28 Years of Marriage

What a beautiful day it was; my marriage day to Laura.  May 22 held blue skies and hopes of a bright future.  We had very little money, but enjoyed a honeymoon on a shoestring in Florida.  We reached a secluded small hotel on the seashore outside of Ft. Lauderdale.  There was a beautiful sunset over the Atlantic.  I couldn't wait to jump into the ocean for a swim.  Laura declined a swim and watched me safely from the shore.  It seemed odd that I was the only swimmer to be seen.  I noticed about a dozen small boats just off-shore.  When I asked about this at the front desk, I was told it was an annual shark fishing competition.  Thus starts my life of marriage.


Our shared love helped us to overcome many challenges, including barely having enough money to buy food.  We had a shared dream of both getting graduate degrees, and buying a house and raising a family.  We were married for 10 years before having our first child.  I had a job offer to move to South Carolina, and we bought our first house in Spartanburg.  There we grew a family of two wonderful daughters.  Much love was evident through those early years, but stress began to take its toll.  Laura and I would take long walks in a state park near our home.  Those walks were imbued with much dissension and anger.  A pivotal point of our arguments was money; never having enough, no matter how much was earned.  These cracks in the marital covenant began to widen as the years rolled on.  In 1997 we moved to Nashville, TN since I was hired for a new job. 


In the year 1999 we took our family to the Thanksgiving Day parade in New York City.  Our oldest daughter's marching band was part of the parade.  It was a wonderful experience, except I had tremendous migraine headaches.  When we got home from the airport, I could not climb the stairs to our bedroom.  The next day Laura took me to an urgent care doctor's office.  The doctor took many tests, and told me to go immediately to the area hospital.  After entrance into the cancer ward, I was given transfusions, and then transferred to the Vanderbilt University Medical Center.  I was admitted to an isolation ward with a diagnosis of Promylositic Leukemia.  I spent almost 3 months there, going through a tortuous regimen of chemotherapy.  I lost almost 50 pounds, and lost my hair. 


Obviously, I recovered and am an 11 year cancer survivor!  However, within 3 years after discharge from Vanderbilt Hospital, my life totally collapsed.  Referring to my earlier blog, during my years of desperate addictions, my marriage came apart.  Only a true addict knows how the stimulus completely takes over one's life.  Again the motto, "nothing really matters" totally broke my marriage covenant.  What a terrible shame, to lose a loving, caring family for a substance and/or stimulus that WON'T LET GO!  It has taken many years to find the strength to stay away from that degrading life.  In my next blog I may delve into that debauched life as a catharsis. 

"All I want to do is die"

The mantra, "All I want to do is die," has plagued me since I was an adolescent.  When I was a young man, I remember waking up many times almost every night thinking about the best way to kill myself.  I narrowed it down to standing on a train track at night until the train hit me, to buying a gun and putting it to either my temple or forehead and pulling the trigger.  I learned to live with these ideations through the development of my career.  I spent decades rising through the ranks to become President/CEO, hiding all the time my deep, dark secret.

I lived daily with my self-loathing.  Along the way through my life, my manic depression went undiagnosed.  I suffered most of my life from SEVERE migraine headaches.  These would be totally debilitating, and each one would last for up to 4-5 days. However, once again I learned to live with the agony.  I would drag myself to work, and sat through many board of directors and staff meetings in shear pain.

Then I started a long spiraling decent into sex addiction, drug addiction and alcoholism.  While my life, my family and career started to unravel, it honestly did not matter to me.  The Queen song Bohemian Rhapsody lyrics "Nothing Really Matters" became my slogan.  Once while lying in bed with a prostitute, I first put a crack cocaine pipe to my lips. That was the final blow that eventually brought my life crashing down around me. I ended up on the streets, homeless, living at a rescue mission.  One bitter cold, snowy evening, I stood on a bridge over a frozen river, ready to throw my possessions in a k-mart bag, and myself, head first onto the rock hard ice. Some unidentifiable force made me look down, and to see one set of footprints in the snow leading away from my position.  I put my feet into these footprints and started walking away from death.

I spent one year at the Adult Rehabilitation Center of the Salvation Army starting my recovery.  That was six years ago.  Earlier this year I received my 5 year sobriety coin from Alcoholics Anonymous.  Cocaine Anonymous also played a big role in my recovery and relapse prevention.  I never attended any sex addicts 12 step meeting, but release from this addiction has been an integral part of rebuilding my life.  What I realized is that I have an addictive, obsessive-compulsive personality that needs a power greater than mine to control and eventually overcome.

During my years as a homeless man, I finally found a psychiatrist who correctly diagnosed my fundamental psychological problem, i.e., manic depression.  Along with the correct diagnosis came the correct types of anti-psychotic and anti-depressive medications that have allowed me to start picking up the pieces of my life and start over again.  To this day my two, now adult daughters do not want to see me again in person.  Oh we send cards, letters and emails, but I have not met them for many years.  I realize how much I hurt them as my life crumbled.  I never lose hope that they will want to see me again someday.

I have held the same job for five years now, and am grateful everyday for the blessings given me.  Is life a bowl of cherries?  No.  Is my manic depression controlled?  Yes, to a great extent.  Do I still think about killing myself?  Yes, I would be lying to say anything else, but it is certainly less a threat than for most of my earlier life.  I do understand that blaming anyone, including God, for my manic depression is a useless and futile exercise.  I also now know that I should not use my manic depression as an excuse for the myriad bad decisions that I have made in my life.