As I’m sitting shotgun riding with the love of my life I’m thinking about what my life looks like today. It’s nothing spectacular, but I’m happy. I battled with heavy additcion problems for 13 years and finally got clean a little over a year and a half ago. After being brought to my knees by meth and heroin I entered my 9th treatment center a broken man and ready to get clean or kill myslelf, there was no in between.
I came in with a trash bag full of clothes that didn’t fit, some cigarettes and a deal I made to pay the treatment center as I went. I had lost everything multiple times and there I was again broken and feeling hopeless. As the sickness of heroin withdrawal wore off I began to see a chance and maybe a way out. I had been to enough of these places to teach the groups but something was different about this time, it wasn’t the place or the people but it was me. It was time to have a new experience and try things a little different. I started working a 12 step program where other times I had done a few and walked away and inevitably relapsed.
After a lot of work and a year in this place I moved out. I worked fast food for the majority of that time and paid my way through. I eventually went back to work for a company cleaning pools and making enough money to support myself and live comfortably. I met a girl during this time and fell in love with her.
As I’m writing this I’m riding in the car with her on the way to visit her parents for the weekend. I’m lucky enough to share a similar past with her and be able to walk with her on her journey as she does mine. I’ve never felt so at home in my life, it’s that safe feeling you get when you know things are right where there supposed to be.
I know today there’s a purpose to life even though I don’t know exactly what it is or what I’m doing all the time. Dark times still come often in my head but there’s a foundation I stand on and people I can rely on.
So today this journal is for her and for what she’s brough into my life and a short reflection on where I’ve come from and how grateful I am to have a life I haven’t known. I’m grateful for love that I’ve always believed in but thought wasn’t out there anymore that this hopeless romantic wasn’t stranded and as lost as he thought he was.
You are amazing you are beautiful.
jbyrd298 