“A Life to Change”

This story was orginally written in college, Fall 1995. Part 2 came along the following semester when I took the class again. About 6 years ago, I began a story about a guy who had stopped drinking and went through a fairly typical routine of healing and growing through "New Age" resources and becoming a "shamon." This was to be based upon my experiences. Then, about 3 years ago, I felt like it should be just about me, but not directly. 400 pages latter, I desided to change it to be a semi-autobiographical account of my life. So, I have been working on making the changes. It may be two books. In my opinion, this is an important story to tell. A story of addictions and depression and trying to find God though religions (not Christianity) and inner reflections in our challenging modern times. I am hoping for publication some day. However, it has been very taxing at times to have to re-live some of this. When I first wrote this story, it was refreshingly healing. Now I trudge through it like a man wearing lead boots through a mud pit. I think that soon I will go back to it.

“A Life to Change”
Part 1
When I decided to give up drinking alcohol, I had no idea what I was in for. I was not living on the streets or had not lost my job or even hit rock bottom, yet. It was just that the desire to drink was not there anymore. However, I soon learned that my psychological and spiritual life had been put on hold during my seventeen years of drinking. It was time for me to catch up.
One year and about eight months after I stopped, I was lying on my small, worn couch alone in my small living room on a hot August afternoon. My thoughts were consumed with my desperate situation. My listless body swooned from the suffocating heat in my old, small house, not feeling the sweat roll off my body. I had just awakened from one of my many long naps, some of which exceeded eight hours. My every thought was focused on my misery. My mind was flooded with self-pity and loathing. The relentless beatings from my constant mental torment and anguish forced me deeper into despair, weakening my body. My heart and soul withered from the exhaustion of hopelessness. Time was never so dark and endless.
“I can’t even get drunk,”I spoke aloud to no one there. The only solution I could see was death and it consumed me.
Moments latter on that day, I found myself in the bathtub. With my shotgun in my hands and wearing nothing but my favorite pair of jeans (that hung from my listless body), I looked down, not noticing that I had lost over forty pounds in the past three weeks. The pain was overwhelming from the hoplessness of having no job or money, no friends, or wife or girlfriend, and the thoughts of my son calling another man “daddy.” Drawing the shower curtain shut, I entombed myself in gloom and isloation, just as I had been doing in my rented, tiny house.
“It’s not supposed to be this way,” I pleaded, trying to reason with myself and, unknowingly, with God. “When you quit drinking, your life is supposed to get better! Your not supposed to lose everything!” The only answer I could hear was just me screaming, “Please, make it stop!”
Standing with the worn stock of the shotgun that was now shrouded in denim between my legs, I pressed the cold, black barrel against my bare, pale flesh.
“Please, Lord, make it stop,” someone screamed as I leaned over to put the end of the gun barrel in my mouth. The faint sickly smell of gun powder combined with the foul taste of gun oil filled my senses with desperation. As I reached for the trigger, a loud voice demanded, “What about your son? Do you want him to grow up with the burden of knowing his father gave up on him; not knowing who his real father is and how much you loved him?”
“You’re right,” I answered aloud, then stood up straight, putting the gun aside. A feeling of knowing came to me. “I can’t do this alone.”
Leaving the shotgun, I exited the shower, went the phone and picked up the phone book. In a short few seconds, I found the number for a suicide prevention hot-line and gave them a call. They persuaded me to check into the hospital

Part 2: The ER
As I stared at the brown and yellow tiles on the floor in front of me, I searched for my departed emotions. All that I could find was emptiness and the peculiar sense of being unreal. I was sitting on the cold, hard examining table in the small, rectangular-shaped hospital room that was just down the hall from the Emergency Room. The hot August air that early evening made the room stuffy and claustrophobic. The past three or four weeks of mental torment had destroyed all of my will, all of my hope. Time had become an irrelevant concept that my mind could not grasp. The events of the last hour or so had drained my dismal emotions; leaving me devoid of any feelings.
Jane, the person whom I had spoken with on the phone earlier, was standing opposite the table by the door. She was a short, blonde-haired woman of about twenty-five with a warm glow emanating from her. I could sense her concerned, blue eyes on the pale, empty shell that was my body.
"When the doctor gets here, we'll get you checked-in," she said in a soft, caring voice. The sound of her gentle voice was like sweet music to me, music that calmed my nervousness, soothing my weary soul. She was an angel with a mission to assist me.
"Thank you," was all my strength would allow me to say to her.
I suddenly started to become uneasy, thinking that this wasn't a good idea. I don't need to be here doing this. The doubt of why I was even in this situation produced feelings of sharp panic.
"What if they don't believe me?" I was telling myself. "Why am I here? How could I have gotten so low?" I thought about what Jane had told me over the phone on the suicide hot line. Although I was no longer standing in the shower with my shotgun pointed at my head, I would have to come in anyway for help. She told me if I didn't drive myself to the hospital and check-in on my own, that she would have to send the police to come and get me. Thoughts of making an already bad situation worse and the hint of mayhem made the desire to leave fade back into emptiness. The anxieties of entering the Physic Ward gave way to relief. Without looking up at her, I asked what she thought of me.
"I think your pretty distraught," she answered, as the door behind her swung open.
The doctor abruptly entered the room. He did no more than glance in my direction before making his diagnosis and suggestion for treatment. "Get him checked-in," he said to Jane and promptly exited the room. His deliberate actions suggested that he had seen this a thousand times before. I later learned that it was quite obvious to see that depression had consumed me.
"Follow me and we'll get you started on your new life," Jane said, as she held the door open for me.
"Wow," I thought, lethargically getting to my feet, "New and life in the same sentence. It just doesn't seem possible."