History and Suicide (Part 1)

Welcome back.  Now its time to give you a little history about myself.  I grew up in poverty.  We were on welfare for a large part of my life after my father had an accident at work that broke his neck and back.  He was unable to work and got a measly monetary settlement that did not last long, nor pay the bills.  Both my parents were heroin addicts before I was born and somehow got clean, but continued to be alcoholics.  I grew up being abused and was repeatedly sexually assaulted by an older friend when I was around 8 years old.  My house was more than dysfunctional.

Of course I began falling in with the wrong crowd, using drugs, drinking, fighting, etc.  My first bout with alcohol was at 12 along with my first cigarette.  By 16 I was getting drunk with my dad and my mom was buying alcohol for all my parties.  Somehow, I survived.  I covered up a DUI crash for my parents at 17 (interesting night).  I had my first child at 18.  I joined the Army and after returning home from Basic Training, I found the girl I loved, that I dated for two years, and was the mother of my child, did not love me anymore.  She left me and I shut everyone out.  I got drunk to the point of blackout every night.  After 6 months, I finally moved on.  After returning home from a deployment to the Middle East in 2000, I became a firefighter.  I still did not know how I did it, but I knew somewhere inside me was a survivor.
After coming home from the Army, I met the woman who would later become my wife.  I spent a lot of time drinking, usually getting drunk everyday.  I would pick her up from her house and down a 6-pack of beer beforehand.  Whenever she questioned the beer on my breath, the answer was always, “I had 1 or 2 a little bit ago.”  She always believed me, either that or she decided not to push the issue.  She stayed by my side through everything.

On March 24th, 2004, my mother put a sawed off shotgun to her chest and committed suicide.  She spent a lot of time during my childhood abusing me both physically and verbally.  I had a lot of resentment towards her, but in the 2 years prior to her death, we actually started to reconcile.
We knew she was in a severe depression and did everything we could to get help, but unfortunately we were unsuccessful.  Two weeks prior to her death, she decided to get everything off her chest from her life.  I guess she felt it was her way of saying goodbye and making peace.  It was horrible.  Stories of abuse, murder, prostitution, etc, all in my family.  I won’t get into specifics because I would be here typing on the subject for the next to weeks, but let’s just say I handled it the way my family always did, I spent the night with whiskey and tequila.

The morning she died, I saw her lifeless, bloody body laying in her bed.  If that wasn’t bad enough, I cleaned up the mess that night.  My family may be dysfunctional, but we don’t allow outsiders handling our business.  BIG MISTAKE!  And that’s when everything spiraled out of control…

I think that’s enough for now.  More tomorrow.  And remember…

Above all else…SURVIVE