This post is part of SoCS!

Here is my disclaimer, I started this very late last night and went to bed and I continued this evening so I apologize for the lateness again.

Every once in a while I question my birth. I know that my parents did not want a boy.  I do have two older sisters whom I adore and have been my fiercest protectors, my biggest fans and two of the greatest best friends a brother could ever have. Throughout my life I have had so many things go wrong. As a child, I was not the most perfect child – all I ever wanted was attention from my parents and anyone else, and it did not matter if it was good or bad. I knew at the age of six that I was different from other children – specifically boys. I knew that I like boys – not necessarily for sex at that age, I just knew that I was attracted to boys. When I was little when other children would watch TV with their parents and siblings – I was made to sit on the side of a wall with my back to the living room so I could not see the TV. If I did anything wrong such as lie, steal food from kids or anything that my parents felt I should not do, my punishment was that my father would make me at five or six jalapeno peppers and then I would be locked in my room. I spent a lot of time locked in my room, I suppose even back then I was becoming institutionalized.

When my parents got divorced neither one of them wanted me to live with them, so their divorce judge sent me to a place called Devereaux Foundation in Victoria, Texas on September 13, 1979 one day before my 13th birthday on September 14th. I was only supposed to be there for a year and my father continued to pay $2,000 a month for another two years until it was determined that I would return to my mother a little after my 16th birthday. While I was I was supposedly diagnosed as being slightly retarded with high attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). While at Devereaux I thrived because I was getting the attention I craved from the staff and a particular boy who I had my very first homosexual sexual affair with for three years. I often wonder what ever happened to Randy Maggard.

When I returned to my mother in October 1982 I was an awkward 16 year old that had not realy been socialized other than for the same individuals that were at Devereaux for the previous three years. High school was not very memorable. I did have my first job at McDonald’s and I met some lifelong friends. But McDonald’s was the beginning of a long string of unsatisfying jobs , yet that wasn’t even the beginning. I learned that I was pretty damn good at shoplifting and this before I started passing of bad checks. My mother would even encourage me to get her books, cigarettes and anything else. Again, this was all in efforts to gain attention. Well attention I got. Between 1984 and 1988 I did four different stints in the Texas Department of Criminal Justice corrections facilities. I spent time on a couple of the more notorious units and yet I never got in trouble while still getting plenty of attention from the guys who I was involved with while incarcerated.

In September 1990 I was paroled to San Antonio Texas. A few months after moving to San Antonio, I began my many stents working at several of the gay bars here in town. I also worked waiter jobs. Back then while I did drink and I did dabble with cocaine, never would I have imagined how badly my addictive personality would become with those two things. On New Year’s Eve 1995, while drunk and high I left a party and my partner of five years and went home with someone. I wound up having unprotected sex with them and little did I know that this individual was HIV-positive. I did not know at the time, nor would I know for another year that he had passed the virus on to me. Although I was working and making some money, I was also donating plasma twice a week and had been for about three years. In January 1997 I went to my location to donate plasma and they pulled me back into an office with a doctor and proceeded to tell me that I could no longer donate plasma because I was HIV-positive. I went into denial until May 1997, at that point I went to the San Antonio Metropolitan health District and got tested. After which I face the truth that yes I was HIV-positive.

In the summer of 1997 I went for my second stent in rehab at the patrician movement here in San Antonio. It was during this time that I learned that my mother was very ill with cirrhosis of the liver and hepatitis C. Now mind you, when I learned of my health I thought that I would just go home and die with my mother. My higher power whom I choose to call God had a different plan for me, and I still don’t know what that plan is. When I got out of rehab and I was living in my apartment by myself I spoke to my mother every day until the day of her death. So let me back up a second in early 1988 I went to work for a company called Metro news company. I told my boss that I was in recovery as a an addict and alcoholic. She asked me if I would ever do cocaine again and I said I don’t know if something tragic or devastating happened, I don’t know.

