrick finally got home today, and paid the tow truck driver, he looked at me and saw someone that, despite these little speed bumps along the way, is still proud, hopeful, and glad that this, our CV joint, is our biggest problem. He in turn realizes also, that these problems are what we need to show ourselves we are always doing the next right thing.  I think we are both realizing, without even realizing we continuously do the next right thing, that our car breaking down this weekend is a sure sign of adulting.  I personally couldn’t be more thankful for our busted CV joint.

You are human, and life will still be a bitch now and then. Your mantra should be “it’s not the problem, it’s your attitude towards the problem”, because keeping this in front of your mind will help you slay these everyday, normal adult problems, so you can keep doing the next right thing.

Keep it up kid, you’re doing great.

Sorry, do I know you?

I Realized how I’ve changed, and adapted to the changes around me, even if some of them sucked.

Roughly three years ago, I was sitting in the woods late afternoon, waiting for Myrick to get back with our dope. Lying in fetal position, crying because I felt like such a piece of shit. Living in the woods, begging in the streets, shooting dope in convenience store bathrooms, I was sad, and my existence was pathetic.

But, eventually, I started feeling something new, something I hadn’t felt out there in the streets before; fed up. I felt my real self tugging at my voice box trying to make it make a sound, begging God to let me hear me, the real me. God answered and sent two sashquash looking guys to kill me over one of their spice delusions (I got away, obviously) and that feeling of “fed up” took completely over and exploded into more of a “oh, HELL NO”.

And off I went. Shortly, (and I’m talking hours), after the Sasquatch incident happened, I called a friend, fully knowing I would be pretty sick in the next few hours, and I rode away from that corner, forever. I would not be seeing that corner again, except in passing. I promised myself if I had the guts to get in that car, I would never look back, even if Myrick was back there. I got in that car, I looked straight ahead, put my blinders on, and started the intricate, forward digging to find the woman that this little girl was supposed to be.
In early recovery, I was just thankful. I gave anything away by the handfuls; love, time, work, attention…money. I came home and got clean November 28, 2015. By December 15, 2015, I had a job. Not just any job either, a marketing manager for a food service company. I made twelve bills every two weeks, and gave the ex-bestie eight out of each and every paycheck for the house. Everyone I knew said that was overkill, but the way I was feeling, if they would take it, I gave it. If the house needed it, I provided it, to the point I didn’t have enough money for the bus all week. Yeah, I rode the bus an hour and a half each way and walked a half mile round trip. I worked to work, and at home I cleaned, and cooked, helped, did what I could, I gave my whole self to this family, including my $8k income tax check.

No matter who they were, or what it meant, these people opened their home to me so I could get clean. They deserved the world, and I was trying to give it to them. The problem was, the support was there, but not the discipline to tell me that I was going overboard, which I was, and unfortunately, if I was giving it, they were taking it.

When their world broke apart and everyone of the nine people that lived in that house moved on, I was left standing in ruins. No money, no vehicle (which is what I planned on using my $8k income tax for initially), no job, no sitter, no help, no one, and loosing hope. Trying to process the loss of an entire family, while learning to be a mom to my two small children again, and being maybe 5 months clean, I stood alone.

“I realized how I have changed.”

Nowadays, I am one half of a team concentrating our efforts on our own little family before anything or anyone. Now our income tax went to finally getting a vehicle and our own, really amazing place. We invest our money in ourselves, so no matter what happens with someone else’s life, we’ve got us. They always say you can’t pour from an empty cup, and back in early recovery, when I was giving myself dry, I was the personification of the word grateful, but I was left with not a drop; sucked dry of everything I could have given myself to be a better mother, a better wife, a better person; but this was an important lesson to learn. When you are a grateful person, anything above your vocal gratitude should be taken as a beautiful gift and treated as such. I just gave away all my beautiful gifts at once. Now I know to practice moderation, not only in recovery, but in life and loving, and especially in gratitude, because a little goes a long way when you want to keep yourself intact; when you want to not only get clean, but stay that way.

Do not kill your spirit being grateful to someone. If people help you for any reason, it should come from the heart with nothing expected in return but seeing you improve your quality of life, and a hope that you will pay it forward. Those who truly want to help you succeed will do so for no more than a “thank you” and you will never hear of it again, where those that want credit for helping you will take as much as they can in the name of “gratitude” until it is expected of you, and punish you when you take away the excess. These same people will always bring up what they have done for you to keep you in panic mode, that you haven’t shown just how thankful you are. Keep your money, some of your time, and most of your heart for yourself from the very start.

When we came to NY, we were riding high on the positive changes we were ready to make, we stayed strong and dug our feet right in. Myrick went straight to work making money, and I started my crash course in being a mom again. Not only did I have my two littles, but now three older kids, and total people that lived in that house after we moved here was 9. I did as much work as I could since I stayed home with the kids while Myrick paid rent for all four of us, all the cleaning, cooking, tending to the animals, errands, whatever. Myrick bought groceries and paid all the bills we could without going broke, everyone else started falling behind on their portion of various bills that couldn’t afford us partial payment. This time our income tax went to its intended purposes, but this time we stopped over-helping financially and only did our part. I learned to say no when I needed the time, away from dishes, and animals, and people.
We noticed at this point something I never realized, that the world around us was shifting and changing as we were shifting and changing. We were coming up as it seemed those around us faltered. I guess, I tried to reach out my hand, you know, to bring them up with me, but they shunned me, so I kept going.

With our support system, it seemed the enthusiasm of us making a clean break wore all but off. The dire need to support us and inspire us became a burden, more of a stark reminder that their growing addictions were real, something they did not want to know. We looked around and saw the whole scene switch, and now we were the only clean ones, making good decisions and going forward.

