I'm a Drug Addict. Judge Me.

Sorry for the delay in posts. I've had to play landlord for the past month or so. Evicting people sucks. You think I'd learn my lesson on picking good tenants but sometimes circumstances are out of my control.

Here's an illustration I did to show you how I found the room after the eviction. (It brought up some feelings I hadn't felt in a long time, so bear with me.)

I think I have compassion for people who have problems, me being one of those people. I was doing nearly the same thing in the same house as the person I had to evict, not seven years ago. Only I was doing cocaine off the bathroom sink. Different drug, still the same never-ending cycle of self-loathing followed by five, ten, or sixty minutes of... happiness - no, that's not the word... joy? No. Just feeling normal. Follow that with ten hours of severe depression. Try that everyday for a year, five years, ten years... You get the point. 

I'm a recovering alcoholic and drug addict if you haven't guessed it yet. (I don't really count the days or years but I know I haven't drank since Halloween of 2007. That's the easiest date to remember! All drugs were shortly thereafter.) I don't tell this to many people because believe it or not it isn't the best icebreaker and society hasn't actually made it easy for me to move past... my past. It's amazing how the ripples of my past keep disturbing the peace and serenity that I have come to enjoy since then. Here's an example: job applications asking me about arrest records and whatnot, yet only leaving the smallest box to explain my entire life story.  


Dear Employer, yes I was arrested for drugs. Yes, I got a DWI. Yes, it was over 8 years ago. Since then I have become an upstanding member of society. I managed to buy a dilapidated house, renovate it myself with no experience, and be a landlord/property manager for the past 7 years. I also got my degree in 3 years while commuting to school 2 hours everyday, 5 days a week, and maintained a full-time job and a GPA of 3.8....

For the next year and a half I struggled to find odd jobs to keep paying my mortgage because Starbucks wouldn't hire someone with a record. [It's many more than Starbucks, but that was the best example... I still love your double espresso Starbucks, I ain't that mad at ya ;) ]

So... I just told you my deepest, darkest secret... and while it's taken me awhile to get to this point, I am okay with putting it all out there now. You can love me or hate me, I'll deal with either one just fine. I just know it has always helped me to see and hear about addicts coming out on the other side okay so maybe this will help someone else out there pull themselves out of that hole to see what life really has to offer them.

And it truly is an amazing life! 

I take joy in the smallest things now. Just last week in Upstate NY while laying on a dock I saw the Milky Way for the first time! It was way up there millions of light years away, just like it always is, just a couple of small patches of sky a slightly lighter shade than the sky surrounding it. But seeing that was all it took to give me an awe-inspiring feeling. To think that we as humans are just the tiniest fraction of a fraction... and so on..  of what is actually out there in the universe and to know that we are apart of something so much bigger than us that we truly wouldn't' even be able to comprehend exactly what IT is if we saw IT.  

HOW AWESOME IS THAT?

:D