sent to a friend on 08/08/2022 at 10:14 AM

When you texted me Saturday, it seriously meant the world to me. You have no idea. Seriously. I told you I was doing good; yet I might have overstated that a bit. You have no idea what your text did. I have kept what is going on in my life private for years except to a few.

In my career, I finally am doing well! I am not making great money, but I really enjoy what I do, and I am being promoted first of the year to a bigger role and opportunity. Basically, started on the ground floor here. It has been a true blessing. So, I am where I belong in my career. The rest will come. Patience. Something I never had before. Thought everything was owed to me up front. Respect, money, everything.

As for personal life, brother, it has been a roller coaster as you probably know from checking in on me the last several years. Yet it has been my doing. ME. There is a lot you do not know about my past, as we all have our struggles and not so great childhoods. I had a very bad childhood and it lasted into my teen years. So much so, my current therapist and doctors have had me detach from my family due to continual triggers and such. Yes, that bad. Enough that I am estranged from all my family, which technically I was adopted.  Anyways, I struggled from my late teens until you met me with serious behavioral health issues due to severe PTSD, and I poured alcohol abuse on top of that which amplified it. I got treatment a few times, but always pushed it down and went about in chaos. It caused me serious issues with my career (as you saw) and my personal life.  Your brother got to see it when I worked for him in 2010. I held so much shame for that for years as you and him believed in me. I felt I failed you and him. Yet I finally had to let that go and I did. Water under the bridge.

I was not a good person. I hated myself and never thought I was good enough. I projected it towards people I worked for, with, and even loved. I always had a preconceived excuse for my failing, failures, or why I would never amount to anything. That was ALL me, no one else. That was from my upbringing. That is what happened at almost every place I worked from 2006-2020. That was my mental health that I tried to hide, which had my life in chaos and spiraling for the better part of 20 years. Don’t get me wrong, there were good times in there and at length. Yet the dark left scars on others.

What is scary, is the verbal and emotional abusive I would inflict onto my previous wife and current wife, I could never remember. Yes, sir. That bad. The memory loss is most likely due to BPD (borderline personality disorder). Not sure yet. Either way, it is not a scapegoat for my behavior. I never laid a hand on them, but words and actions hurt just as bad. I pushed people away from me as I thought deep down, I was never good enough for them or whatever my mind led me. Who knows? I put on a false confidence and arrogance that got me through most obstacles in life, but I could never keep it up for extended periods of time. I mimicked the narcissistic traits of my abusers to inflict upon others. Note the job hopping, always looking for greener grass. I always crumbled due to the issues in my head and the alcohol abuse. I was continually in pain.

Now there was the termination issue in 2019 that I was falsely accused of. 100%.  I was doing a lot better the two years leading up to that. But when I got fired for the first time in my life, it hit the reset button on ALL progress and my sobriety. I lost everything material, which hurt, but most of all, I lost myself again to my mind and alcohol.  

For almost two years after that I struggled. You know, I humbly reached out during that time. My wife and I ended up with no vehicle, me begging for food, and other things I never had had to do before in my entire life. I could have easily gone back into the car business, but I was so damn broken.  I went through this from the end of 2019 to mid-2021 when I found my current company.

There I was in 2020, 42 years old. The knowledge, experience, and work ethic I possessed, but I was at rock bottom. Broke, penniless, nothing. So I thought. Blaming an industry for my failures. Blaming others. Living my life in the negative in my bank account. No savings and no real plan. Just trying to survive. Never once focused on my wife, just on how bad life was.

Since my first marriage and beyond, last 20 years,  I have struggled with:

• Finances
• Friendships
• Relationships
• Health
• Career

In early 2021, I sobered up for good. After I got the role, I am presently in, I started going in the right direction. Problem was, I was still not owning my mental health issue. Yet, finances are still a struggle as I am trying to climb back to where I was, but on a fraction of what I used to make. Not feasible. Part of my issue since I started working in the metro area back in 2006. I felt “things” would make me and my loved ones happy and get respect from peers. It doesn’t work that way as I know now, yet that was not how I was raised and what I perceived.

Thing is, my current wife, who is absolutely the love of my life saw me changing for the better in the last year, but what she experienced from me since 2013 had emotionally drained her, her trying to finish her masters and hopefully land a career, as well as the ongoing onslaught of financial issues. Which she left two weeks ago on a Saturday. So, Saturday when you called me, it was exactly two weeks since she had left. She left me when I went to go get lunch. I came back to a letter and her cellphone. She took the little we had in the bank.

The last few weeks have been rough. I have been in behavioral health therapy since April and have been waiting to start psychiatric therapy in September. I even started light meds until the psych evaluation. Yet I was too late.

I was sitting on the edge of the tub in the bathroom just contemplating I would just end it all for me. Look at what I have done. I never amounted to much and everything I failed at. It had been that way for some time now. Just hopelessness. Nothing. I have no family to turn to. I have a lease home I cannot afford and no way to save money to pay the deposits to get something cheaper in an area I can manage and budget. I was literally empty on hope and the will to live. I have pushed away every friend I had and now my wife has left me. I had one person I was confiding in, but bless them, they were going through struggles of their own and feel like a burden at times. Feeling I was a literal cancer on society, I felt I had burned my last bridge of hope.

Then you texted me.

That text started a chain reaction of something I still can’t explain. I ended up going to bed and had a pretty out of the world vivid dream. Which I have had many these last few weeks. Got up, made me and my dog breakfast, sat down and watched a live stream of a pastor (which I have never done, don’t know why that came up in my feed), which weirdly spoke about JUST what I was experiencing and going through. Then I watched Dave Ramsey videos on personal finances. Things I have always known just really never did. Read a book from cover to cover about healing from traumatic abuse. I am not going to analyze it too much, just take it for what it is. Which is what I am starting to do!

I realized then, I can only take one day at a time, and I had to do healthy things, continue my therapy. Start living within my means. Budget, a word I never abided by. I had to leave the past behind and move on. Granted, I have a lot of things to figure out and get moved to a cheaper place. To cap off the day, my wife came to visit the dog yesterday as well and we had a long talk and made a plan to each heal. Hopefully leading to reconciliation. I need to find something I can afford and not struggle. Take away all the stressors that trigger me and her not have to feel I am the same person I was the previous years. I really love my wife yet have never really shown it.  It still was a good day yesterday.

Something about that text you sent. Made me realize people do know the real me. Not the chaotic mess, but the real me. The person I am becoming again after 20 years. It also showed me other people think about me, which really helped me stand up and start eliminating the thoughts from my mind that I was just a piece of forgotten garbage.

I don’t know much about my next steps with anything aside from my physical and mental health, the career I love, and work towards bringing back the wife I adore. It’s crazy what a text message can do. I still have a long road, but I just wanted you to know how much that text meant to me. Plus, part of my therapy is taking ownership of my actions, telling people how I feel, and putting positives into action. I felt I needed to tell you this, and I wanted to tell you everything. Be transparent about who I really am. Which is not a failure, just someone who wouldn’t allow themselves to win for years. Kind of a weird path at 44 to partake, but better late than never. So, my apologies about the long email. 😊 Just how I am!

Thank you, bud, you have truly been an inspiration for many years to me. You have a light about you. You and your brother both. You have both been blessed with perseverance and know you have had to overcome obstacles as well!

Never been more awake in my life than now. You really don’t realize what that message did! 😊

Always check on old friends or current friends that are silent! You never know!

dK