The day I decided to flow with this epiphany, was the day we made the almost impossible, monumental step of buying a truck, cash. Myrick drove up with our new-to-us truck, and me and the kids bounced out the door, felt all over it while Myrick beamed with pride, we bounced back inside expecting everyone else to be bouncing for us, but that’s not what happened. No one talked to us, not about the truck, not a congrats or good job, not “let’s go out and look at it”…just silence. Everyone that crossed our path that evening looked down at the floor, and you could have stood me in front of a firing squad and it wouldn’t have done the damage to my chest that this night did, all the progress I was so, so proud to show my family now didn’t matter, ironically, as much as their new habit, one I wanted no part of, so they wanted no part of me. But, it was bittersweet, and meant to be. It was then I decided to hone my new qualities and let go. I learned to look at these three people in front of me as I write this blog, Myrick and two of our 5 kids, and know they are all I need, and the only ones I really have to trust with my life. I wanted to trust my life to a lot of people over the years, but the difference here is I NEED to trust these three, and I know I can.

We let the scenery distort, we couldn’t control it anyway, we kept our compass in front of us, and God above us, and we seem to be through the thick of the forest with the four of us entact, with our pride beaming, but not outshining our humility. Picking up is never an option. Replacing my drug use is never an option. Getting to know myself and discovering layers of myself that I can fall in love with is the only option.

So, leave some for yourself, understand that as you’re changing, everything around you is also changing, and not every time in your favor, but stay focused and worry about you. I mean, have a giving heart, but know when giving turns into taking. Human nature can be a dick sometimes.

Stay sober my friends. ✌

Shout Out to the HP.

What is happening with Myrick and Michelle these days?

When we left our daring couple, we were making our way through this new clean life in New York. New York has been very good to us. It’s amazing what a new shitshow can do.

October 15, 2017, we headed out on a road trip, away from Florida, away from Myrick’s old dope hole, away from certain failure, on a one way trip to New York. There we would have our support system, and Hillsborough & Himes would be too far away to even think about anymore. I had an idea in my head of how things would go, I’m sure Myrick did too, but nothing could prepare us for this final leg of learning we needed to do life on life’s terms.

In Florida, I documented Myrick’s progress, and also his weakness, his relapse, and his rise to victory. The relapses became more frequent, and I started to question if I did the right thing, allowing him to come home, I once again sat worried he was dead behind a dumpster somewhere, not hearing from him for days. The second to last time he relapsed, I begged him, “just bring it home. Don’t do it out there, come home where I can watch you”. This instinct I have when it comes to him is fierce, I knew that day would be different than the other relapses. I watched him go into the bathroom, and he came out as someone else. All I can say to describe it is, he was possessed. He scared the shit out of me, saying things that sounded like his brain and mouth were not connecting correctly. He was scratching his arms and just raging, and then he went limp. He fell onto the bed and started convulsing. I was horrified to say the least, and I was crying, and shaking him, screaming at him to stop. Finally he stopped and grabbed my arm and hugged me so tight, I couldn’t breath. He was breathing really heavy and I made him get up and drink water and walk around. It was by far the scariest shit I’ve ever went through. I thought I was sitting there watching him die. My brain already accepted the responsibility of having that talk with my kids, and it knocked the wind out of me.

The last relapse was in the Wendy’s bathroom on that fucking corner. Junior, his dope dealer, ran from the scene, and left his “brother” there to die. He probably made killer sales that night. Someone found Myrick and called 911. It took them almost 9 minutes to revive him, and even though I found all this out after the fact, as I was hearing this I felt like I was there. I felt the panic imagining him looking in the mirror, and then hitting the floor. I felt anger watching Junior run out of Wendy’s and acting like it didn’t happen. It made me wonder how many people Junior has killed. I felt the sadness and complete horror of telling my kids their dad was dead from an overdose…every nightmare I’ve had since all this began was so real in my head at that moment, I exploded. All the noise stopped. Everything went dark, and the only thought that stayed was “we have to run”. My primal instinct took over and wouldn’t let anything else in.

For 3 days I sat there thinking about running. Myrick was on probation, and he had a few drug classes to finish, and he hadn’t gone to a meeting in two weeks, because they were his biggest trigger. He was either going to stay in Florida, violate because the call of that corner was too strong, and go to jail for a year and probably kill himself the day he got out; or we could just pack up and leave. New York never sounded so appealing. If he went to jail I would probably have to go there anyway because I wasn’t prepared for failure. We could go to New York, way too far to ever get back to that corner. No bus could just take him there in 15 minutes. We could try again, and if he can do it, we will just live right, keep our asses off drugs and out of trouble, and then he could go back to Florida when he was stronger, and make it right. This is what Florida was trying to do; get him clean and living right, with a job and a clean urine sample. He did it, but he just had to do it a little differently.

I brought it up to Myrick, and at first he blew it off. If we were going to do this, we had to make up our minds, we had a ride up to New York, but a very small window of opportunity. Myrick slipped into such a deep depression. He just sat down and waited for the usual fate to take it’s course. It was a depressing, confusing, just heavy feeling in the air during this time. I don’t know what changed his mind, but he managed to pull himself out of that darkness long enough to say “call her. Tell her come and get us, I do want to move to New York”. Once again, I exploded. Everything stopped. The realization of what we were about to do had to set in slowly; not too slowly, because this decision was made 4 days before we left.

Me and my friend planned, and scraped together all the money we could and made it happen. She was coming to Florida to get her son anyway, but adding us meant 4 more people and a dog in the car. We only packed what really mattered to us. Our clothes, bibles, electronics, the kids favorite toys, and we packed that little SUV so tight, it was kind of a miserable ride to New York. That four days I spent convincing Myrick we were doing the right thing, despite what the law said, a few times he thought about running, but he was tired. I could see in his eyes that he was void of any plan. He would sit outside and tell me how scared he was to leave Florida, because he has never lived out of Florida before; he would be worried that he wouldn’t be able to handle the cold, he went over every scenario that would kill that happiness in what was about to happen. The last few hours of waiting, waiting for that SUV to pull up and drag us out of hell, it was tense. Myrick wanted to change his mind now. He was not going. He had to wrestle with going to New York when he wasn’t supposed to, or losing his entire family. I knew with all my heart that we would win out, but the gloom of the situation would have shown you otherwise.

