I am

I am

I am 40 years old, a faithful husband, and a loving father of one and one to come. Our home is filled with hugs, kisses, and I love you, and two dogs and fish. We have arguments, we disagree. We agree to disagree. I ‘m honest, to a fault, but rarely do I wear my heart on my sleeve.

I am from white middle class American suburbia. A good Catholic family of seven kids, where condoms weren’t used and protection meant an older sister blanketed over a small boy, shielding me from daddy’s wrath. I‘m from a home of hushed secrets and secret touches. I lived in hypocrisy and endured lectures from the hypocrite about hypocrites. I am from a kind mother that wanted better for her family, and lived with resentment and regret to the day she passed.

I am from the house of horrors.


I’m from Sunday masses and Sunday school. From a parochial education that taught me enough to know not to pay attention to half of what they said. I’m from a school of thought that says don’t get your thoughts from school. I was an alter boy where Father Nelson took naked dips in the hot tub with bare boys, but I wasn’t one that gave my ass at the alter. I’m a failed attempt at Catholic brainwashing.

I am contempt.


I’m from the generation that came up after the hippies, wishing I could have been one. For eighteen years a daily half-fifth of Jim Beam and a few joints helped keep the nerves steady. Weekend drives down dark allies for a score and paying a 70 year old man with a snub nose .38 five dollars to hang out in the back of his ghetto dwelling while smoking crack cocaine with the whores. Nightmarish trips down windowpane lane; holding a blade to my wrist and contemplating a dive through the plate glass window at Stop-n-Go because I believed that my mind was gone forever. I had demons and they wanted fed and I fed them until I convulsed in overdose. Damage control became my way of life as divorces, lost jobs and jail became commonplace. I cussed god for making me and for the last 10 years of my drinking shame would keep me from seeing my own eyes in a mirror.

I am addiction.


I am 2am at The Waffle House, sitting with a new friend as tears roll down my face, craving my love, alcohol, fatal attraction. I am self help and self hell. I am 6 years without a drop. The only highs I’ve had are the kind that made me weep as I saw my first born enter this world. I’ve carried the cross of my own sins.

I am redemption


I am mind your own business, in-your-face, get outta mine. I did it my way, the hard way. Two real IQ tests, not this crap you take on the internet, gauge me to be more intelligent than 97 percent of you. A college drop-out, I manage to pull in more dough than 75 percent of the people in this country. Working 40 hours a week sitting on my ass in a comfy office chair doing what I love to do, designing automated and robotic systems, an honorable profession. I stress over how long I can keep up this charade before those that pay me discover that I suck at my job and replace me with someone worthy.


I am ego riddled with fear.


I am a human being