Why should anyone care what you have to say?

I woke up this morning and picked up my tablet to write on this blog, I had no specific subject to talk about, I was just going to write whatever came to mind. What actually came to mind was a question directed at myself that I don't have an answer to but thought maybe if someone was going to take even a minute out of their lives to read my words, then maybe they should know more about me. The question was "why would anyone care what you have to say or what you think about anything?" The answer is that I don't know that anyone should or will. All I really know is that I have been through a lot of things that I feel like so many people are going through and have been through since the beginning of time.

There is nothing new or unique about my experiences, so why would anyone want to hear about them? There is one thing that I think may stand out and make me different. I have spent a lot of time in prison and much of that time was in solitary confinement. I am in this very moment still in prison. I am dead center still in the eye of the storm. Usually you hear and read about peoples experiences once they have already been through it, they give it to you from a perspective of having already gone through it but are back on safe ground and they share it from the way they remember it, doing their best to capture those moments and how they felt in them. It´s not often we get a play by play from the inside in the exact moments they are happening.

What else made me think that maybe what I have to say could be important and could possibly help someone is this obsession I have with self analysis. I know it sounds strange but I have and continue to closely watch the growth, change, and the way I am effected by what I go through. Having only myself and what is on the inside of me to focus on has been a painful blessing, although at times threatening to turn me almost psychotic:-)

Having the ability and patience to dissect things that happened 40 years ago and follow its effect step by step on how it has shaped who I have become as a result of it is valuable I think. The important thing about that though is it puts you in a place where you have the sight and understanding to change or better yourself.

As I said in my last post I am a drug addict in recovery. I was great at being an addict. I had zero self discipline. I was very self centered. My mother was an addict as well. I had 2 brothers and a sister, and then there was my step dad. I was the youngest. I was 100% a complete mammas boy. if my mom made something for dinner that I didn't like then I was able to have something different. For example while she mad stuffed cabbage for everyone, I would get cereal or maybe a grilled cheese. If one of my siblings didn't like what she made then they just didn't eat. They where not allowed to have anything separate. They all had to take turns doing dishes and chores and I had to do nothing. My mom always had excuses for why I would get treated different. She would say that I'm allergic to onions and that's why I would get to eat something else, but I wasn't allergic to anything. This caused my siblings to pick on me when my mom wasn't around.

I remember one time around x-mass it was snowing outside and it was getting late, I was staring out the window watching cars waiting for my mom to come home. I used to play this game with myself, I would tell myself one of the next 10 cars would be her, then I would count down and when I would reach zero and she still didn't come home I would start over. My sister and brothers would tell me things like "mom got in a car accident and she is dead on the side of the road somewhere". Man I would freak out and cry and scream at them. I remember chasing them with knives. Finally when she came home I would tell on them and they would get in trouble. My point is that as an adult I now know that my mom didn't do me any favors. My lack of self discipline, work ethic, having a sense of responsibility, I was missing those things and so much more as a result of being a " mammas boy".

When I got a little older and would get in trouble for stealing my mom would argue that I was innocent. She would blame the kids I was with. When my step dad would ground me my mom would let me do what I wanted as soon as he left for work. Growing up these things made me feel special and like my mom loved me more than anything in the world. We where very poor and my mom and step dad where addicts my whole life. Sometimes we lived in tents in the summer and in the winter we stayed In garages and would use small space heaters to keep warm.

Looking back I know my mom felt guilty and that's why she treated me that way. Because of how she treated me I was missing so many important values that I needed growing up and when it came to me being an addict it was the perfect storm. By the time I was 14 years old I was a complete crack monster. Smoking weed and doing a lot of acid when I was 11 and 12 years old was the setting for what was to come. Looking back I can see how I thought I was having so much fun, kids hanging out getting high and laughing having a good time. But because of essential values and personality traits that I was missing I became something else.

I don't blame my mom or hold any negative feelings towards her, she thought she was just loving me. That's not me making excuses for her either, it´s just what it was. That's why these things are so dangerous and out of control in our society I think. I even started that cycle all over again with my kids. It´s scary how easy it is to do your kids a disservice in the name of love.