We arrived and there were people that were happy to see us, and the kids were around the family they were used to, and opportunity was everywhere, even for us! The day we stepped foot in New York, every thing changed. We did it. We left that corner behind, and from the minute we landed in our new hometown, I felt the weight lift, I felt, light. I call Myrick a “Glimmer Person”. Glimmer people are those addicts that take a long time to get clean, and are generally a pain in the ass, but they do these little things to give you a “glimmer” of hope. Trying again after relapsing, doing something super selfless, things like that are “glimmers”. Since we have arrived here in New York, Myrick has not stopped glimmering. It is amazing to watch someone that has been in the darkest place their whole life, come out into the light. If you ever get a chance to see this, see it. It changes you. You literally see God at work.

My higher power. My HP. He’s not just a “higher power”, he is power. God has shown me in so many different ways, who he is, and I don’t understand when people say “well, if God is real, how come he doesn’t perform miracles anymore?” and when you see a good person, finally coming into the light, and all the good inside them just glimmers so much louder than the darkness, you realize that miracles do happen every day. Little ones, big ones, maybe ones you are involved in but have nothing to do with you. Look around. YOU are a miracle. Your heart, is a muscle that works every day, 24/7, for almost a hundred years in most cases! That in itself is a miracle. Every thing, every where, all the time is connected in one way or another to accomplish something. The fact I even write this blog is a miracle.

My first miracle happened the first time I became homeless. I at least had a Jeep back in those days, and as Myrick sat by Oso Blanco and drank with the homeless people, while I cried in my Jeep, parked in the parking lot. I was out of ideas, and we were failing fast. I decided to pray. I told God, if he’s real and he made me, then he knows I’m a nihilist, so please show me you’re real. Don’t let me spend the night in these streets. I wasn’t prepared mentally for that yet, I needed to do a lot of work first. 15 minutes later, Myrick’s brother called us and invited us to stay with him, and that never happens. So many little miracles started happening every day, despite the fact I was, well, acting like a dumbass. Myrick and I snorted pills, then cried about how bad we were doing, but in that time, I was reading the bible, and finding out who God really is, and started learning how to act.

The closer I got with God, the worse life got for us, at our own making of course, but I was making decisions differently, and it was almost like I had no control. Looking back I realize that was my education. That was preparing me for the life I really wanted. I realize it’s all timing. Your blessings, or destiny are not always right in line with you, sometimes you have to slow down, or speed up, or go left or right, and all the components that make up the timeline so you can arrive at your blessing is infinite. Yes, back in the day when there were a handful of people here, striking someone healed was feasible, but look how much we have grown and crowded ourselves and how many things have to change, how many millions of little components have to feel the effect of that miracle? We ourselves have mindlessly diluted miracles and that’s us, not God. From Sammy being born, to a heart disease cured, to a warrant of mine disappearing, to the move to New York, you only have to look as far as me to see that God does still perform miracles. With every day, I am learning how to be content. When I started this journey, I thought being content was what you own, and how much savings you have, and if you just kept working every day, all the time, it would all work itself out, and I would be happy. Well, happy maybe, but not content. From the moment I talked to God, I started becoming a person I could be proud of, from the inside, out. When you have a relationship with God, not a religion, but a true, personal relationship with God, you feel thankful for everything, even the hard times, because the hard times are what make you who you are. I found a fighter in me, I found forgiveness in me, I found a person that can love unconditionally, I found a person worth saving.

Myrick has been clean since October 2017. That’s the most important part of our story. it took a woman that can love unconditionally, a God that is so loving and forgiving, and the heart of a really good man to bring the real Myrick into the light, and put Mike to rest. Myrick is in jail right now, coming home soon, and then Florida will be just a bad memory. We thank God for our salvation, we thank each other for loyalty, and ourselves for strength. I don’t judge people that don’t feel the same way about God that I do, and yes, it is possible to get clean without him, but not like this. Not to the point where you are the best person you’ve ever been, not to the point where literally everything is a blessing, it’s not the celebration that you deserve. God loves you, you should give him a try.

Catfished.

I signed out of Facebook roughly 2 months ago, and decided to live life, prioritize, and grow a back bone. The life I ordered when I got clean doesn’t look like the one in the brochure, so I had to step back and figure out what was happening.

I thought about all the progress Myrick and I have made in the 6 months since we arrived in New York, and how things turned out so much different than we envisioned. We thought there would be family everywhere, cheering us on, celebrations upon major accomplishments, and so much love we would never come down.

Well, that didn’t happen. What we thought we deserved for all our hard work, wasn’t nearly enough, come to find out. The approval and love from so called friends and family was our aim, but God changed the course of our self proclaimed karma to a much higher plain than we ever expected. What ended up happening, is we gained approval and love from ourselves. Family, friends, approval, pseudolove, were nothing compared to where our new outlook on life was taking us if we prioritized.

When we got to our new home state, everything seemed peachy. We seemed to have family everywhere, and for the most part we were immediately accepted in our little town. Myrick started working right away, and I hit the ground running to be a better mom, wife, and person. We set short and long term goals and worked towards them tirelessly. We didn’t veer from what we saw as our place in life. We held our ground and did what was right, and this very thing got us blacklisted with most of our new town. Not because we relapsed, because we didn’t, not because we screwed anyone over, because we didn’t, not because we cared too little, but because we cared too much.

Over the initial three months in New York we became frustrated and excluded, we were outcasts, in fact I never felt so out of place, and we had to feel this until we got our own place. Just, keep our eye on our goal, a smile on our face, and the dishes done. The more we focused on our new, clean, happy life, the harder we had to fight to get there and we were ready to shine! The resistance and negativity we received, as you probably know, kind of floored us, you don’t expect to get so much push back for just trying to do right.

We’ve been harassed, lied about, lied to, spied on, hacked, and the list goes on. I’m actually starting to feel famous, that’s an awful lot of effort on two little ex-dopeheads from the south.

