Chapter 12
It’s around the time I’m being harassed by the police that I suffer a nearly fatal relapse. It starts with a call to work on a Saturday. I try to make the best of a difficult situation offering to buy my coworker whatever he wants at Starbucks to start the workday. He decides to purchase twenty-five dollars’ worth of items, taking my generosity for granted, as well as taking out his frustrations on me throughout the day. I assume it has something to do with having to work on short notice, overtime, and on a Saturday, and I try to turn the other cheek.
However, at the end of the day, when the guy drops a couch we are carrying on top of himself while walking backward with it into a house, he completely loses it. He springs to his feet and comes at me swinging as if am responsible for his dropping the couch or having to work. I know martial arts and self-defense, so I’m able to fend off my enraged coworker and I do my best to calm him down, since I know that he is a decorated army infantry veteran who struggles with PTSD.
The guy who is flipping out at me seems to enjoy making life difficult for the new guy (me) more than the rest; sometimes he acts downright sadistic. When he calms down, we talk things through and shake hands, even though it definitely crosses my mind to up and quit right then and there. But I remain on the right path, go back into the moving truck, and head straight to the warehouse to punch out.
On our way back, leaning forward to block the sunlight as I check my phone, I neglect to realize that I am also blocking my moving partner’s view of oncoming traffic. As he pulls out into the lane, he slams the brakes so hard that I fly forward and slam against the dashboard with such force that it draws blood from my nose. “Won’t be leaning forward again anytime soon, now will ya?” he says with a smile. The old me would have found out his address and lit his vehicles on fire or fired shots into his home. The new me feels sorry for the man.
My job used to feel steady and good, but I’m beginning to think that dealing with coworkers who can be extremely verbally abusive is not worth my while, so I decide to switch companies. I apply to a competing company and get hired quickly, starting after giving two weeks notice at the old company.
Two or three days into the new job, I mention to a coworker in passing that I had worked there once in the past, but was fired for failing a drug test for weed; this was during the time I spent bouncing between jobs, working my way through twenty different ones. I thought nothing of speaking to the guy candidly and told him that I had previously found the job to be unbearably difficult, but since leaving my most recent venue of employment I’d come to realize that nothing could be worse that that job and I was willing to work anywhere else. The coworker mentions this conversation to our boss, who explains to me that it goes against company policy to hire someone who has lied on the application. I had filled out so many applications in such a short period of time that I left employment history basically blank to move forward quickly. I thought they remembered me from my previous term of employment there, but I was wrong, and I am promptly fired.
I go home early to Hunter and Brittany’s apartment and find them sitting in the living room with a police officer. Since I am part of an ongoing investigation, I panic, but I know I never mentioned it to them and my instincts tell me that the situation I now face has nothing to do with it. Indeed, the officer says he’s performing a field test on a substance found in my room, and I am at a loss for words when I hear this. Not only have I been clean since entering rehab, I’ve even helped Hunter and Brittany go clean, supporting them in giving up drinking and partying. Next to them, sitting on our living room couch, is Brittany’s biological father, whom I’ve never met. Shaking his head, Hunter tells me that they found heroin in my room—but this isn’t accurate and this is proven when the officer asks what the brown powder is because it didn’t change colors when he used a testing solution on it, which is what confirms a substance is heroin.
I explain that what they found loosely sitting at the bottom of a garbage can was incense ashes. The tenant who lived in the room before me, the one they kicked out for refusing to stop hosting parties, was such a slob that she had left a pungent stench of her own filth and I had to burn incense constantly to mask her odor. The ashes, I explain, were then dumped in the garbage can at the start of each day after having burned through the night. Satisfied with my explanation, the police officer leaves. Immediately after, I pack a bag and also head out the door. I understand Hunter and Brittany’s suspicions given my history and the fact that I am always tired from working and boxing and never home much. When I am home, I’m usually in my room with the door shut, but it’s not because I’m doing drugs, it’s because I’m sleeping. It’s pretty fucked up and disrespectful that they invaded my privacy and then didn’t ask about what they found without first calling the cops.
Of all places, I head back to my parents’ house. They’re satisfied with me as long as I hold down a steady job, so I neglect to mention that I just lost mine. On my way there, I get a call from my girlfriend and she says she wants to hang out. She calls at just the right time; I’m having a really hard moment and just hearing her voice is uplifting. I tell her to come hang out with me at my parents’ house. I don’t have the right words to express what happened that day; I feel frustrated beyond words, and it will be easier to tell her in person than over the phone. What it will be like to tell my parents is another story. I hope they will understand when I tell them what happened and ask to move back in with them since I won’t be able to afford to live on my own without a full-time job.
When I get to my parents’ house, I go downstairs to watch something on their big screen TV and try to relax and contemplate my next move. My girlfriend is later let into the house by my parents and when she quietly walks up to me and sits down, she grabs my hand. “What, no hug and a kiss?” I ask with a grin.
“I cheated,” is all she has to say.
I am silent for a long moment, and then, “With who?”
She refuses to reply.
“With Shawn?” I guess. “How could you? I can’t believe this.”
