My mother was a wonderful woman. My chosen memories are of feeling loved and cherished. Comforted. Of skinned knees lovingly bandaged (with 5-year old me pissed off because she’d say she was sorry. “You didn’t do it!”)
I don’t remember her ever hitting me, but the threat of “a lickin'” was always in the air.
Her laugh. An occasional whiskey sour. Her laugh, her laugh, her beauty queen smile.
My poor mother was surrounded by addicts. Her father; two husbands; both first born. But she died holding dear to her quiet faith in Jehovah.
Sorry for the blaspheme Mom, and all due respect to the Son of Man, but when I need spiritual guidance, WWMD always works for me.
Jonathan was a friend I met while at Lowell House Men’s Recovery Home. When he got there his kids were with strangers, he didn’t even have visitation privileges. Their mother wasn’t in the picture. Over the course of several months Jonathan went through a lot of work to get visitation, custody, employment, and housing for him and his kids. I saw him, his son, and his daughter April 23, 2019 at a dinner at the Recovery Home for graduates. Everything was going well. He overdosed and died about a week later.
Thanks for taking us
to that dinner, Dad
Back where you used to
live
We played on the floor
with your friend
And that stupid Dexter
cat
That used to make you
sneeze
Sneaked looks at the
weird White guys
That think they’re
cool, cuz they wear ‘our’ clothes, right Dad?
You joked about doing
dishes, sneaking food, and smoking where you weren’t ‘sposed to
A lady let me make
PBJs, and we served them like fancy desserts, on a tray
And played a game with
a pretty bald lady, who smiled like she liked us
They talked to you different Dad, like proud, we were too.
What did we do Dad?
Were the PBJs no good?
Did we color outside
the lines?
I thought we said
thank you and please
I’da picked up my
clothes faster Dad
Or not fell behind at
the mall
Sometimes I stopped
just to watch you walk
Your head up finally,
for once
We woulda done better
Dad.
But you left us again.
It woulda been better,
Dad, if you never came back at all
GYST stands for Get Your Sh!t Together. GYST4Life! is about sharing my journey of getting my own stuff* together.
The current leg of this journey started in January 2018. That’s when I started what I call “Recovery III.” GYST4Life! is about sharing with you how I am working through the obstacles, challenges, and wreckage of the past.
My goal is to help you succeed in your GYST journey by sharing my experience.
If you are:
In recovery from addiction
Healing from depression, anxiety, or other mental health issues
Recuperating from an illness or injury
Trying to get a handle on your thus-far screwed up life
the experience and information I share here can help.
If you are looking for advice, look elsewhere.
GYST4Life! is about me sharing my experience in successfully addressing some daunting challenges. That’s a nice way of saying, the friggin’ dumpster fire my life was after a 7-year relapse into addiction.
What do you do when you’re life is a physical, mental, spiritual, and financial disaster?
First, stop making things worse. Second, take stock of where you’re at in each of those areas. Third, start walking.
These situations include:
Homelessness
Unemployability
Fifty pounds overweight; diabetic; high cholesterol & blood pressure; an Alien-like hernia protruding from my stomach; leprosy-like psoriasis.
No health insurance.
Sold my car for cigarette money
$75,000 in past due income taxes
Depression, anxiety, hopelessness
I will share with you how I worked through all that and more.
Before this chapter of my journey started, I was pretty much a hopeless shell of a human being. I prayed every night to die in my sleep and cried many mornings just for having woken up. Then went out and made everything worse.
I had been in recovery twice before, both times for over 9 years.
Recovery I started in 1987. I was an uneducated, unemployable kid with burns on his thumbs from a freebase pipe. By 1997 I’d put together a successful career in politics and government. I relapsed and wasted 5 years.
Recovery II began in 2002. I built a successful career in real estate. I relapsed in 2011. I lost my real estate license and career, another good job I somehow landed, my house**, and my relationship with my children and their mother. The IRS and Massachusetts Department of Revenue were on my tail.