Inside the harassment and chaos, a few little glimpses of hope shined through, and led us to the true meaning of our quest to stay clean. Our strength was tested by a good friend, great person, heavy on meth. We stayed our course with a few attempts at trying to help our friend see the clean side of life. He has since moved away, but left us with a sense of empowerment. Menopause itself is a huge battle, let alone trying to stay clean through it, so at the end of every day, I am twice as proud of myself for not picking up. I have given a little more respect to the word “diagnose”. Instead of thinking everything I feel is me being less than normal, I realize some things are worth a diagnosis. I have crippling social anxiety, and I used to feel weird about it, now I realize it’s just a thing I need to control and work with, not a character flaw. I don’t believe a diagnosis is necessary every time you shed a tear, but I know now, sometimes, it’s unavoidable. You’re not weird, you’re human. Let’s not forget Myrick learning to blend into the functioning world, which he did like a boss, all while being clean.

So, we have resistance, temptation, life, betrayal and rumors to fight through, and this all got worse AFTER we got clean. After we made one of the biggest decisions of our lives to stay clean, the real fight began.

Rather than look at it like a tiring task to face over and over, we look at all these things now like challenges. Someone went around our town telling everyone that Myrick and I were using again. Oh boy. At first, I was hurt because it was a friend, I thought, and also because we have worked so hard to get to where we are and stay clean, I thought “now no one will notice”. But then, as time went by, day after day of staying clean through this war that has been waged on us, we started to forget about who was watching. We internalized and realized, to our surprise, we were proud of ourselves, and proud of each other. We realized that feeling that came from looking at our kids, knowing we are being good parents. We realized how much closer we have grown from giving each other support for all we strive for and all we do. Then the major shift happened.

Just like that, like someone unlocked our cage, we didn’t care anymore. We didn’t care who thought we were clean or using. We realized that if we turn the other cheek, we won’t even notice the harassment. We finally realized, because of our rough start here, that we truly have each other, that loyalty may be a dying brand, but there’s no shortage of it under our roof. We came to have the attitude that the only ones we have to prove anything to is God, ourselves, and each other.

After we got used to our new outlook, I, personally, started to grow a backbone. I could say what I had to say, I stopped agreeing to make someone else feel at ease, I stopped letting anyone do anything or say anything they wanted to, to me just to keep the peace. I learned to say “no”, when “no” is what I wanted to say. We both saw ourselves for who we really are for the first time, and finally learned to love who we really are. We saw ourselves now as Myrick and Michelle, not “that junkie couple”. We made ourselves into the people we knew we could be, but only after everyone else turned away and we were left with just us.

Now this clean life, looks much, much better than the one in the picture.

Nowadays, we are settled into our little town nicely with a small group of clean friends, Myrick is well respected at work and in our personal life, I am getting to experience one of our kid’s toddler life with joy and excitement, instead of convincing myself my friends were right, that I could never be a full on mom again. We’ve bought a truck, and stacked some savings, we’ve found each other again and the love never ends. We smile and laugh, lay around watching tv with the kids, we grocery shop and quickly replace broken electronics. We are living the way God wants us to live, with forgiveness and love in our hearts, we stand for what we believe in, and what’s right. Most importantly, we don’t use drugs to escape, because there’s nothing to run from anymore.

This is the happy ending to the chapter of “Myrick and Michelle get clean” that we’ve all been waiting for. We all know that life can change fast, so there will be more chapters to write, challenges and temptation, more betrayal and disappointment, because that’s life, but we finally love ourselves enough to say “bring it on, life, we have fought worse demons and won”.

Stay. Keep going. Don’t give up. The resistance, lost friends, isolation will all add up to you realising your strengths, so let them come. This clean life may not be the one you ordered, but God tends to be an overachiever when we act like decent humans. Let your only expectation through recovery be your perseverance. It’s the only one you can control.

Stay clean my friends.

By Design.

The reality we were told to make so as to not want to escape turned out to be just that. What a scary place to be. Staring responsibility and life right in the eye, all that’s left is to cross the road. For us, as the last words of that last chapter were being written, God was setting up props for the new chapter.

Life was scrubbed of any negative energy, our minds started evolving, our choices enhanced our lives and didn’t drag us to hell anymore; we were making changes those in our lives wanted to see. This new chapter came complete with a beautiful home on the lake, a new pick up truck, the still startling fact that I can go to the store and get anything we need, I don’t have to wait until Friday; I don’t have to scan Myrick’s eyes when he walks in, and he doesn’t have to anticipate my daily tantrum. This life started offering peace of mind, a new, most welcome feeling.

At night, after a walk and dinner, we put our kids to bed and enjoy each other in comfortable silence. In the morning he texts me while we wait for the bus. The same text every day, but I’m crossing his mind nonetheless. “Good am”, and I get a big dumb smile on my face knowing I’m the one he’s thinking of, even now, after almost 7 years. This is especially cool since, 2 1/2 years ago, I was trying with all my might to hate him, and he was on the streets slowly killing himself.

I don’t know if it’s age or recovery, but I find myself being brave. I have always been a people pleaser. I would say whatever made my loved ones happy. Even if they were self destructing, I wouldn’t say one thing to make them uncomfortable. But as I go deeper into age and recovery, I am finding that people listen to me. I don’t know why, maybe because I am understanding, I like to make people feel comfortable around me, I have a humor defense that can be quite entertaining…so if I said something they would disagree with, maybe it could at least get them to thinking, and knowing me, they should know it comes from a good place. So I tried it a couple of times. I don’t know if my fantasy outcome of thinking about what I said came true or not, but even if there is a chance it could make them happier, I should say it.

I opened up, I started caring from a different place, a place of connection, a place of selflessness. I started to like this about myself. Those I love may not want to hear it, but if I care I will say it. So now, I do. That hasn’t gained me too many fans, but I’m willing to live with that, because I know first hand that people need someone like that.