Shawn is a guy she used to hang out and play drinking games with. He lives in a home full of drunken hicks and on several occasions I’ve received calls late at night from her begging me to come pick her up. She’ll say the guys have taken her car keys or something similar, and that she doesn’t want to sleep there with them, that she wants to sleep with me.
I am heartbroken and feel like a fool for trusting her and always following through with her requests despite the fact that she refused to stop getting herself into those situations. “Please leave,” are the only words I can muster.
“But, baby, can’t we—”
“Just go!” I scream. She is taken aback and stares at me with a lost and sad expression, and I can’t even look her in the eyes. I scream so loudly that my mother comes to the top of the steps and asks if everything is okay.
After my now ex-girlfriend leaves, I immediately pull out my phone and text Giovanni—he responds within seconds. He’s still attending college a few hours away, but hasn’t heard from me in well over a year. I ask if I can spend a few weeks with him and he says sure. I grab the bag I packed at my apartment and head straight for my car, speeding so fast that I make the couple hours drive in less than an hour forty-five. My black Chevy Impala with a leather interior and about 175,000 miles is the best I could come up with after having bought and sold my way up the Craigslist ladder and lost my Chrysler 300—but it still nails it.
Within fifteen minutes of arriving at Giovanni’s place, we have four hundred dollars-worth of heroin sitting on the table in front of us. One phone call, one car ride, that’s how easy it is to fall back into the deep end. I spend the following week absolutely chopped. Things with Giovanni feel normal despite all that’s happened, though Giovanni’s girlfriend doesn’t appreciate me vegging out at their place constantly and I get the picture loud and clear when she and Giovanni argu
e about my stay. I don’t mean to impose, but it just feels so good to spend time with him, to get high together. It’s so familiar. It is so wrong and yet so right, and I know what I am doing, I’m not being forced into it.
I am just so frustrated after having lost my job for a bogus reason (they even said I was doing a great job), being cheated on by my girlfriend, and having an irreparable falling out with my roommates, whom I was trying my best to help, and the fact that all the blows came in a single day. It’s just too much and so I’m turning to the one surefire comfort I know will not fail me. If all this shit is going to happen to me, I might as well take a break from life and get super chopped on some H. Call it old habits, call it giving up, I don’t know, maybe it’s both.
In the end, I make one final order, blowing the rest of my money on six hundred dollars worth of heroin, and then I leave the next day. I sneak back into my parents’ home, and there I begin shooting up again on a regular basis. When my mom asks where I’ve been the past week, I tell her I was visiting an old girlfriend after mine cheated on me. At least it’s a half-truth.
I haven’t been home for long, when instead of looking for job, like I’m supposed to be doing, I’m standing alone in my parents’ kitchen taking a shot of heroin. All of a sudden I start reeling and I instantly know that this time I’ve gone overboard and taken too much. I stumble around the house, cursing and crying out, “Oh, God, oh God.” There is the familiar feeling of fading in and out of consciousness, and a sheer terror that surges through me like lightning.
I collapse onto the family room couch and the next thing I know, I’m having an out-of-body experience: viewing myself looking down at my body from above. Panic stricken, I peer over to the right and notice Francesco Russo standing in the foyer with his arms folded, looking on curiously. He doesn’t seem to notice me as he cocks his head from side to side and shifts his weight, peering only at my lifeless body. Utterly confused, I look at my body, then at Francesco, again and again, for moments that remain etched in my mind. I don’t understand why he is standing in my parents’ front hallway looking at my dead body.
To this day, I don’t fully understand what took place, whether it was real or just a result of the drugs, but I have a vision of a man in a white robe, maybe Jesus or maybe a guardian angel, coming down and standing with Francesco. The two talk about me as if I’m not there; Francesco asks the man why he would want to take me because I’m all fucked up again and the man points to a book he’s holding and says my name is in it. The man tells Francesco that every time I mentioned Jesus to a person, even in passing, my faith was demonstrated.
Indeed, when I was enrolled in Job Corps, a group of evangelical Baptists looking to gain attendees to the church visited, and I accepted their invitation. I proclaimed my faith to them during a Bible study held after service one Sunday. Repeatedly at AA meetings and throughout rehab I sought guidance from Jesus, whom I chose as my higher power; a necessary step in the AA process is to choose a higher power.
When I stir awake, I’m disoriented and still clearly intoxicated. I think I’ve only been out for a few minutes, but I’m really not sure. I see our family dog, Bella, outside and I stand up from the couch and head to the door to open it, but when I reach for the handle, my dominant right arm seems completely out of commission. I open the door with my left hand, concerned that I might have a paralyzed right arm, and walk onto my parents’ deck. I try to call the dog, but my vocal cords don’t work. I can only let out squeaks and squawks as my high-pitched voice shrills and breaks.
As I do my best to maintain my composure, my dream, or whatever it was, flashes back to me. I recall a part at the end where Francesco and the man seemed to agree about what should happen to me, that my life would be spared but the nerves in one of my arms would be injured in such a way that the arm would never work again. I am grateful to be alive, but frightened by this.
I go back into the house, draw a hot bath, and soak my arm in it for hours, hoping it will help wake up my arm, but it’s no use. Eventually, later on, a buzzing and tingling feeling starts to fill my hand and forearm. I begin to cheer up only to grimace at the intense shooting pain that follows.