Not me. Hint: he’s smiling
I ended up bartending in a private club in Stoneham. I spent pretty much every waking moment there for 5 years.
I hung with a bunch of great guys who have a couple of beers, rag the crap out of each other and for the most part maintain a life.
I’m not a couple-of-beers-and-a-bone type of guy. If I partake of any kind of mind- or mood-altering substance, I will eventually screw up my whole life.
As long as the money was right at the end of the night, I could drink while I worked. I took all the shifts I could get. My boss once asked me, “How come when you finish a shift, it feels like you should pay me?” I spent most days on one side of that bar or the other.
My life revolved around hopefully making $120 on a shift. I could pay the $40 I owed, buy another one, and then, of course, another one.
At some point in 2017 I got the auction notice for my house. I packed some clothes in a trash bag and left a lifetime of family stuff behind. I ended up living with two good friends who let me crash at their place.
I found out later they call this “couch homeless.” Not under the bridge yet but heading that way.
I’d buy some food for the house with food stamps and felt like a real leech. (That is not a knock on food stamps or those who need them. If you need food stamps, get them, and keep yourself alive until you can buy your own food again. You will find how to do this here.)
I thought a lot about suicide, for the first time at the “how-to” stage. I don’t know if I was being dramatic, but it felt real to me when I decided on carbon monoxide. I picked a parking spot in the lot behind that club, next to the old 7-Day Adventist Bloodmobile. It was private enough to get the job done but someone would find me within a couple days. (Hm, Mel’s been sitting there a couple days, think we should check on him?”)
Thanks to a random text message (S.”C”.K.) and the Florence Nightingale of Boston recovery (A.M.), I got another chance at redemption
I washed ashore in February 2018. I crawled back onto the beach of life, feeling like Andy Dufresne. I got up and looked around, and all my problems surrounded me. For the first time in a long time, I didn’t jump back in the water.
How did I go from trying to figure out how to attach a hose to an exhaust pipe to looking forward to waking up every day? Knowing all I have to do is a few simple tasks to stay on track to a beautiful life?
More importantly: how can you start your journey from wherever you are, to wherever you want to go?
If I answered that you’d have no reason to come back and consume my content. There is no single answer anyway. It’s a process, and I’m good at it. Wherever you are starting from, my content will help.
Want to find out how I reduced that $75,000 tax debt by over $60,000 (with no ‘professional’ help)?
How I won a disability claim against the Social Security Administration (with no “professional” help)?
How I accessed funds to start a new (and lucrative) career in digital marketing?
How I got biologically younger over the last 30 months?
I will be sharing the experience gained from those accomplishments right here. If you or someone you know might benefit from that experience, subscribe here and you’ll be in the loop.
I’ll also be sharing my journey back into recovery. If you, a friend, or family member can use that information, let me know.
The point is to get off your ass and start making progress. For a long time I was constantly looking back with regret. If that sounds familiar, don’t look back ten years from now with regret on another decade wasted. Subscribe and I can help.
I’m good at breaking down complicated projects to manageable increments. That’s what I want to share with you, so you can learn from my experience and do it for yourself.
That’s the gist of GYST.
As for the “manifesto” part: I got that from Gary Vaynerchuk, someone who’s content you should consume daily.
When I was living in the Lowell House Men’s Recovery Home in Tewksbury, I stumbled upon his clip “6 Minutes for the Next 60 Years of Your Life.”
This clip is why this site exists.
One of Gary’s concepts is to tell people what you want to do, then document the doing.
The telling is your manifesto.
This is mine.
* It’s a good name, trying to be considerate. ** Actually, I only thought I lost my house. I’ll document that story in another post!
GYST4Life is where I will be documenting my personal journey of getting MY sh!t together, sharing both the personal details and information that will help others on their own journeys. Check out The GYST Manifesto for details.
I’ll also post my creative writing efforts, short fiction, poetry, essay, as well as book, movie, and documentary reviews.
I appreciate you spending some of your valuable time here. Please take a minute to subscribe above so I can let you know of new posts as they come out. I appreciate all comments and shares!