I came to NY along with my family to get away from the drug life in Tampa. We came here to start again with a clean canvas. In the beginning, I was offered a drug that I thought I could get hooked on, and I had no choice but to work the nerve up quick, so it wasn’t a problem for me and I’m thinking I’m probably impressing someone somewhere, but all those “irrational” thoughts about what would happen, happened.

I was taken as a snob, They thought I thought I was better than everyone, they all looked at it from a different angle than I was giving it. In their minds, it wasn’t about my mental celebration for turning away a drug that could quickly ruin me, they looked at it like I was setting them up, like I was too good to do drugs with them, after all, I did bang heroin in a homeless camp, but “you can’t do a couple of lines with me when Myrick’s not home?”

I was being strong, I was being loyal, I was making the right decision for my kids, I was…turning into a better person, a more responsible person, a good parent, an honest friend; everything that everyone said I was missing was naturally coming back, and instead of “adda girls” and pats on the back, I was being slandered and hated on; I was being harassed for making good decisions. Someone found the proper way to congratulate my little family on finally being happy is by exerting the energy to send me hate mail once a week heckling me and laughing like the bully on the playground, except we’re all grown. Myrick and I have a lot of hate and negativity to overcome, and there have certainly been times I wanted to give up, times where it seemed like this desirable reality wasn’t a reality at all, but a dream they sell you in rehab, because every where I look there’s a different drug no matter where I look. Then I looked inside and realized that we had the foundation solid; as long as we don’t use, we can make it.

We were in a strange town with no one. But come to find out, that was exactly God’s plan. There was a metaphorical explosion, and the kids, Myrick, and I landed right in the middle of where we were supposed to be.

We landed in a beautiful, quiet part of town that almost seems frozen in time. The lake surrounds us, the sun setting every night is like a free light show, when I’m up to here with life I can go out on my porch and as if it was rehearsed, a single, slow-moving boat strolls by. We have a vehicle, which that in itself is accomplishing leaps and bounds; Myrick keeps a budget and manages money as if he’s always done it, we want for nothing, we’ve met amazing new people, and we are still building.

This life is beautiful, far beyond what I thought life could be but the part that makes you not want to escape isn’t the scenery, or the nice truck, or my Red Bull every morning; it’s what we are building, we have finally joined forces, Myrick and I, and started building a life from scratch where connections have not yet been made and there’s a clean canvas where we can draw whatever we want life to be. We did it all by ourselves because we stayed focused and still manage through the hate mail and false rumors, and keep our eyes on the canvas. Turning the other cheek is inviting blessing after blessing to us.

Here’s a few tips about long term recovery.

You were a fuck up at one point, but you gained your footing and got clean. With getting clean your intentions and general being get better. Some people won’t accept that you really are just clean now. They won’t let go of the past where you were a fuck up, even if just for a minute. The longer you stay clean, the less exciting you are to talk about, the more those around stop waiting for the ball to drop, and sometimes, people’s imaginations will run away with them and they will find it their responsibility to tell everyone that 2+2=4, but 1+3 also equals 4, so you must be using again.  And we all know how people love that kind of stuff, they will eat it up and they will share it with the next person, who will also eat it up and share it with the next person.  And you just sit idly by and watch it happen as if it has nothing to do with you, because what other people think about you, or say about you, really doesn’t have a thing to do with you.

You can vocally defend yourself, which will make you seem guilty. You can start bashing those that start the rumor that you’re using, which would also make you look guilty, or you could keep quiet, which will also make you look, surprise! guilty. So basically, no matter what you do, you are going to look guilty, because some people want you to be guilty. So my suggestion, pick #3,  just sit back and be quiet. Eventually, a rumor will be realized and everyone will understand to consider the source. This never doesn’t happen with rumors, so be patient.

Remember, you have no control over who people think you are. Our realities are all different, in your reality, you are you, the real you, and in their reality, you are whoever they want you to be. Sometimes you really are you in someone else’s reality, you are still who you were 3 years ago for others, and for a few, you are a composite of everything they hate about themselves, mixed with one or 2 mistakes you’ve made in life that were doozies. You don’t even register in some people’s reality, I think you get the idea.

This is a good lesson for remembering that this can also be reversed, so take care that you are seeing people for who they really are in your reality, and not just a character made up of expectations and reflections of your shortcomings. We would like to be taken seriously as people in recovery, but if we display the same behavior as those who are toxic for us, then we are not getting the point. Recovery requires giving up addict behavior and resenting recovering addicts for making progress in a clean lifestyle is a classic addict behavior.

Also, be sure when you are building that life you love, that you don’t only swing the hammer in the name of recovery. Recovery is the hammer, not the entire reason. “Building a life from which you do not want to escape” is about your ENTIRE life, from the bare ground all the way to the sky, your happiness and contentment should be your reason. Protect your design with your life, and that might mean cutting people, jobs, even family members or hometowns out of your life. Don’t look left, don’t look right, there are distractions on both sides. Put your earphones on, tune out with some Tupac (may I suggest Mama ❤️), and stay the course. Don’t listen, don’t look, don’t acknowledge, don’t box or debate, don’t be baited into childish ways, keep your eye on the goal and keep going, don’t stop for anyone or anything. Because once you get there, once you get so close you feel the heat from it, you will explode into a better person. A kind person, a pusher of love and nurturing, a speaker of truth, your love will come from somewhere else inside. You will learn to not love in vain, to love unconditionally because someone, or something, loved us without conditions and saved our lives. You will be a glowing example of contentment. You will be someone’s inspiration, knowing you pulled out of the gutters of the darkest place ever, seemingly too far down to even think about crawling out, and you clawed your way with bloody fingers and a stone dry throat all the way to enlightenment.

