Determined To Succeed

Day eighteen.

Today I am a bundle of energy and a bundle of nerves. What a way to start the day. You know that feeling. It’s anticipation, that feeling when you are expecting something or waiting for something to happen but don’t quite know when it is so you sit and wait…and wait some more.

Yesterday I met with Dr. John, the first of two appointments I had and I have gotta tell ya, it was a meeting well-worth going to. He was awesome. In just five minutes of talking to me his experience told him so much about me that I sat there, dumbfounded, at how much he could read me like the pages of an open book. He told me about behaviors, and he told me about addictions and addictive traits. Most of all, though, he challenged me. He challenged me by slicing through my bullshit and hitting me with one gut-wrenching but true fact.

He said, “Bill, because of your addiction, you are only using 20% of your full potential.”

It’s not easy when you’re told how much better you could be if you didn’t piss away a portion of your life wasting time on something that had such control over your life like this did mine. What he said hurt and it was on my mind the rest of the day. Not necessarily in a bad way but in a “wake up” way.

I used to be so fucking arrogant. I always used to think I was better than most people, especially people you can look at and say “damn, they look fucked up, don’t they?!” The “rode hard, put away wet people” who look drugged out and knocked out even when out in daylight. Why do I say this? Because one of the reasons I am in this predicament is that I was arrogant enough to believe I was above this kind of shit. I went to college, got a degree and used to hold a $70K-a-year job. I hung out with people who were not like the people you see hanging out on street corners. I hung out with like-minded, well-educated people who talked politics and drank martinis, not baby-mamas and daddies who couldn’t put together a cohesive sentence if they tried. I was arrogant, conceited and just plain wrong, and in the end I learned I was no better. Not only that, I was worse because I knew better! I had access to all the resources in the world. I just chose to ignore it all for my addiction. That’s what an addiction does to you. It puts you in a leaky-ass boat on the river of denial without a paddle.

I once thought my accomplishments were pretty cool, and some of them are. I’ve met people who were pretty important, politicians, celebrities and the like, and have done things I am very proud of (like having the Chicago Sun-Times print the American flag as a pull-out page so people could show the flag after September 11, 2001 or helping a mom give her dying son the experience of a lifetime simply by setting up a movie screening). But these are moments, moments that showed signs of the potential I knew I could reach but never did because I was afraid. Stupidly but plainly afraid, and part of that fear was letting go of the addictions in my life.

When I started attending twelve-step meetings I was nervous so I sat and observed minor details, like that the meeting was comprised of this many women and and that many men, some older, some younger, some white and some not (there was one woman who was Filipino, I think, and one black guy which, with me, made one-and-a-half black guys, I guess). And they all looked normal. And ain’t that a shitty thing to say, “they looked normal.” Like you can tell what an addict looks like on sight. But as I am being honest here (truly, a new thing for me) and since I am trying to keep this as real as I can I was half-expecting to see people who looked like they did crack as a hobby or never left the world of Dungeons & Dragons and used the internet as their own personal girlfriend or boyfriend.

But that’s not the truth. The truth is the people I saw and met looked like the people you stand in line with at the store, take your orders for crappy merchandise on the phone and do your taxes. They are normal every day people who were nice, accepting and non-judgmental. In other words, they looked just like you and me. People like your neighbors, friends and family members. People who are in front of you at the drive-thru in the morning and behind you in church on Sunday afternoons. We are everywhere and we need help and I, for one, am so glad I finally admitted it to myself and others.

That is why I am a bundle of energy and nerves today. I am ready. Finally fucking ready to not be a coward any more. You see, honesty in any shape or form was such a foreign concept to me and lying such a way of life that anything honest, truly honest, felt wrong. I even made attempts to stop my behavior and failed and that shame held me back. My actions held me back. But I am not accepting failure anymore.  I am committed to getting well again, gaining control over my life and being my mother, JoAnn’s, son again. And I am finally ready to live up to my fullest potential not just in career but as a human being. I am.

This road we travel is a scary one but I am doing my best to hold my head up high and make that inventory of myself to make sure I never do the things I’ve done again. And everything I’ve said here and the past three weeks is absolutely applicable to weight loss, it is, because food can be an addiction. It certainly was for me. And once we restore that sanity, regain that control and live up to our fullest potential we can achieve our goals and dreams.

My name is Bill and this is my on-going story. Thank you for listening and thanks for letting me share.