What Life Could Have Been

Originally written on April 19th of this year.

A special note to those that have sought numerous hospital admissions. You are not a frequent flyer. You are a self-care warrior. 💕

What Life Could Have Been

Trigger Warning: Trauma/Suicide.

I wasn’t going to write about this topic, but recent events reminded me that telling my story, may save a life or a soul. 

Twenty years ago, I watched a young golfer by the name of Tiger Woods win his first Masters Championship. I remember it so well. He was the young phenom. The heir apparent to Jack Nicklaus. Surely, Tiger would win more Majors than Jack had. And there were many times that Woods, clad in the red Nike polo, would charge through Sundays and on to victory. It seemed that Tiger’s twelve-stroke victory in April of 1997 was merely a precursor to all that lay before him. 

I remember the buzz about Tiger, because I was literally, a captive audience during his first Masters victory. You see, I was an inpatient at Jackson Brook Institute on Running Hill Road at the time. 

I was seven years sober, and had reached my rock-bottom around a host of issues. Depression had me by the throat. My own trauma history, coupled with working in a field that, systemically, was loaded with homophobia, had ripped my insides to shreds. 

Outside of work, I was once again, chasing someone I could not have. A young man who fit all the missing pieces (so I thought) of my life, but could not love me the same way I loved him. External homophobia pales in comparison to the decisions a person makes based on internalized homophobia. Somehow, I thought that loving a straight man would make being gay somewhat . . . Forgivable.  

Now I had come out some four years prior to this. And in order to get and stay sober, I had to get honest about a lot of things. My sexuality being at the top of that list. But coming out is not a task to be done and over with. There are layers of coming out that happen on a daily basis. I first started talking to folks about my sexuality, when I was attempting to get sober in the late 1980’s. But I could not admit to myself that I was even an alcoholic, let alone that I was (Gasp!) gay!

And beneath my sexuality lurked a terrible, and forbidding trauma history that had left me with silent secrets about sex and sexuality that had me questioning my own sanity on a daily basis. 

I now know that the deeds done to me were emblematic of the sickness of the individuals who delivered that trauma, but I had no frame of reference at the time. In the seventies and eighties, drugs and alcohol where the only coping skills I had. And the behaviors and debauchery that went along with them left me even more ashamed and lonely. 

Getting sober in 1989 was a good start, and coming out in 1991 was crucial. But there were additional boatloads of work that needed to be done. I had much love and support, and did some incredible work over the first seven years of my sobriety. 

I met a man in 1991 who helped me come out, and celebrated all the little victories of that process. He was gay, sober, and happy. I couldn’t get those three things in the same zip-code. I shall be forever grateful for him. He was the first gay man in my life that extended kindness to me, without trying to sleep with me. 

I also was directed to the Caron Foundation in the spring of 1993. I left a ton of trauma memories on that hill in Wernersville Pennsylvania. Most of the nightmares stopped. And for the first time in my life, I experienced something like real relief from this sticky, ugly past that was my childhood. 

But I still had cornered the marked on dysfunctional behavior, and I was doing and reacting to things that made me desperately unhappy; all based in trauma and internalized homophobia. 

Which leads me to back to being seven years sober, and an inpatient at a local psychiatric facility. 

In early April 1997, I had tried to commit suicide. I used my bicycle to ride from the top of Munjoy Hill, down to the intersections of Congress at Franklin Arterial. I stood at the top of the hill and timed the lights, counting the seconds they remained green and calculated the speed and distance necessary to run a red light; making things appear like an accident. I tried several times that evening, and a couple of times the next day, but did not “create” an accident at the arterial. 

Despite my best efforts, nothing happened. I ended up back at my apartment, laying on the couch, in gut-wrenching pain. I was a coach of a local swim team, and had decided that it was best that the kids not know what a failure I was as a person. I was out as a gay man, but not out to the kids and parents of the team I coached. Being inside that invisible closet was literally killing me. I was convinced that the team would hate me. Given the climate twenty years ago in athletics (Heck! Given the climate now!) I may not have been too far off in my perception. 

But I must add that many of those kids are now adult friends and acquaintances in my life. They absolutely love what I’m doing, love my husband, and care for me a great deal. So in the final analysis, my skewed self-image, combined with internalized homophobia and depression was a recipe for self-destruction. How fortunate I am to have survived. 

I walked from my apartment, up to the local emergency room. I must say that I paused at the one busy intersection and contemplated another attempt. But something held, then pushed me across the road safely, and I went to the hospital. 

Once in treatment, I discovered that depression was a physical illness. And Oh! did I mention that I had been a mental health worker as well for almost five years when I became an inpatient treated for depression? 

I had been immersed in mental health and substance abuse work, but I couldn’t see the problem in myself. I thought I was the only one! Many times during my life, I have learned (and re-learned) that any emotional pain or doubt that I have will manifest itself in the need to isolate. The key to wellness in these situations is to break out of that isolation. 

And so began anew, my journey into wellness. The next ten years were full of lessons (and behaviors) that have led me to a place of peace and comfort. There were times I threw in the towel and settled. I thought I’d never find love, fidelity, or contentment. But little by slowly, all those things came my way. And the key was breaking out of the isolation of the given behavior I was struggling with at the time. 

One of the most amazing things that happened to me was finding a level of recovery when I was 17 years sober that I thought impossible. This layer of awareness came my way as the result of yet another emotional bottom that revealed a place of comfort and like-minded people who had struggled at the hands of the addictions of others. I thought, being an alcoholic, that I had no right to experience the kind of personal growth they offered. But I was assured there was a seat at the table for me as well. I learned that the alcoholism that surrounded my life had effected me as deeply as my own addictions. 

I didn’t join this group of folks to quit smoking, but that’s what happened. I didn’t join this group of folks to give up flings and find personal integrity, but that’s what happened. I didn’t join them to return to the water, start swimming, and rekindle my passion for the sport, but that’s what happened. And I certainly never intended to return to recreation full time, but that’s what I’m looking to do.  

I saw this morning that Aaron Hernandez had killed himself. I then witnessed the shit-storm of hate for this man’s deeds on social media. It brought me back to that place of fear and self-loathing that I had at such dangerously high levels in 1997 (there have been struggles since, but never to that magnitude). And I thought of friends of mine who have lost sons, daughters, uncles, aunts, siblings, parents, friends and a host of other relations to the terrible diseases that fan the flames of suicide. 

And I thought of Tiger, and his well-documented struggles. And how deeply they have effected his professional and personal life. And how quickly the social media age and the public judge and condemn people who stumble and fall. 

Then I thought of those that see all of this and suffer in silence, like I once did. No matter who I was talking to, or what behaviors I was engaged in, no one could see the immediate desperation that was so ever-present in my life at that time. Heck! Even I couldn’t see it!

So let’s all try and be a little more gentle with one another, shall we? 

Peace,

M