battle tested love

I recently watched an interview with Shia Labouf on the real ones. The man is battling and has battled demons and you can see it throughout the interview. The reason I’m bringing this interview up in this blog is because of the way this man describes LOVE. I have never in my life heard anyone describe love, the love I feel for my wife, he described it perfect. He beings talking about how his girlfriend now had to take a loss to be with him. How he was at rock bottom, and he had no one else and she was there for him. He went away to a rehab place, and she was the only one to show up for him.

He talks about how he didn’t deserve love like that. How he had nothing to offer her, and she was still there. It is so close to the story of how I found true love in my now beautiful wife. I had nothing when I met her. NOTHING. I was a raging alcoholic sleeping on peoples couches with no job, no path in life and I was begging for death. I was so depressed. I had zero going for me and I met this woman. She had two kids, working her ass off being a great mom, dealing with her crazy abusive baby daddy, dealing with all the drama of her own family and she met me.

She had to come hang out with me at my friend’s house as I’m sleeping in his recliner. For whatever reason this woman sees something in me that no one else did. Everyone gave up on me at this point including a lot of my family. I was getting shit on left and right from my family for being an alcoholic when a lot of them drink heavily. Not long after she met me my friend kicked me out and I was homeless. She took me in without hesitation. No one knew where I was besides her and even though I was drinking, she kept believing in me day in and day out.

I started to fall in love with her, but I was so confused why she liked me or wanted anything to do with me. In my mind I’m just a lost cause. A drunk failure, who was a disgrace to his family and himself. I tried getting sober many times and she stood by me the whole time. I got my third Ovi right after I met her. So, I ended up having to go to jail for sixty days straight. She came three times a week to see me. She made sure I had food in there, she made sure I could talk to her, and she never left my side. I got out and I couldn’t stop. I always had this feeling that she was going to leave me, I thought all this is temporary and she would leave me like everyone else did eventually.

I was put on probation for the OVI, and they made me wear an alcohol monitor. I stayed sober the whole time I had the monitor on but a few weeks after I got it off, I relapsed and had to go back to jail because part of my probation was no drinking. This time when I went back to jail the withdrawal was so bad that I was hallucinating, and I collapsed so the squad took me from the jail to the hospital. The whole time I hallucinated and as I have written in a past blog, I thought my now wife was killed. After I woke up from being sedated a few days, they let me talk to her on the phone, but I didn’t believe it was her till she actually got to the hospital.

She came to see me every night I was in there. Once I got out of jail, I stayed sober for a while, and we started to plan our wedding. Six months later when she went with my mother and sister to get her wedding dress, I relapsed. She gave me a few months to try to get sober, but I kept drinking more and more behind her back till I ran out of money. She had taken my wallet the night I relapsed, but I had a huge jar of change that lasted me a while just drinking straight cheap vodka. The day came that I ran out of money and withdrawal set in. It was the worse I ever experienced, and she was done.

She dropped me off at the E.R. and told me we were through forever. The hospital was awful, and she had already called my probation officer, told him I relapsed, and I went straight from a week in the hospital to jail. Jail was even more awful because they didn’t give me all the prescriptions the hospital had sent with me and I ended up having a seizure while climbing to my bunk, falling and busting my skull open on a metal desk that was bolted to the wall. At least that’s what everyone told me, all I remember is waking up in the emergency room getting my head stapled shut.

I had to still go back to jail with almost thirty staples in my head and serve out my time. For some reason, my wife still cared. She put money on my books so I could call her, and she told me she still loved me. I got out and went to a half-way house for a few months and her and the kids came to see me every chance they got. Then I got a good job and my probation officer let me move back with her as long as I had an alcohol monitor on. I still to this day don’t understand why she still loved me or even loved me at all. Through all the bullshit, the pain, the tears.

Through my depression, alcoholism and all the shit that came with me, she loved me for who I really was. Once I moved back in with her, I remember telling her, I got us from now on and I will never hurt you a day in our life. Four years later, married for going on two years, sober for four, good job for four years having a beautiful baby boy to add to our other two children and one beautiful boy on the way I think how if I never met her, I would be six feet under. I would of never gotten to experience the amazing joy of marriage, the amazing joy of becoming a father and watching your first child be born.

I have turned my life completely around and am now trying to help others struggling. I thank God every day that he brought her into my life and for giving her the love to never ever give up on me. I’ve never loved a human being so much in my life and it is a joy each and every millisecond to be married to my best friend and watch her be the most amazing mother I could ever imagine parenting with. Never give up. EVER. Sometimes all we need is love to show us what we are really worth and what good we can do for this world. We all have so much to offer this world, don’t let anyone or anything let your light stop shinning!

This is for you Justice! I love you more than words can describe, and I am so lucky to find someone so beautiful, loyal and loving. You are forever my queen! I want to live with you even when we are ghost because you were there for me when I needed you most.