You decided to raise your weapon and fight the demon that kills thousands of human beings a day. You locked it away and now you stand guard every minute making sure that beast does not get loose to hurt another soul. But now, you don’t stand guard defeated and fragile, you stand guard strong, your head up and chest out. You respect the beast so you stay sharp, because it’s quick and it’s smart. You are not the symbol of a warrior, you ARE a warrior. And please believe, I know us addicts are talented when it comes to making our own pain, but when you can overcome that pain, own the fact you manufactured it yourself, and still raise your head to look other people in the eye; how humble and fierce, strong and gentle you are. Your story will reach those that need it, some people in your life will look away but do not force their head, we all see what we want to see. Be a beacon for the broken, forgive because we were once forgiven, look away from negative distractions and press on.

“A reality from which we do not want to escape” is not a dream sold by rehab. It is the change your mind makes through recovery that allows you to discover the beneficial bits inside you, it transforms us into different people, some more than others, but no ones reality is free from trial and error, so be human, grow, mature, learn about yourself, but most of all, let go. People, places, things. If you have to fight or put your recovery in jeapordy to keep any of the three, it is better to just let go.

And if that is not what people around you want for you, well…fuck them. There are billions of people, no one is irreplaceable.

Stay sober my friends.

Self Awareness.

Self awareness is defined as having conscious knowledge of one’s own character, feelings, motives, and desires.

Behind each one of these four categories is about 6 billion other categories going in about 6 million different directions. Knowing this makes being self aware even harder to accomplish. “You mean once I’m aware of those four things, I’m not done? I mean, I am me so I’m aware of a lot, but when am I fully self aware?”

I have learned a lot about myself, and I have paid attention to who I am growing into. I have looked to those 4 categories, and I am trying to see where the “spin-off” takes place, the new “veins” of your makeup. I am also learning that full self awareness is a life long experience. Human beings are ever changing, so it is hard to lock in the idea that you are “self aware” if a year from now you’re going to be older, wiser, and maybe more mature. Every time your vibe changes, you are challenged to relearn yourself. You know a few things for sure, those things that don’t really change. But there’s so much more to know, every time you feel like you’re getting caught up, changes happen and all the sudden, you’re a life time behind.

You have to constantly seek to be self aware. Always be aware of yourself. Am I who I want others to see?

I paid attention to my character. I examined if who I was to other’s was what I wanted them to see. From looking to my character, I found being honest is respected, I found that taking time for others was appreciated, I found that not being a gossip benefited my life tremendously; from just those 3 spin-off’s, there are billions of other spin-off’s, and from one small effort put forth involving just one category, I was able to adjust my character slightly to start to be the Michelle I want people to see. But I’m not done, it’s just beginning.

Let’s talk about feelings. Feelings are definitely in the forefront of recovery, because we learn to deal with feelings, both good and bad, without the help of getting high. Sometimes it’s overwhelmingly good, and sometimes it’s a horrible bad. Every feeling you can feel gets magnified, and you don’t feel equipped to fight the fight. But key here, is not to fight your emotions, it’s to tame them; kind of, put them in the right place in your mind so you can exude the proper reaction. And not a reaction others feel comfortable with, but a reaction you feel comfortable showing others.

How many times have we felt remorse or regret about popping off, just letting out feelings of frustration, and anger, and unhappiness at exactly the wrong time at exactly the wrong person? Or how many times have you blown off being pissed at someone who wronged you seriously, because you are excited about something totally unrelated? These aren’t feelings to be fought, we need to feel these from time to time, as I said, these are feelings that need to be tamed. Frustration needs to be dealt with right away. Getting to the root of what is causing the frustration, or teaching yourself patience and acceptance, knowing where to be and who to be with in times nothing else can calm you; these are things that can help you manage your feelings and minimize feeling bad afterward.

Frustration is an especially hard one to manage at first in recovery because I know most addicts spend a lot of time frustrated during active addiction. It wouldn’t seem like that would be the case, but between coming up with the cash for dope, finding it, waiting for the dope man, and getting ripped off, finding a damn vein, and being dope sick, in active addiction you are either high, or frustrated.

I found teaching myself patience and acceptance was the most efficient way to curb my frustration. I used to tell myself during detoxing cold turkey, “this is temporary, it will pass, it always does”. I held onto that theory and I use it during times of frustration even now. I talk to myself out loud, and I remind myself that time still passes, that throwing a fit will just create more problems, and that God knows what’s right for me, and if something doesn’t go my way, there is usually a reason why. Once you teach yourself these things, you will find yourself getting frustrated less, you will be able to get through stress and issues without overwhelming your emotions, and you’ll spend far less time wallowing in regret.

Motives was the one I think might be the muddy water here, just because I have done the wrong thing with the right intentions. When you think about why you do, or say things, you never really start off by thinking why. For example, snitching in rehab; you don’t think about the motive and then tell the counselor your bunkie is high. You just automatically know that if they find out you knew, you’ll get in trouble. So the motive would seem to be, “I’m gonna tell counselor Bob that Joe Cool over there is high, because I’m not going down for him.” So, if you thought a little harder about it, was staying out of trouble really your motive? Or do you hate the guy, or do you really just want him to be ok? Whatever your answer is to this question will speak volumes about what kind of person you are, and it will also be an indication of what your motives will be in the future. But it’s not the most thought about part of the process.

Sometimes you can shock yourself when you really think about your motives for things you do. A small example of this would be something like, cleaning the toilet at my old house thinking, “I just can’t take a dirty house”, but once I thought about it, my true motive was so none of the females in our house had to get pee on their bare bottom or in their hair. I discovered something here about myself through investigating my motive, and that is that my attention to detail when I am looking out for someone goes far deeper than the obvious, and I found I love that about myself. These small efforts went mostly unnoticed, but I knew I did them, and I knew none of these girls would walk out of here with pee on the tip of their hair, so I was ok with that. I could live with the thankless outcome, because my motive was selfless.

Desires are pretty self containing. Our desires can’t really be altered to fit the person we want to be. They change with time, and they change with you. I wanted to be a musician for many years, I played and wrote and recorded, but life took me in a direction that didn’t include a music studio with me in it. My desire to become a musician slowly morphed into a desire to write, and a more urgent desire, to help others. And then Myrick came home and we moved to New York, again my desire shifted from wanting to help others, to wanting to focus on my family, and with that change, I am living my desire to write, and take good care of my family.

