By: Marc McMahon

It’s too early for this shit, to feel this way, but oh well here it goes………………

Ya know I just realized at 5:16 this morning with a wave of emotion so forceful not only did it knock the tears out of both of my eyes but almost the cup of coffee out of my hand. That my very existence as a child, my life, the reason I saw fit to get up out of bed every morning into the unknown chaos that I new to be my life was to see my Grandparents!

Oh wow can’t even hardly see out of my damn glasses to type. I hate this shit sometimes because it really, really, hurts. Try being 48 yrs old, 218 days clean and sober and alone in your apt. realizing this after 3 days of sleeping a total of 12 hours. An hour and a half at a time. Maybe though, that is exactly what was needed in order to foster the needed state of mind required to allow this memory to come forward. The fertile soil giving way to the bright green sprout as it boldly breaks through the earth to begin its new life. The supremely high octane fuel necessary to propel this memory from the pit of my hell to the forefront of my mind this morning.

The next ordered step sent down from my God on High to his Angels here near me to execute as the next phase of my Holy Spirit-Powered, completely of the wall, you wouldn’t believe me if I told you so why bother recovery plan. That God has so graciously seemed to bless me and this 9,000th recovery attempt of mine with. The next memory to be exhumed from my cemetery of childhood memories that my mind has been keeping hidden from me for some 40+ years.

Feelings Sometimes Uninvited

Kind of like if you were walking down the street minding your own business. When all of the sudden an all black van pulls up next to you, slides open the side door and 3 huge men all in black with guns jump out, toss you in, and speed off. Once inside the van you cannot understand the language spoken, you are in moments gagged, bound, and a black hoodie is pulled over your face and cinched tight around your neck. Wrapped up neatly with duct tape around the ankles and you are scared to near death.

Van stops, door slides open and away you go not walking being quickly carried obviously up stairs, door opens, BOOM! You land hard on a carpeted floor as you feel the cold backside of a steel blade slide across the insides of your wrists and sliced……………………The duct tape is cut off your wrists and door slams closed, locked! You awkwardly free yourself only to realize your back in your apartment but somethings different, very different, and its scary, and it starts to hurt and its…..Grandma………Granpa, is that you??

And your torture is the pain from the past that your mind said you would never be able to handle so it kept it hidden away all these years from you hoping to spare you the grief but only actually creating more and leaving you on the street with a 20+ plus year drug addiction because you were completely broken inside but could not for the life of you figure out why. Every time you went and asked for help and tried to get better they couldn’t figure it out either so finally you hurt so bad one day you just say the hell with it and try to DIE!

Emotional Overload, Then Rebirth

I’m sorry you guys I really am for talking like this but this stuff has to come out and I have nowhere else to put it and nobody else who even cares to hear it so sorry, but your all I got………………………………………………………………..After a long pause to dry my face and my glasses, equally important, to catch my breath. I went out on my front porch and had a cigarette a moment to pause and reflect on this a moment and this is what I came back with here ten minutes later. That writing lasted a total of thirteen minutes yet I feel like I just worked an entire 10 hour shift throwing chains around 40ft iron beams as a rigger at the old steel mill I worked at years ago in Seattle.

Emotions can be a handful, if not dealt with properly they can be crippling, completely debilitating, leaving one literally paralyzed from emotional trauma/stress. Unable to cope with life on a daily basis because of them, some who never turned to drugs to cope either, I give them props for having the courage to go all natural because I sure wasn’t man enough then to try.

I am finally just this past 7.5 months beginning to piece together the memories from my childhood. I went through the majority of my life until a few months ago holding onto four memories from four different times in my childhood, that was it. I was not sure exactly what order they went in just that I knew the houses that were in those memories because each revolves around one specifically.

No matter how hard I have tried over the years. No matter how much Treatment, or Therapy (group, individual, or both, public pay or private) I have attended I cannot seem to be granted access to any more then the four clusters of memories my mind has marked as safe for me to see. I am talking like ages birth to 8yrs old, four little tidbits of memories, blurry at best but the houses are clear and the two are well actually two are very clear.

Moral of The Story

The one that started this mornings chain of events is and always has been my favorite of the four and the longest memory, it plays like a movie in my mind sometimes adding or subtracting a seen depending on what season its in I guess who knows :). The longer I stay clean the closer I am getting to being able to piece back together my childhood from first memory to about age 11. A journey of incredible discovery, deep-seated emotional pain, and awe-inspiring growth if I don’t say so myself.

I want to say that this holiday season although without family, and in another state where the people I have known the longest I have only known about 8 months and where I will inevitably wake up on Christmas morning alone, and spend it alone. That I am looking forward to this Christmas as much as any other Christmas I have before as an adult. You see this Christmas I get to keep all the gifts I receive because my drug dealer won’t get them in trade for dope. But more importantly, I get to spend it with the two people who care about me most in this life today…………………….My God and Myself and that my friends is a priceless gift that will keep on giving whether I am surrounded by people or not.

Much love to you all my friends, and a heart full of love to all of you and your families this holiday season. May God bless you and Keep you until then. 🙂

About the Author: Marc is a 48-year-old Author, Speaker, and Soldier in a war to loosen the grasp that Substance Abuse has on our society. He is a Father, Son, and friend to all those seeking refuge from this incorrigible disease. Marc resides in the beautiful Pacific Northwest where he enjoys, writing, hiking, and kicking the disease of addiction in the teeth, every chance he gets. As Marc always likes to say, “be blessed, my friends!”