In 1992, I was living in Oakland with my parents and sister, working with hazardous waste making $42.50/hr. I went to Vegas for one year, and then I came back to Oakland to live with my parents and sister. On one particular night I was at home watching TV with my family when my ex-girlfriend came knocking at my door. I hadn’t seen her for about one year. She was holding a little baby. I invited her into my parents’ home, and she told me that this was my child. At first, I didn’t believe her. Until two weeks later, when I got a blood test and found out it was actually my child.
We started to see each other all over again, and I helped her with my son and her two other sons that she had, which I liked very much. In the seven years while we lived together, we had two homes and all sorts of animals. Over a period of time we had three ducks, three hamsters, three dogs, fish, and two cats.
I was arrested three times while I was with her. I received three felonies. I served 52 months behind bars, went back to her and stayed for another year and a half. After that, we left each other, and we’ve been separated now for 15 years. I started to pay child support weekly — $250 a week – but the money ended up going into my addiction. My addiction was alcohol, cocaine and heroin. I had a job with this company doing janitorial work, but I lost it because of my addiction.
So that’s when I started my journey on trying to stay sober. I’ve been on this journey since I was 38. I’m now 44. I’ve been in 7 different recovery programs. I’ve been in this program for one year. I worked at the diner for two and a half months. I was working in-house as the senior houseman, which I loved very much. I now have a new sponsor, and I’m learning a lot about myself, my defects in character, my anger issues, pain that I was going through as a child. And the loneliness as I was growing up as a child, that’s one of the reasons why I’m a loner. So my counselor thought it would be a good idea to be the houseman so I could interact with the rest of the house and learn how to have more confidence in myself, and bring up my self-esteem. And it’s working, because now I’m very direct, I have good self-esteem, and I like who I am. I graduated from the program in February. I found a job, so I can be independent.
I’m now in Project Read, which is helping me to better my reading and writing. I like it very much. My tutor is really good and she’s helping me out a lot. I like working with her because she is funny. She’s like my counselor in that she wants me to have a better life. Someday I will have my son in my life and he will live with me, so I can be a real father. That’s my goal, too. That’s my goal.
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