This work I’ve done, getting and staying clean, and getting to know who I really am, has helped me start to become the woman I know I can be. So many things aren’t “back” since I got clean, but showed up for the first time only after I got into recovery. I can be completely honest now, even if the truth will hurt. I can put out there how I feel about something, and have the guts to stand behind it. When hate and jealousy attack me, I can turn the other cheek and pray. I can understand more about those who hurt me, and forgive. I can teach my children what I want them to know without letting other’s advice trump my own in fear of hurting someone’s feelings. I no longer sit in the corner where I won’t bother anyone, gaze to the ground, now I can stand in the middle of the room, look anyone straight in the eye, and stand for something. I don’t use, and I won’t use, and I won’t stand it around me, for I too am weak. Where I would once put my recovery at risk to spare someone’s feelings, now I shield myself and my family from it out loud, and I am proud of that more than anything.

Myrick and I are building this “life we don’t want to escape from” and I am now a woman that can protect it with pride and humility. The more I learn about who I really am, the more currently self aware I become, the more I am falling in love with the woman I am, and I can’t wait to learn more.

I need closure.

This is a word I see a lot regarding many situations and it is also what most of us consider “closing the door”, or “putting it to bed”. Most of us believe closure will help us move on, but who is responsible for your closure? What is the “closure” you envision to be able to move past a trying time? I find, what we do is convince ourselves that we are entitled to closure in any situation that we want to be done with. The magical “explanation” of why it happened, which we somehow believe will put it behind us. Sometimes yes, sometimes, and most times, no, it’s up to you to put your past behind you and not rely on other human beings to give you what you can only give yourself.

What we don’t do is apply closure to the correct spot in our lives. You look for closure when relationships end, when someone passes, or someone mistreats us with no apparent motivation; we look for closure in all the places where closure doesn’t exist. This is the part of life where I have learned to use reason with no emotions attached to see the areas in my life where closure is, or isn’t possible.  I have learned that doing this has saved me from a lot of frustration and disappointment, and helps me forgive and forget easily, regardless of the situation.

Some problems have been predisposed with a solution already in place. A bill is due, your power gets shut off, you pay the bill some how, some way, and your lights come back on, that’s your closure. You’ve been overcharged for an item at the store, you realize on your way out as you are reading over your receipt, so you go to the customer service desk and they refund you the difference. That is closure.

Do you see a pattern here? Closure can be obtained through issues you handle by yourself, especially issues with multiple choice solutions. When you have control of a situation from beginning to end, and don’t share the outcome with another, closure is inevitable. You yourself can give yourself closure, and you do get closure regarding these aspects of your life.  So when you view it from this angle, you find that you are the only thing that can ever give you real closure.

Now, we never really view a solution to a problem as closure because such instances are open and shut cases with not a lot of need for emotions.  So we don’t seek closure when closure is eminent, but we do seek closure where we have no control; like situations where we feel we have to depend on someone else for closure.

“Why did you break up with me? Why didn’t my parents want me? Why did my mom, or dad, or brother, sister, loved one have to pass so young? I need to understand, I need CLOSURE”.

More times than not, in these situations, closure never comes because closure can never come from something that you have no control over.

“Why did you break up with me?”  is a classic situation for the need for closure. You can’t accept that maybe you just grew apart, or one of you wasn’t what you seemed, or the other person says “it’s not you, it’s me”. Although these explanations may be truthful, for our emotions, they are too open ended to bring closure. So now you spend precious energy trying to find out why the other person felt you grew apart, or why they changed, or how you changed, trying to find the one explanation that will satisfy your means to an end.  The problem is, closure does not exist in this situation because you are depending on the feelings and emotions, the soul of someone else.

“Why didn’t my parents want me? I have to find them because I need closure”.  Another situation where closure is not possible because in this case what would happen if you found them? What exactly could they tell you that would make you put this issue to bed in your mind?  That they couldn’t afford you? That they just didn’t want you? They were forced to give you away? The reality is, no matter what they say, you were still adopted, they still gave you away, so no matter what they say, closure can never come, because you can never quite trust it coming from someone else.  You have no control over their response so if you have no control over the situation completely how could you ever have the illusion that there would be closure? How would you ever feel like closure would make you feel better? Closure in this sense is equivalent to a flimsy excuse that may or may not stick.

Remember your reason for needing “closure”. It is to get past a bad time basically. And you are going to get past a bad time with or without your “closure” as memories naturally fade and you start to adjust to the change the bad time made, so all an explanation can give you that you didn’t already have is more questions. If you keep questioning the ending, you will never get to leave the scene. Just leave, no explanation needed, closure of any situation needs to come from you making a firm decision to move on.

In the end you’re still broke up, you’re still adopted, you still lost a loved one, and no matter what the reason for closure, the situations don’t go away just because you have an explanation.  In a lot of cases your closure becomes the new issue and the explanation leaves you with more questions than answers.

“Why did you break up with me? I need to know the truth! I need CLOSURE!”  So what if your answer was “you’re just not what I’m looking for in a partner”? There is the closure you were looking for, but now you have a new issue. Why? Why wasn’t I what you were looking for in a partner? What is so wrong with me that we couldn’t work it out?  And whatever the answer is to that question will lead to a new issue that needs closure and so on and so forth, because you have no control over how the person feels about you, or the situation, so closure is an unrealistic expectation.  Another words how many times do you have to close the door before you walk into the next room?

When you accept the reality that closure can only be attained through one’s self, and that seeking closure regarding situations you share with other human beings only begets more questions that need more closure, repeating this pattern to infinity, you start to adjust your expectations to fit the reality of what closure really is, and you start to expect closure in a personal sense, and not expect closure in situations of the heart. You find yourself being less disappointed and more confident in moving on without seeking useless explanations passed off as “closure”. I don’t want to say you lower your expectations, it’s more like put your expectations in the right place with this state of mind.

