Just Me

Recently, I celebrated being alcohol-free for 6 months. What is interesting is that the date – April 12th – was my dad’s heavenly birthday. He would have been 71. Also interesting is that it was alcohol that killed my father. He had a terrible drinking habit and it got out of hand during his last days. He was binge drinking a lot and on that night that he died, he had been drinking several beers until he ended up having what was probably his sixth and final heart attack. He had recently had heart surgery and while he was warned to cut back on alcohol, he didn’t listen. And in the end, his drinking is what killed him. That fact was not lost on me when I was in the hospital a little over 6 months ago and I was recovering from alcohol-induced pancreatitis. I was forced to take a good hard look at just how badly my desire to destroy myself had gotten. Up until then, I had lost my passion for life, and my desire to live. But when I was in that hospital, I made one decision: I want to live.

In my last blog post, I was talking about how I was going to apply for a job as an assistant to people with disabilities. The place I was going to apply for this job called such a person a “direct support professional,” or DSP for short. I applied for the job and was eventually hired. After some time spent training, I was able to actually do that kind of work. Since this was my first “real” job after years of odd jobs babysitting, petsitting, cleaning offices and houses and as a working writer who worked from home, I have since learned all of the real-world rules about having a real job and being a part of the working world. And despite being profoundly deaf (and without a hearing aid – my last hearing aid caused my ear to become infected and I was pretty much against getting a new one), I was still able to work this job. And that was great. Then my anxiety and panic attacks started up again – and this time, more frequently than they have in the past – but I have been figuring out ways