It was Sunday night when my wife found my shit. I didn’t use that night cause she had my stash. It was one of those nights man. Give or take seven years ago my wife walked out with my 3 kids at the time and started me towards trying to sober up from alcohol and porn. That was seven years into our marriage. So, at this point this spring its seven more of me in and out of relapse. I was finding some traction but not man. The last two and a half were spent stoned out of my mind. Every night, escaping the stress and anxiety of pushing to hard. Overdrive without much to show.
I work in the agriculture industry and come spring it gets nuts. It’s all timing of the season and tight windows. My wife and I had decided to try me staying at the office two nights a week so that I could focus on work and not have the commute so I could get home and not worry about work the other nights. Monday after she found that shit was a night I was staying. I told her I wouldn’t use but I did. I don’t remember if I took the stuff she had confiscated out of the trash or what, but I did. Tuesday, I came clean with her. I had been sprinkling little bits of the truth in our conversations but not the whole truth.
I was driving down the highway and I decided fuck it. I needed help and I told her everything. All of it. I came clean. It was one of those moments that you feel 200 pounds lighter. That shit is so heavy when you’re holding onto all the secrets. The hiding, lying, snooping bullshit that goes into using. It’s nuts but in the middle of it all everything, every part of it seems so normal but it’s fucking insanity. I went home that night and stayed clean. Then came the second day. Wednesday was awful. I got emotional, shaky, and when I got home every sound in the house was amplified with a piercing intensity. I felt like I could have pulled the roof off the house. My wife decided she should take the kids, and she went to her parents’ house with all four of them.
A house with no family when they should be there is the emptiest place on earth. I could be in the back country 100 miles from anywhere with not a sound in the world and nothing compares to the house empty of the kids laughs and feet running on the hard floors. I couldn’t sleep, I was starting to feel sick. I don’t know what it was, but I felt like I could have run a 50k race at any moment. I wasn’t eating. I had a friend Ron that let me stay in his shop on a couch bed. I went there the next day and ended up heading to the hills for the weekend on Friday with a friend that’s there through anything. Parksy is a God’s send.
That night was a lifesaver for me. I was able to stop. Work was stopped. Family was stopped. I was alone with no schedule. No one to hold me to anything but you know what? I was two days sober, and I was learning about myself. I went back and forth with AI and went through some crazy shit. My religion that turned out to be bullshit like most man-made religion is. I started opening up about this second father that tore me apart and left me feeling like it was my fault and mentally fucked me. All the shit I was running from and taking the THC to take the edge off. I didn’t solve it all, but it was a start. That’s all I believe we need is a start.
That was the night Ravenmark was born. Not out of victory, but out of blood. Out of the cold shaky sweats on a patio in a neighborhood not my own. Away from my family just trying to figure out who the fuck I am and who the fuck I want to be. I realized I don’t need more second chances. I don’t need another stretch of “clean days” I can brag about. I don’t need softer edges or easier nights.
I decided that I will relapse forever if I keep trying to change without dying first. The old me has to fucking die. The liar. The sneak. The guilt-ridden nice guy pretending I’m healed because I’ve strung a few clean days together. That version of me gets buried today. Not next week. Not after another apology. Now.