So how does this fit into addiction and recovery?  I know the NA basic text tells you, you should go back and make amends and say sorry to people that you’ve wronged in your addiction.  They teach you that somehow this will give the person that you’re dealing with or yourself closure.  But what you are really doing is facing your wrongs and taking them back, taking responsibility for your actions. Understand there is no “closure” here.  Again the other person is depending on you to give them closure and they can only give that to themselves.

Addiction rears its ugly head during times of pain and instability. In recovery we try as hard as we can to start trusting the world around us again. We are taught in the basic text and other programs how to approach the future and how to amend the past. But what they don’t teach you is how to minimize your disappointment because disappointment begets pain and pain begets addiction. The expectations of closure for every situation will lead you down a path of disappointment if that is the only way you feel you can move on from bad times.

Put your expectations of closure in the right place in your mind, and you will minimize the amount of disappointment you feel when you don’t get an answer that will satisfy your means to an end. This is less disappointment you’ll feel, less pain, and more of a chance of successful recovery.  Am I telling you not to trust anyone to give you the right answer or to ever be a partner in a solution in your life? No. What I am saying, is I have found over my almost 2 1/2 years of recovery that putting expectations in the right place, understanding that I cannot control the actions or feelings of another, and knowing I am the only thing that can bring closure to my situations, I have saved myself a lot of pain, and I can accept reality, and what can be more beneficial to recovery then seeing reality for what it is and being able to accept it clean and sober?

Plato Explains to us in his book “The Republic” that every situation in life can be broken down to the simplest form possible, and from that ground zero, thoughts and decisions about a situation can be made to benefit your life.  For every layer of depth we add to any situation in our lives, there is less of a chance the situation will be honestly rectified with a sound mind, and more of a chance of adding more questions than we would have prepared to handle under the guise of closure.

Closure is personal. No one owes it to you and no one can give it to you. The only one that can give you closure is yourself.  The more you realize this the more positivity you can add to your life by not expecting every situation to end with a reasonable outcome or a reasonable explanation for an unreasonable outcome.

Recovery is hard enough on its own. Kill the illusions, accept personal responsibility for your own closure, and try to remember, we are all human. #recoverybeast

If you don’t eat ya meat, you can’t have any pudding!

Consume good food, an expensive glass of wine, a nice cigarette after dinner, vitamins, medications, soft drugs, hard drugs…even though all these things are different, the goal is the same; to consume as much as we can to be happy. Because since the day we came out, we have been constantly conditioned with the “need” to consume.

Think about your rewards as a child. Your reward more times than not wasn’t the good feeling you get when you accomplish something, it wasn’t the knowledge you gained when you did something right, it was ice cream for winners, and dessert for everyone that finished their dinner, and snow cones after the softball game whether you win or lose. It wasn’t the memories you built with your family, it was McDonald’s on the way home if we were quiet on the ride.

Then you get older and you can’t start your day without a Monster, your little reward for getting up and doing what you’re supposed to be doing. You have a drink after work, or a good meal with family, maybe an L of some good medical with your buddies.

Then all the food and consumption gets boring, but what else can you consume? Because at this stage of the game, you are almost thoroughly convinced the only way to be truly happy is by consumption. What they don’t equip you with is the projected end result. The part where you’ve consumed all the normal stuff, and now it’s all boring so you move onto a little coke, then a lot of coke, and when that wears off you graduate to meth, and all the while in between you smoke 2 packs of cigs a day trying to find that feeling; that very first taste of ice cream, that very first Cosmopolitan, that first line of coke, that first hit of meth. The magic quickly deminishes leaving nothing but a trail of empty soda cans and cigarette butts, spent tin foil bowls and fast food wrappers. Chasing the magic you find the truth, consumption was never the way to real happiness, because consumption doesn’t allow contentment, it only allows fruitless endeavors and empty dreams. Before you know it, it becomes your life’s destiny to find the magic, and you don’t care to ruin everything in your wake. You spend your life chasing the high that disappeared a long time ago, and isn’t coming back.

Very few and far between do you find those of us that realized what was happening before it was too late. Only a handful of us felt the need to stop littering our journey with biodegradable happiness. And when you get the chance to pick our brains, the truth, the answer, the way out, may not be all pillows and clouds, but it will give you what you need to find your inner contentment under all the false happiness you’ve shoved in your face for so long.

True happiness comes from the inside out, not the outside in. If you really do want a life you are content with, open your eyes, close your mouth, and listen to your soul. It’s drowning in your happiness.

Today.

No, not JUST for today, but every day I have to look pretty damn hard for the lessons in some of this injustice and years upon years of mankind just fucking it up. Those of us that want to change the world, we stand up and unite and have for at least 100 years but the human brain, and the human ego have thousands of years more practice.

But we keep speaking up. We keep inviting change, inventing technology and terminology that can take us to the next level, but what’s up there? Less physical exertions? Less we have to actually apply ourselves for a higher payout? Less attention we have to spend on our kids, our money, our homes, our lives?

What I see collectively is a world heading towards that big question mark in the sky as if that’s the answer to all this, and slowing down is frowned upon and taking a deep breath, spending a Sunday on the couch, is cause to be diagnosed and medicated, because in a world that is grooming us all to hurry the fuck up, you just wanted to slow down.

Because. Because if you slow down the scenery is no longer blurred and you might see what it going on is exactly what’s supposed to be going on. Addicts are addicts because the man who holds the money and the key to the city wants an addict to be an addict, then a recovering addict, then an addict who relapses, so on, and so forth.

We are forced by some cosmic force to be alive in a time where beautiful people are called ugly, equality has to be a war to be fought, and consumption is the number one image that burns into the minds of mankind every waking minute. Drugs kill this nightmare and are being force fed to us by the same ones that put us to sleep.

Recovery doesn’t only help you live better, it takes a little bit of your life back from the almighty dollar, and that my recovery friends, is this best middle finger you could ever give addiction.

*drops mic*