One mistake that I’ve made on a consistent basis was being disrespectful. To whom?…. My mother, father, close friends and so on. As much as I knew I was being rude, I just wouldn’t get it. With this mistake comes many lessons to come.

I noticed that the same pattern that I created with my family and friends trickled into my relationships with my teachers and other authority figures in my life. I ended up getting expelled from school due to my smoking, drinking and full out disrespect.

How is it that after two great scenarios in my life, I still didn’t snap out of it?… Well it hit me in this program at “Caritas”. My anger, disrespect, laziness, sneaky behaviours.. you name it unravelled in here. Once day at King City, I was told to pack my bags and move to the city centre, in a blink of an eye. I developed quite an intimate relationship with everyone there despite my rude actions. The damage that I created though could not be mended in that split second that I had to move houses. Then and there is where I realized that I better create positive relationships because nobody knows when a sudden scenario can happen. Treat my family (mom, dad) with absolute respect, for they raised me and secondly, I never know when they’ll go.

I’ve made several mistakes in my twenty seven years on this earth but none stand out to me as much as the mistake I made when I was thirteen.  I was living with my father, in Newfoundland, at the time and the people who I considered friends were starting to pick on me and outcast me from the group.  I didn’t know how to handle the constant abuse they were putting me through and as a result began to become very hard on myself.  I think it was at this point in my life that I stopped seeing the world as a beautiful place and began to only see the cruelty that the world has to offer.  Things at home weren’t much better either, with a military father who expects a lot out of his only son, pressures were high and my desire to just hang out with my friends and have fun was looked down upon to say the least.  What I wanted to do and what my father wanted me to do were two very different things and seeing that he was the man of the household I had no other choice but to see things his way.  So, most of my time was spent in the woods with my father, when I wasn’t in school being picked on of course.

He was trying to teach me how to be an outdoorsman.  He taught me to hunt, fish, chop wood, track, and most of all work.  The only problem was I wanted to be hanging out with my friends who constantly picked on me, craving their acceptance.  Eventually not being accepted by the people I so yearned to be accepted by and having different desires than my father had for me became too much to bear.  So I decided to move to Nova Scotia with my mom and leave all my problems in Newfoundland where they belonged.  This was my biggest mistake.  I say this not because living with my mom was difficult or anything but because in that moment in time I learned to run away from my problems.  I learned that when situations become too much for me to handle I could very easily run from them and this gave birth to a whole list of other problems that still, to this day affect my life.  If there’s a valuable lesson to be learned from my whole ordeal it’s that, running from your problems doesn’t  make them go away it just makes them worse because not facing the obstacles that life throws at you just makes it that much harder to deal with the much larger obstacles that life presents further along the path of life.  Wherever you go there you are, and just because you decided to run away from your problems doesn’t mean your problems decided to run away from you.

My addiction became the only way to deal with life.  The ways of life for me were to hurt my family, hurt my friends, hurt others, and hurt myself.  The work that I did for my addiction was to steal, lie, cheat, spend earned money, and to rob.  My experience in rehabs and jail was not helping me become a healthy person.  I could not wake myself up from the nightmare I was living.

Learning to face my problems without running to drugs and alcohol has not been easy.  With the support and direction from the program I have the tools to build an independent life for myself.  The decision is mine to make in regards to how the rest of my life will be lived. 

I believe that one of my biggest mistakes is taking my life for granted.  I put no value to my time and procrastinated on all the important things in life that really matter.  For example, my family, my health, my friends and many more things that I can carry on about.

I’ve learned that like time these things I’ve taken for granted don’t always wait until I’m ready to appreciate them the way they deserve.  On the other hand, I’m very lucky to have the kind of family I do that is still waiting for me to pull myself together.  Of all the things I have taken for granted my family is the one that hurts the most.  I want to make it up to them and I know that getting healthy is the best way to do so.  I don’t know where I would be without my families support but I do know where I am going now that I have it.

My efforts will be endless just like my lies and manipulation were endless.  I will chase my sobriety like I chased my drugs.  I will fight tooth and nail for my life and all its worth.  A big battle ahead, but I choose a sober life instead.

There was a period of time when I was nineteen years of age, my mother broke up with my father.  My part to play in this is that I had resented the fact my mother did what she did and because I felt so hurt inside.  I took advantage of her and began to hurt her by stealing money from her bank card. Over three months I had managed to spend well over $10,000 of her hard earned money all on crack cocaine, hotels, etc.  Due to my actions my mother she could no longer have the chance to start to get ahead financially with her bills and payments.  The biggest lesson I learned with this situation is it takes hard work and time to make money.  To take it away from someone you love is taking them for granted and that is the worst feeling you could ever have.

Every step to a normal life seemed unbearable to me but then I found Caritas.  Through the program I slowly began to learn the basic skills I needed in order to live the normal life that I didn’t have before.  All the little things that I neglected before, I found out, were the things that were keeping me from living a good life.  Things like personal hygiene, cooking, cleaning, human connection, communication, work ethic, and so on.  That I was neglecting these things left me feeling so low about myself that I couldn’t take on bigger things. 

After being in the program seventeen months, I now have a much better grasp on all these things and look forward to continuing to practice them as well as many others I will learn in the rest of my months here and the many years I have left after the program.

 I was hurt.  I was broken.  I was angry.  I blamed everyone else except the one person who was responsible for my actions, me.  I was living a life without ambition or balance.  After twelve years of running on a dead end street I decided it was time to search for something worth living for.  I found Caritas.  I didn’t know how to get where I wanted to go, but I knew I didn’t want to go back to where I came from. 

I’ve completed 23 months and it didn’t come without effort.  It took a lot of sacrifice, honesty, willingness, and humility.  I have learned a lot of life lessons that sometimes take a lifetime to acquire.  But above all, I have learned that the strength that is within me can overcome the struggle that lies before me.  Without the struggle I would have no purpose.

My life used to be exciting before,
But I had nothing worth fighting for.
It used to be about pleasure,
Yet I was blind to the real treasure.
I wanted it to be
Like peaches and soft cream.
But I kept falling in ditches
With lost dreams.
My life was about partying
From evening ‘til morning.
Yet it always seemed boring
Because I had no real meaning.
While I was having fun
My soul was bleeding.
The lifestyle seemed flashy
But it slowly brainwashed me.
My life has no more compromise,
I water the seed and watch it
As it slowly rises.
The change in me is evident,
Constantly showing,
Because the flower of life blossoms
As I continue growing. 
I have something more important
Than anything that can be bought.
My life, my life,
My life is all I got

I can only speak for myself when I say that it was through trekking alone that I accepted and transformed that struggle into something I could hold as close to my heart as all the virtues I had only envisioned myself possessing. Before arriving at Caritas, I hadn’t the motivation to try and build a relationship with my father, or even to finish my school year. I was in a very negative mental state and my mood was as unpredictable as the weather in Bermuda.

Coming in, I was the youngest in age and I felt like I couldn’t’ relate to anyone, which wasn’t anything new. Sometimes I think about how far I drifted away from my family and, after everything I took from them, every defeating word I spoke, they are still there waiting for me. The one thing I can say from coming in and out on during my fourth phase visits is that nothing changes out in the real world; but inside of me, nothing is constant…but change.