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Life of an Addict (Pt. 3)

Coming Home

By Fellow KneePublished 5 years ago 3 min read
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Bad Habits are hard to break

After spending a little over a month in the hospital, and another month and some days in a rehab center, I finally got to go home. It wasn't the "welcome home" I'd hoped for, considering I had gotten involved with a girl that ended up being crazier than I thought I was. Being as which, it was a short-lived relationship, thank the Lord. I'll leave it without much description. Trust me, you're not missing much.

I had to go home to live with my mother for about two months. She was so great to me, she helped me in so many ways. The doors to her bathroom were too small for my wheelchair to get into, which made me have to go to my father's apartment to be able to get into the shower. He helped me a lot too. One morning, as we were leaving his apartment for a doctor's appointment, one of the ladies that worked in the main office of his apartment building stopped him, just as we were getting in the car to leave. She said, "I'm not sure if you know or not, but you are only allowed ten overnight guests a year here."

"This is my son," my dad said, "He stays with me so I can get him to his doctors appointments. He was paralyzed in a car accident a couple months ago."

She seemed very empathetic to the issue, but continued to say that if I stayed there too much, he would be evicted. So she told me to fill out an application and I would be put at the top of the list for a handicap apartment. Lo and behold, less than two weeks later, they told us that there was an apartment available in town. She said we could look at it in a couple of days, once it had been cleaned out. We were very excited and went to go see the apartment, and told them we would take it immediately. It was nice. It had hardwood floors and three nice size bedrooms. It was a great place for me to wheel around in my wheelchair. The neighborhood that it resided in, however, and was one of the worst ones in the town, and that proved to be one of my next biggest challenges in recovering from my addiction.

I had met a wonderful girl the night before I moved into my new place. We ended up hitting it off so well, that she moved in with me and my dad. We will call her Abby. She was a great girl. She accepted me for who I was. Like, she didn't even see my wheelchair. My family loved her and she loved us all. That was in June of 2013, about seven months after my accident.

Abby helped me in so many ways. She was the perfect girlfriend. We got along great. She was so hospitable to all my friends and they all loved her to pieces. Only problem was that we both liked to drink a little to much. I had turned to alcohol to self-medicate the depression I dealt with each and every day. Being in that damn chair was horrible. Even tho I acted like I was making the best of a bad situation, I was really suffering inside.

Most days, I would wake up and start drinking within the first couple hours of opening my eyes. And I wouldn't stop until I usually was passed out sitting in my wheelchair, or flipped backwards in it and passed out on the floor. Yeah, I was a mess, but, honestly, that was nothing.

I managed to only drink, other than taking the pain medication that I was prescribed, for close to a year after I moved in my new place and got with Abby. During that time I had proposed to her on her birthday and we planned to get married in the next couple of years. I knew I had a bad drinking problem, but my addict mentality told me that it was not a problem. I figured, as long as I'm not sticking a needle in my arm, like I had been doing for ten years before my accident, I was good. Little did I know, that's exactly where I was headed back to. And it would sneak up on me, putting its evil fangs in me for at least one more go around. There was nothing I could do about it, or at least nothing I would do about it...

If you're enjoying these true stories of my life and would like me to continue adding more, please donate to help fund me in keeping it going. Thank you and I hope you return for the next part.

addiction
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About the Creator

Fellow Knee

Paraplegic artist that has been through more than 20 men go through in a lifetime. I want to share my life stories with you to let you "live my life" through my stories

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