I'm watching superbad. There are so many movies about High School parties. I thought it was all make believe. I never went to an alcohol party in High School.

Since I've been here I've heard about all of the High School drunken parties. I know they really happen because I know people that went to them.

Sometimes I think that I missed out on that time of my life.

As time goes on I think about the college dorm life that I missed out on but I had the Marine Corps and that was a wild time. I consumed more alcohol during those years than a normal person consumes in a life time. I don't know how I survived. I don't know how I stayed out of prison.

So I didn’t really miss out, I just traded one set of adventures for another.

After the Marine Corps I was on a path of self destruction.  I lived a wild non-stop party for a few years. I worked hard and played hard.  I rode my bike like a bat out of hell, no speed was too fast. I remember going 125mph down a hilly road. There were times I just knew that I was going to fly right in to the sky.

Some nights I flew down the road in the car, flipped the lights off and I went faith driving for miles. Faith driving is where you can’t see the road because its dark but you just have faith that it’s there.

Maybe I did have a death wish back then.

I was one crazy animal. I risked my life almost daily, drank till I blacked out and went to work with a hangover every day. My morning routine was to wake up, throw up, take a shower, throw up and get to work by 6am. I’d sober up by noon, get out of work at 2:30 and do it all over again.

That was before my daughter was born.  Becoming a dad changed my life.

I was sober for five years. Amber’s mom took her across the country and that night I fell in to the bottle and stayed there for several years.  That night I lost myself. It took me years to find myself again.

The thing that changed my life was spending two weeks in a coma.

You can say what you like but I lived for 30 years in that 2 ½ week coma. I lived a life time. It was a horrifying and torturous hell. I could never do it justice by trying to write those events down. I doubt Stephen King could even capture it.

I sit here tonight writing this stone cold sober.

I want to drink something so bad right now but I’m not doing it.

Sometimes the feelings are too much and I stumble and fall

But even though I’m in the darkest depression that I’ve been in, in several years I’m in control.

Those of you that think depression is just sadness are so wrong. Those of you that believe that you can just stand up and shake it off are so wrong. There is an intensity to it that is indescribable. There is a depth that is unimaginable. There is a weight that makes ever second feel like your drowning.

It takes everything that I have to hide it from the children. I can’t hide it from Mandy. The children have no idea. I sing, I make silly voices, I pretend it’s all ok, but inside I’m withering away like I’m being eaten by the blackest cancer that ever existed.  I will continue to hide it from the children because that has to be the way that it is. They can’t be allowed to see that part of the world yet. That’s why I was so angry with their father. We all face the darkness, some more than others but we never…NEVER… let it be seen by the children.

This will pass

It always does

In the old days it was dangerous. Those were the days before the counseling, the days before I understood that it will pass every time.  It’s just a test of endurance, and I always win.