On Mother’s Day May 10, 1998 I called the hospice care facility that my mother was in, she was in one of those hepantic comas. I told the nurse who answered the phone if you go in to make her comfortable or give her water whatever please tell her that her baby in San Antonio called to wish her happy Mother’s Day and  to tell her that he loves her. This was between 10:15 and 10:30 AM. At 11 AM I get a call from my sister and she asked me what am I doing and if I was sitting down. I told her I was not sitting down and she told me I needed to sit down. She proceeded to tell me that our grandma Wanda had called her to tell her that our mother had passed at 10:30 AM. Grandma Wanda had not called her and my sisters had not called her, my mother was truly waiting for me before she left us.

So back to my boss who asked if I would ever do cocaine again, I called her and told her my mother passed and she told me to her at the office in 15 minutes. I did meet her at the office and she reminded me of that conversation we had and she asked if I wanted a line. That was the beginning of six months of nothing but being a functioning cocaine addict and alcoholic in which my boss was providing all the cocaine. On October 6, 1998 which was my mother’s birthday I was arrested at my office for a probation violation because I had not been reporting because I knew I would fail the urine test. I again wound up in the state penitentiary just for a few months.

In January 1999 I came back to San Antonio again was working hard to get my life back together and start working at a great job called Sitel Corporation in which I made some lifelong friends. I was still dabbling in cocaine and I was still drinking does not heavily. To backtrack to 1996 a mutual friend of mine introduced me to this very handsome man who is 12 years older than me. At that time we became what people would say our friends with benefits, then we lost touch in 1998 when I went to jail. In January 2001 this man called me out of the blue because he just needed a friend to talk to. It was almost as though we had picked up where we never even started. What I will say about this particular piece of my history, is that through all kinds of stuff he and I are still together going on 16 1/2 years.

When I moved in with him in October 2001 I was at rock bottom. I had been helping cut cocaine and stuff out of my apartment I was doing it all the time and I had lost my apartment. I was still doing coke when I’m moved in with my better half and I was told it’s either this or me figure it out. So I quit doing coke, I still drank all the way until 2011 during the summer. Now during this time I not only got me a bachelor of arts in communication but I also earned a Master of arts in communication from the University of Texas at San Antonio. Oh and I was a full-time staff member at the University for six years until my drinking and cocaine got the better of me and I had to leave. After I left the University in February 2014 I began a journey of recovery from alcohol abuse and cocaine addiction which lasted almost 2 1/2 years. Well I fought for two years to get back the University when everybody said I would never go back and I did return on July 1, 2015. I worked hard for almost 2 years but then life happened.

My better half and I started 2016 with 10 dogs. Beginning on January 4 and ending on May 27 we went from 10 dogs to five dogs. Three of our dogs we lost due to aggression issues, our littlest baby we lost due to health and my Patty I found laying in the middle of the road dead two doors from our house on May 27. All of this loss is just so much for me and that is when the drinking began again. Between May and September I had no inkling no not know nothing about cocaine. On September 11, 2016 my entire family except for my father and stepmother came to my 50th birthday party here in San Antonio and I had many friends that attended. I think there were 50 people at this party, and it was the first time I had ever had every single one of my family members in one room here in San Antonio. My actual birthday is September 14 and I was born in 1966.

On my actual birthday I took off half a day with no plans whatsoever. Well, that addictive personalities saboteur was very much a play. That afternoon I hit every one of my normal haunts I drank plenty of beer, plenty of tequila and I purchased a good amount of cocaine. This became my downfall because over the next few months I missed a lot of work I continue to drink mass off continued to do coke until I was pushed out of my job. Let me rephrase that I wasn’t pushed out I took the meat hook yanked my myself out because I was an idiot. The drinking and cocaine use continued even after I lost my job because I had a dealer who made it so easy as he would give it to me on credit.

On April 3 of this year while very drunk and high I took 30 trazodone trying to commit suicide, and again my higher power plans for me that I don’t know. Things are good today and just for today I will not drink and I will not use. I’m doing this for me because I have my husband and our seven dogs now and I have my sisters, their husbands, my nieces, their husbands, my great nieces and great nephews and I have my church family because yes I got my faith back again.

So while this is a very long post and I do apologize, no I don’t apologize because this is something that needed be written for a long time. So today it is September 3, 2017 and I am 11 days from my 51st birthday and I am proud to say that today I do not question my birth. My higher power whom I choose to call God has his plans for me and every day I just need to say made thy will be done not my will.

This is “What’s Rattled My Cage”!!!