History

I was raised in a broken family. Very broken. Neither of my parents were alcoholics, but one was very abusive and the other one had no idea how to raise a child. I'd leave home with broken parents, then go to school and get the living shit beat out of me. My so called friends just made it worse, torturing me more after school. I'd come home, with no one to console me or protect me or give me advice, and I'd repeat the cycle over again. I did this for 18 years. And I was alone.

As soon as I hit 18 I moved out to Seattle. The one thing that kept me sane while living at home was the promise that I could normalize my life once I moved out of that hell hole. But it wasn't true. I was raised under a certain paradym and that paradym followed me. No experience with healthy relationships or girls, I did the best I could. I stuck with computers, the only solace I'd ever had, and begain to build a career off work that I had started when I was 16. But I did not have healthy relationships with anyone. I was still alone.

I told myself while I did this work that everything would just become normal, that I wouldn't have to do anything to make it that way. I started partying. An online friend introduced me to raves. For a few years I went to raves and got so fucked up on drugs I typically didn't remember what had happened the night before or where I was when I woke up. Somehow, my car was always with me, implying that while under the influence of multiple drugs I drove my car and never got caught. This continued for about 3 years. I met my first real girlfriend while I did this, but she never did as many drugs as I did. At the time I knew she loved me, but when I look back I have no idea why. Perhaps it was just young innocence, perhaps ignorance, perhaps some combination of both.

I would go to parties and do drugs that made it hard to sleep, then I would go to work the next day stoned off my ass trying to cover the come-down of the drugs I had done the night before. Even though my manager never said anything direct about it, he hinted enough for me to understand that he knew.

Before I had the girlfriend, during and after, I was still alone. Something inside me was broken. I was unable to connect with anyone. I was unable to let down my defenses enough for someone to get inside. I never made myself vulnerable. But at the time, nothing really mattered. All I cared about was my career, video games, and getting fucked up. It was my life.

One day it all came crashing down. My girlfriend and I had moved to the Portland, OR area for a new job. I soon lost my job because I was too fucked up to do work and didn't show up for three days. I had $5000 worth of computer equipment in the trunk of my car. They had to have the cops come out and get it from me.

I was strung out after being up for multiple days of drugging and partying. There were squatters living in my house despite my requests for them to leave. I fell apart. I fell into my bed one day and I was changed forever. I was so desolate and destroyed that I couldn't move. My girlfriend at the time couldn't even look at me. She focused on how we were going to get through this and ignored what I was going through. I was empty inside, I was destroyed. All the illusions I had of living a normal life had been destroyed and I had lost the thing most precious to me at the time; my career. And it was all my fault. I could not blame anyone else for what had happened.

I continued on the track of drug abuse though. I came into contact with a drug dealer known only as "Rocky" who would supply me with drugs to sell at raves. I spent the next few months dealing drugs. Why my girlfriend never protested I am not sure. I was surely throwing my life away. I would sneak huge amounts of drugs into raves when active duty cops stood nearby. If any of them had discovered my stash, I would have gone to jail. But I made a lot of money and we got by for a time.

Then I started doing lot of the drugs that were given to me. $1800 worth of drugs got snorted into my body and my girlfriends, and a friend screwed me over for $500 worth so he could get laid by two girls. I was in debt for $2300 worth of drugs to a man who was not a fool. He came by the house one day, unannounced. I never told him where I lived. How he found out I don't know. But he stopped by and demanded to see what was left of what I had to sell. I showed him, and I assured him that I had enough left to pay off what he had given me thus far. He left, but I knew he was not happy with what he had seen.

Slowly my drug abuse increased from there. I started doing more of my product than before and was soon unable to repay my debt to my dealer. He kept fronting me drugs so I could make up the debt, but I just kept doing them and only selling the rest as a cursory gesture. I became suicidal and faced my darkest days. I was so strung out I couldn't think. All I wanted was my next hit. I began to wish for death. The only thing that would make me happy was drugs, and I was out. There was no way to get anymore. My dealer had cut me off and I had no other income to buy more.

I told my girlfriend of my feelings of suicide. She saved me by having her family move us back to Seattle and to sober up. It didn't take me long to find a job using my previous contacts. I was good at what I did and they remembered me for it. But when I showed up on the job, something had changed. I was not the same man I was before. I wasn't willing, perhaps not even able, to perform at the same level as before.

Eventually my girlfriend left me. My cries of grief were so loud that my roomies could not ignore it. They asked me to quiet down, they gave me alcohol, but nothing helped. For 6 hours I screamed at the pain I was in. There was no hiding from it, no one to console me. No solace. While I didn't collapse and feel desolate like before, I was still destroyed. She had been my life.

Just before she broke up with me, I had just landed my highest paying gig. I wasn't going to lose it this time. I did the best I could and soon raised to the top ranks of the team I was apart of. I recieved kudos from multiple portions of management for doing such a great job. I held that job down for two years as a contractor, then finally was finally let go because I started talking about unionizing the work force. We had been promised permanent positions after 6 months. After two years I had had enough.

I was burnt out at that point. I couldn't handle any more telephone technical support. It was killing me. I spent about 8 months on unemployment getting high and drunk and playing computer games. It was just after 9/11 so it was easy to hide. Tech workers across the region had been let go and we were all having a hard time finding a new job. The only difference is that I wasn't actually looking.

After 8 months I contacted and friend and told him I was looking for a job, and that I just couldn't go back to telephone technical support. He said he had an opportunity but that it wouldn't be easy getting it for me. I worked my ass to get it and then more so trying to keep up but in the end my alcoholism destroyed that opportunity. I wasn't able to stay sober. They even had beer available on the premises. I would drink all the time.

I left that job and stayed and moved back in with my parents for a time. It was horrible, because nothing had changed. They were still the same people they had been before, and I felt myself turning back into the person I had spent so much time trying to leave behind. After about a year I finally landed Desktop Support position in Seattle and moved out as fast as I could. I impressed management there enough that they hired me permanently as a Systems Administrator. Even though I didn't know much about the technology I supported, I studied and quickly became one of the leading administrators at the company. I had a senior that walked out on the company, and multiple business critical jobs fell on my shoulders. While I knew the technology to some degree, I was not a senior level administrator. But it fell to me, so I studied and I learned and I filled the position as best I could. I was credited with pulling two business critical projects out of the toilet and making them successful. By that time though, I was so stressed out I had to leave the company. I still have a standing offer with them to come back if/when I am ready.

Once I left there I used my new found skills and abilities to land a much more prestigious position with Microsoft working with the best in the world with cutting edge technologies. It wasn't long after I started working there that I was diagnosed with bi-polar II, ADD, and social anxiety disorder. I was started on a drug regiment that ended up changing my life. Suddenly, I wasn't depressed any more and social situations weren't so intimidating. So I started looking for new friends and decided I wanted a girlfriend.

That's where I am today. It's been a long, very hard and very lonely road. I still have trouble being vulnerable and trusting people, and I have no idea what it means to care for someone or to have someone care for you. The kindness of my first girlfriend had been all but forgotten. In the last 10 months I've been given a new lease on life, and it's hard to get used to the dramatic changes. You develop a lot of defenses coming up from where I was and living with an undiagnosed mental condition for the first 27 years of your life. You don't recover from it overnight.

So, I toil. I work hard to overcome my new challenges and it's the hardest thing I've ever done before. I am used to excelling at what I put my mind to, but this is not something linear thought can resolve. I have to learn a new way to think and feel, and I have to do it soon. If I don't, I am afraid that I will be alone for the rest of my life.