Depression has eaten away at me like a cancer.

My anxiety has made it impossible to look people in the eye. My relationships have all eroded or faded away. My fiancé is gone now too. 2000 miles away from my touch. A universe away from my heart. Maybe i am being too hard on myself. Maybe I'm just a child that never learned proper coping mechanisms. Whatever the reason for my current state, i am fully aware of the consequences of my actions. Point being, my behavior must change or i never will. I could die. My behavior pattern is hopelessly compulsive at best, dangerously impulsive at its worst. The drinking isn't helping.

"GET HIM OUT OF HERE!"

When i was ten years old i missed the school bus one morning and walked into my mother's room to let her know i would need a ride soon.

I found her rocking my 18 year-old sister in her arms, both of them were covered in blood.

There was a quiet chaos about the scene. my big sis was bleeding to death from her trachea. She had undergone a procedure a few months prior that we hoped would extend her life. The brittle bones in her neck where failing under the weight of her head which meant her spinal chord was slowing being crushed causing her motor skills to dwindle.

As a senior in high school, she really needed them to complete her work and get her diploma. The solution was agreed upon. I watched in horror as the surgeons put her in traction so her neck could stretch for two agonizing pre-op days. A metal halo around her head, silver bolts being screwed 1/8th of an inch into her skull, a child's face twisting in pain. I still question how in God's name they allowed a 9 year-old boy to watch the process.

A portion of her femoral bone was cut out and placed in her neck to help support the weight of her head. My chest tightens and pains me every time I have to walk into a hospital. The 10 hour surgery was a success but she was left with a permanent hole in her trachea.

That December morning, one week after my tenth birthday i stumbled into the room to watch her bleed to death from that hole in her neck. My mom screaming at the live-in nurse to get me the hell out of there.

I failed a breathalyzer in 7th grade, it was a kegger at a friends' house a few blocks away from 24 hr softball tournament that ran all weekend each August. Alcohol has been apart of my life since i turned 13.

When i was 12 i was fooling around with another boy. Before i knew what was happening we were having anal sex. We took turns on each other, i was on top first but didn't fully understand what was taking place. When i was done and it was clear it was my turn to be on bottom, i didn't want to but i felt like it was only fair. I remember telling him i didnt want to catch AIDS. My 12 year-old mind still equated homosexuals with the deadly disease exclusively.. What did i know about anything? I let him do it. At least I had had the courtesy to pull out.

My parents divorced my senior year.

I left smallville kansas after a failed year at college. I woke my mother up on night at 2 am. I had filled my car with whatever i deemed worthy to make the trip for my new start in Colorado. Im leaving i told her, before its to late to ever get out of this town. That night, the same softball tournament i told you about was happening. I found out later that my best friend's mother died of lung cancer in the house where i blew a ridiculous BA content and got in trouble with the cops. She died that night i left town.

I am working on me this year.

For the most part i think I'm doing okay. Working out at the gym, keeping my passions on top of the priority list. Guitar and golf practice. Keeping important people in the loop and all that.. If only i could keep my drinking under control...

I woke up from a black out on my 20th birthday. My friend was driving my car on 2 bare rims. Someone at my birthday party had slashed my tires and the 30 minute drive from Golden to Denver had shed the rubber off the wheels completely. We went into a snow bank and didn't know what to do so we just fell aslep and waited for the police but not before we cleared out the bottle of jim beam and 20 beer cans of course.

The car was impounded and the bong in the back seat remained until i retrieved it a week later. Lucky me. I had broken my leg in a freak accident and had lost my house and my job, i spent my last $300 to bail my car out because the "friend" that was driving refused to. That Ford Tauraus was my home.

The shame and discomfort i was in was bearing down on me.

I was becoming confused about my sexuality and had turned to drugs and alcohol again. After i got my car back, i drank a gallon of Even Williams and swallowed an entire bottle of sleeping pills. It didn't work.

FLASH FORWARD

At 24 i was living in Hawaii, i had curbed so many of my demons and i was in the best shape of my life. My anxiety was still around but had subsided a great deal.

I was debt free, had a prestigious job and i met the love of my life!

