Category: Recovery & Personal Growth

I write a lot about the darkest parts of my life: alcoholism, drug addiction, and my past struggles with suicidal ideation. I talk openly about being suicidal even in my early sobriety because it’s the truth, and I’m not one to hold back. However, I’ve been thinking all week about the fact that this page…

The “dad guilt” is real. I’m usually going to the office, on a side job, or somewhere in between, trying to pay for the cost of this life. When I’m not working, I’m at the gym, trying to stay healthy enough to keep paying for it. The truth is, it isn’t my life; it’s my…

What is a home? I suspect that the answer is different for different people. For me, it’s the house we are selling. I grew up here but didn’t move here until I was 37. My first night in this house was the most alone I’ve ever felt. I was about to finalize a divorce; I…

This life is better than I deserved. I’m not sure any of us deserve anything, really; we just have at it. It’s the “having at it” that I actively avoided for a long time. I don’t talk about it often, and I’m not sure why I would, but my life has had more than its…

Some days I feel the weight of living several lifetimes inside of one, and today is one of those days. If we consider childhood its own lifetime, and I do. An argument could be made for several, really; but one will suffice, and that was Iteration 1. Then there was you, Iteration 1.1, and there…

I’m far from perfect; however, I’ve never claimed otherwise. I get lonely, I feel rejected, and I struggle with my self-image. I have waves of self-doubt and self-pity. These things are less than attractive, but such is the human condition, and we all have our moments. ​What’s different today is that I get up and…

I can hear the water moving below. It must be moving fast for me to hear the rapids from this distance. The sound of the wind blowing through the ponderosa pines dominates the area. The gray sandstone outcropping I’m sitting on has been windblown smooth, clean of the small loose rocks common in the area,…

The death of hope is the birth of change.

I wear my losses like an ex-lovers t-shirt. I want to breath in deeply and feel the memorey next to me. The scars, the anger, the grief, they feel like the only tangable part of that person I have left to hold. What if I let those go? Then they’ll really be gone. If I…

It’s quiet, my house is empty, and I’m examining the remains—surveying the damage from a storm I never saw coming. This storm started 23 years ago. I am a man who has violated his core values, who has crossed his own line in the sand, and I’ve done it more than once. I have recklessly…