When my mother returns home from work, I tell her in a squeaky voice that I fell asleep on my arm and that I’m in a lot of pain. She calls the ER at the hospital where she works in administration and they suggest I come in to see a doctor. At the end of my visit, during which I completely lie about the cause of my condition, I am informed that this rare form of paralysis has been seen before. The doctor tells me that college students who have gotten very drunk and passed out on a limb in an awkward position and slept that way overnight have sometimes had to wait a few weeks before the affected body part finally woke up. The doctor prescribes nerve pain medication, which I diligently take and it offers some relief, but makes me extremely tired.
After a month passes with very little improvement, I go see a neurologist. He tells me that he knows I’m lying to him about not using drugs, but isn’t going to tell my parents. They’ve taken a hands-off approach to my medical issues anyway, and I’m old enough to say I don’t want them to get copies of the medical reports. The doctor says I have a 75 percent chance of losing function in my right hand and arm permanently. He says it’s a rare condition and gives a scientific explanation, which goes over my head, and says that even if I recover mobility, it could be years before I gain back functionality.
I leave the appointment upset, and have no one I want to talk to about it. Mentally I’m a mess—ashamed, broken, weak, exhausted—and the physical pain is so extreme that I often fall to the ground and silently weep. Showers are the worst. The water hitting my limb causes pain so severe that it makes me feel like I’m being electrocuted, and a severe burning follows. Sometimes the pain is brought on by mere physical contact. The medication helps, but inconsistently, and hopelessness hovers over everything.
As time goes on and no relief is in sight, it becomes clear that I need to find an alternative to a job. My dad constantly hounds me to get one, and sometimes gets physically violent with me, but I can’t imagine a job that I could handle in the state I’m in. I do, however, need something to keep me busy and out of trouble. I finally reach out to Kurt and Christa, who have never given up on me and have been patiently waiting for me to contact them when I’m ready.
We meet at a local Perkins Restaurant around 8:30 at night. I sit on one side of the booth, clutching my paralyzed arm in great pain, and they sit across from me. They implore me to explain why I didn’t reach out to them when the shit first hit the fan—although they phrase this differently. I’m honest with them, which is to say I needed a moment in the dark to sit and wallow in my self-pity. They tell me that true healing comes from God. Back and forth we go—them speaking about God and wishing I’d gone to them, and me trying to say that I couldn’t—until I can’t stand the pressure any longer. I spill my guts and tell them that I had been using heroin again, and that the guilt and shame I felt for it was insurmountable. I tell them I haven’t done it again since injuring myself and I ask for their forgiveness and continued love and support, telling them I really am changing and becoming a better person, and that my life really is on the right track despite this setback. All of these things are true, and I can tell they believe me and feel bad for me. After opening up and explaining that despite the awakening of my heart, I am still in a bad situation, Kurt tells me to be strong, that my arm could heal and the pain subside.
I sigh and tell them it’s not just my arm that’s concerning me, it’s also that I’m under investigation for the third time, that two detectives have been after me for more than six months and are now turning up the heat, and I don’t think I’ll be so lucky this time around. I tell them that I’m worried I’ll be hauled off to prison for three to six years, and that I’m really freaking out about what to do; that it’s all come to a head and I can’t run anymore.
Kurt thanks me fo
r my honesty, which I’m sure is not easy, and somehow he and Christa are still on my side. Christa pulls a Bible out of her bag and together we read passages about forgiveness and unconditional love. Afterward, Kurt makes it clear that he’s happy I’m reading with them, but also reminds me that my faith life is between me and God, that He and I are the only ones who know if I take it seriously.
As we’re talking, Kurt suddenly perks up and smiles as if he’s just had a stroke of genius. He looks at me excitedly and I feel a shift in the mood of the conversation. He says that he and Christa have taught me all they can about being a Christian, about living in the Kingdom of God, but I need to make the personal decision to give my life to Christ.
“I don’t get why I need to do that. I prayed with the chaplain and obviously God heard my prayer and accepted it, healing me and cutting me a break with my family and stuff,” I say casually.
“Yes,” he pauses, “and an appropriate expression for your acceptance and response to God would be to get baptized, or born again.”
I think this over for a minute and although I don’t know what it would encompass, a determination to do this wells up in me, and I suddenly get the feeling that everything is going to be okay, regardless of whether I go to prison or not. I know that no matter what happens, I will be alright. “Okay,” I say with a growing smile. “Let’s do it. I don’t have much time.”
Part Three
Chapter 13
I am so scared by the detectives that I get down on my knees after the cleaning lady, Judy, leaves and yell, “Jesus! Please help me!” I’ve heard people talk about how they gave their life to Jesus and he changed them and did miracles for them. I’ve always thought I’m too bad of a guy to deserve any miracles, but right now I’m in desperate need of one—so I ask anyway. I’ve made a mess of my life and I’m certain I’ll be in prison within a week; the only question is for how long. I feel bad for many reasons, one of them being that I don’t have much of a life left to give to God, but I tell him, “You can have it,” anyway.
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