I had even finally started to realize my lifelong goal of buying braces for the crooked teeth i loathed more than anything on earth. I spent every dime i had on invisalign braces. I was in love, I was a working professional and had a beautiful girl that i was so sure i would marry all while I was making my dreams come true and living in paradise. A real world fairytale and yet somehow, most of the time all i could feel was pain, desperation, and shame.

MY DEMONS RETURN

The drugs and alcohol revved up again. I was in a tailspin. One night i decided to give into my curiosity.

I snuck out while my baby was sleeping on her side of our bed. I met another man at his house and we had sex. It was disturbing to me. I was repulsed and excited all at the same time.

Basically, i had never had such a powerful orgasm.

I must have liked it enough because i met up with the guy a few times a month for the following year. Before i knew it, i was officially bi sexual. I was also cheating on my girlfriend. My mind was muddled with substance abuse, love, confusion, sadness. I decided to tell my best friend in the world and damn the repercussions.

MY BEST FRIEND HAPPENED TO BE MY GIRLFRIEND

I fibbed a little when i came out to her about it. We lived on an island after all. When she demanded to know his name i lied. I lied about the timeframe of my experiment as well. As far as she knew he had moved away to the mainland long before we got together. I just wanted to tell someone I trusted that i was bisexual. I would do anything for this woman. Including coming out but i couldn't afford to lose her. The pain of lying to her as well as the pain of my own self discovery led to an even deeper despair. I failed a second suicide test.

I have absolutely no control over my consumption or my spending habits.

The two go hand in hand. I'm playing the ultimate game of catch 22. The endless cycle of being miserable because I'm poor while spending all my money trying to cheer myself up. Just like my dad, only he was never a drunk.

4 years into our relationship we sold everything we owned so we could backpack the world. We had a tremendous time on our open ended adventure. Until one day we were arguing at an atm on a remote island in southeast asia. We got so fed up with each other we simply walked in different directions and didn't realize we had left our debit card with all our money in the machine until the following day.

Stranded and angry, we broke up in Thailand but couldn't part ways until we landed in the U.S to divide the money we had saved together and put into the one bank account. Devastated, lost, alone and nearly broke i tried to pick up the pieces but found a lot of them had gone missing. Once again, Alcohol became a daily routine. Only this time i was truly at rock bottom.

My invisalign was cut short by a year because of the traveling. After all the money and time i invested, my almost straight teeth were doomed to return to their original crooked positions. My dream was dissolving. I was Completely disconnected from my family, carrying insurmountable debt in a town i didnt want to be in, losing my best friend and failing at everything i tried really killed my spirit. I failed a third suicide attempt. I'll spare you the details.

Life got pretty nasty for me.

A living hell of bi-polar sadness and mania fueled by a new addiction: sex with strangers.

I would drink and troll through casual encounters on craigslist for hours. Many times going over the same posts and not realizing it until I responded to them and saw that i had already tried. I met up with men in sheds, in dark basements, in gigantic houses over looking the river. I met a married woman on Craigslist who told me her husband let her loose every now and then and how it was healthy for them.

When she took me back to her place she told me we had to film us fucking so her husband could watch.

I still cringe when i think of them watching the tape together. I did a lot of things I'm not proud of but I am trying not to beat myself up about them anymore. I guess if i was enjoying myself and that's how I chose to spend my time, so be it. Anything to take my mind off finances, death and my lost love.

I have had experiences i wouldn't trade for the world. I have deeply personal anecdotal evidence of manifest destiny. I learned that rock bottom is the choice time to excercise will, intent, and meditate. If you can shut your brain down during intense emotionally trying times, clarity is within reach and if you can smile through the pain and tell yourself to lighten up miracles happen.

Half the day i want to live but most of the time i fantasize about my own death.

What will it take to swing the pendulum permanently in one direction or the other? Is being a traumatized bisexual drug/alcohol addict reason enough to end life? Or is it motivation to climb out from the depths of despair to succeed at something IN life? Do i suffer from PTSD, or is it just a chemical imbalance that leads me down such dark roads..... will I ever love again?

-Secret Writer

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