Roughly five years ago my mom died, and I was laid off the same week. I took full advantage of the pandemic and stopped paying my rent. At the time, I felt the money would be better used to purchase heroin and put off grieving as long as possible. Of course, this wasn’t a conscious decision, and I didn’t realize what I had done until much later.

Since I’d already been an IV opiate addict for over a decade, all I had to do to fall into kind of deathly trance was not resist. I passed four months on my ratty couch driving black tar into my veins and surrendering to apathy. I didn’t look for work, I didn’t write, I didn’t do shit but feel sorry for myself and alone in the world, even though I wasn’t. I’m not proud of this behavior, nor did I suspect how hard I could make things for myself by fucking off those four short months.

I rode my unemployment benefits until the wheels fell off the engine seized up. I grudgingly went back to work building fences and decks for a shady, poorly managed mom and pop general contractor. The company that handled the messy business of renting to a crook like me had little leverage to oust me from the brick apartment I’d come to call home, so they offered to forgive my past-due rent, and even allow me a clean rental history if I would kindly get the fuck out of Dodge. I saw it for the great deal it was, and talked my uncle into letting me rent a room in exchange for $400 a month and free carpentry labor to remodel his home.

For six months I hustled side jobs, defrauded the government, smoked fentanyl, drove broke down, unregistered vehicles that did not belong to me (not that I had drivers license anyway) and did my best to deal with my deranged, drug-addled thief of a relative (not my uncle–he’s always been cool). Life was difficult to say the least.

I spent the next six months living in my work partner’s garage–forbidden by his ultra religious wife to enter any other part of the home for any reason. I was happy to have that much. I kept hustling what work I could find, washing my clothes in buckets and shitting either in garbage bags or gas stations, and spending any money I made on fentanyl. At this point it was becoming clear, even to a dense junkie like me, that this lifestyle was not only unsustainable, but leading me to some unhappy combination of incarceration, madness, and death.

Life continued like this for another year: me getting the boot for one reason or another every six months, struggling constantly to keep working, keep out of jail, keep a vehicle running, keep getting high enough to make the wasteland I’d let my life become seem tolerable.

I found out how true it is to say “It’s darkest before the dawn.”

I lost the car I’d fought savagely to keep on the road to the impound, but not before pawning my tools to and try and save it. I developed bronchitis, and the DA caught up to the temp agency I’d been working at and started taking so much of my check that I couldn’t afford to work there. I didn’t have money for food. I couldn’t pay the rent at the weekly where I stayed. I was already hungry and about to be homeless for real.

The last day I had in the weekly I spent enrolling in a sober living program. I was ashamed to see my kids (had been for a while), I felt unemployable, and unworthy of anyone’s love. The day I committed to being sober, doors that had been welded shut started springing open. I found a job with easily the best employer I’ve ever had. I went to intensive therapy and lived with the craziest muthafuckers I’ve ever met, but I started feeling something I had almost forgotten I could feel: happiness. I knew hope again. I was a drowning man pulled suddenly aboard.

Now, it’s been a long road filled with plenty of slides back into old ways, but as 2025 dawned, a serenity I have never felt so strongly before has taken root in my being. I’m positive, I’m active, I’m actually happy now, not just aching to be that way. And all I can say now is “Thank You.” I rejoice in the gift of each day given to me by Creator God. I feel absolutely lucky to have this measure of peace and confidence in that which is life-affirming.

If you’re going through it, please, please, please never give up. Life is an ever-unfolding wonder.