Though my mother dying, the incident with the couple towards the end of my ridesharing days, the noticeable rise of my sex addiction, the twelve step process reawakening an old resentment within me and the loss of my confidence in my driving abilities did not happen all at once, each of these things over the course of five months has crippled me psychologically. I am now prescribed Zoloft for anxiety and Divalproex for mood management. I struggle to understand the meaning behind it all but I do believe in predestination and hold strongly to the idea that it will lead somewhere. I don’t care to argue about the logical flaws of my thinking when it comes to the idea of “fate” or how bad of a theory it might be. Like any other human being not every belief I have flows with perfect consistency. I don’t have it all figured out and neither does anyone else.

When I think about the near fatal overdose I had speedballing cocaine and heroine years ago and other close calls in my life, I find it hard to believe that mere luck or fortune protected me from all of the things that should have happened and many of the things which any reasonable person would say I deserve. Myself included. I am far too much of a lucky moron to not be protected by some kind of divine intervention. I like to think of God’s will like a GPS; I might stray from the path which means it will take me longer to get where I’m supposed to go but I will always be rerouted to meet my perfect destination. Where it all leads I’ll never know. The purpose behind it? I may know one day as I do today when I look back on how certain events in my past transpired and how perfectly timed it all seemed.

Before all of this chaos, I was so burned out from my job, from my usual weekly alcoholics anonymous meeting in which I had a service commitment that I eventually decided to start making moves to change it all. As the days of my life went by I felt myself growing older and older with each day, week and month feeling exactly the same for two and a half long years. At the beginning of those nearly three years it was all so new and refreshing. I had just come back from a brutal relapse after being let go from my then previous sponsor Paul, who in all honesty, was completely justified in letting me go as at that point I had given up on the program and wasted his time.

After a few painful weeks of a chronic weed and alcohol addiction, I gave up and realized I needed to seek new sponsorship and so I started going to meetings again. Oddly, my spirit had been reinvigorated with new hope that I could restore myself to sanity, seeing this beginning as a new opportunity rather than a complete loss. It wasn’t long before I met my new sponsor Matt who introduced me to a circle of friends and help me gain a service commitment-making the coffee. Something I did with incredible consistency over many months, with the exception of a handful of occasions I could probably count on just three hands. Matt’s father even hosted a weekly men’s only bible study which I began to attend regularly each Wednesday and see some of the same people there. These friends at first were at our weekly meeting at the church and bible study nearly every week, even though they each had kids and other commitments, but gradually over time they stopped showing up to the point where by middle of last year in 2024, the faces I had once become so familiar with had disappeared.

One of them got married, Matt had more kids and before I knew it nothing that I had become comfortable and familiar with existed anymore, but I still kept coming back anyway. At some point I began to ask myself “Why Am I still doing this? Why does it feel like I’m frozen in time when everyone else is moving on with their lives?”. Maybe it was the classic trap of comparison or maybe boredom or perhaps both, but I eventually concluded it was time to move on as I was beginning to feel like an adolescent shark stuck in a fish bowl. My environment was too familiar and life was becoming stagnant and stale for me so I had to find a way to move forward on my own.

I had begun to notice friends of mine at work that I had known for awhile moving up in the company or moving onto better jobs. If there’s one thing I always hated, it’s always been routines. Sure it is important to remain in a structured and disciplined lifestyle to some extent, but over very long periods of time I find myself becoming very bored and unfulfilled-something which I have a difficult time tolerating. In addition to that I also wanted better for myself like others had had, but I knew it would take some time and effort so I started to devise a plan in order to try and break out of my old and familiar circumstances to try and gain some upwards momentum of my own, by attending online college courses at RCSJ, with the intention of one day becoming a counselor, which is something I’ve always wanted to do.

On my first course I ended with an A+ and in the following class I finished with a B. I had fully dedicated myself to my schooling with every intention of advancing forward and was fortunate enough for the company I was working for to pay a generous amount of the tuition. Unfortunately around the time that my mother had died I was two quarters done with my third class I had been working on and just completely allowed myself to fail out of it, as I had too much emotional baggage to deal with at the time. Even with my mother dying, my older sister still would not talk to me and this added another layer of resentment and an extra gut punch.

As of writing this I do plan on attending a college course once again, hopefully soon. I ended up walking out of my job and then quitting one day over a month ago and have been utilizing gig work, even with my added anxiety and I’m lucky enough to have family and parents supporting me here and there to help make up for the money crunch which I will no doubt end up having to pay back at some point (maybe?). Currently, I found another job at the same company who has hired me back at a different location further away from home, but it’s a nightshift job with fewer hours and starts at 3:30 AM and ends at 7:30 in the morning. I am due to start my new job in just over a week and I’m both nervous and excited to be working fewer hours until I can get back on my feet and move back to full time at some point.