Low-self opinion < depression-anxiety < Alcohol/drugs/cigarettes owned my ass from age 14 on. I had my share of reasons to stay locked in this cycle of bullshit well into adulthood. But i eventually managed to pull my head out of my ass. I wish this could have happened with one smooth motion. But this was not the case. The dislodging process began when I went to jail six months after my only child was born.
You could say this was an eventful era for me. I’d been working Construction; a few months prior to going to th, 160 lb LVL beam struck me in the head.
If the beam had connected 2” more to the left of my forehead, that would have been square between my eyes. I was told that death/paralysis/heavy brain damage would have been all but certain if it had.
If the beam incident had been some sort of memo from God/The Universe/Etc, to wake up and become a better father, i missed it.
When i was released from the hospital after being treated for a TBI, I went straight to the bar to meet a couple friends.
My head was stitched up like Frankenstein, and my right eye black/swollen shut. (TBI Pic)
Looking back now, i was sure one hard-headed SOB; yeah, both literally and figuratively.
A few months after the beam, i was driving home from the bar, buzzed, with a headlight out. This was what landed me in the Wake County Detention Center for several days. I only stayed so long because they misspelled my first and last names (yes, both of them) So the initial bondsmen who came to get me out was turned away, told that there was no one being held under my name in their system. Because there wasn’t. (Just some fictitious dude named '“Jeffery Roberson” Ha! Because those gabronis can’t spell.
My arresting officer and his trainee instructed me to strip to my bare ass and put on an orange jumpsuit. They walked me to a detention dorm. It was one large open space, teeming with like 100 other men. I was led to a lumpy cot with no pillow.
Soon after, “Lights out” sounded from the half-sphere desk at the head of the dorm. I’d sobered a bit by then. My mind began to race and swerve: What would my son’s mother say? Damn good thing for me that my son was still crawling around, and wouldn’t have any immediate idea how bad his old man had fucked up.
Back then i was working as a department manager (yes, directly following the TBI) . What the hell would i tell my job—would they shit-can me? What about my car; would i be able to afford to get it out of the impound yard? That may well depend on how long i was stuck in this shit-hole.
So i lied there stressing about all this shit for a few minutes.
I was driving out to his grandparents house in the boonies to visit him on the weekends. I loved my time there with him. But i didn’t know what to do—how to be a father. Maybe because mine had left so early. That wasn’t his fault in any way; but it could potentially become my son’s problem in a big way if i didn’t fix the issues that fatherlessness had created inside of me. The repercussions of my father’s absence, along with some early personal experiences that i had defined as difficult, were my justifications for my heavy drinking. This had seemed like a very common track: Father leaves/stays, is an asshole: Boy grows into a self-destructive man; commonly via alcohol/cigs. So no one asked certain questions if you were a fatherless drunk. It was like they silently understood the crutch you used to beat the tar out of your own life with. And most of them seemed to be in the same boat in some sense.
But now i was in jail for drinking. It was Thursday night. I was supposed to go visit my son in the boonies that Saturday afternoon. If i no-call/no-showed, my son’s mother would probably assume i’d gotten myself belligerently hammered, and plumetted into a deep canyon: this would have been a reasonable assumption.
The detention dorm became quieter than i’d thought possible. My mind droned onward:
My son would find out eventually that his father had been jailed. What would he think of me?
How would that relate to how he viewed himself?
He would probably just mope around like a drunk the way I had. Or overcompensate on the opposite end, and become some sort of narcissist.
I realized on that shitty little cot, that if I didn’t find a way to unfuck myself, that my son would suffer far more than he had to—that he would never get nearly as good as an experience of life that he could have.
And i would know that i had sentenced him to a lower version of personal experience than was necessary, due to my inability to transcend the interpreted suffering/heartache/trauma of my past.
My son would probably idolize me on some level, despite how impoverished my approach to life was. Because i had friends who had angry/drunk/shithead fathers, and they still looked to them for approval and modeled them largely.
So how would this seemingly standard father-son emulation translate for my son?
Well, i was currently lying on a cot in jail, so less than optimal would likely be
But what was optimal, and how could i find it?
It would turn out that i could only begin the search/construction of the optimal version of myself as a man, after i had healed the forgotten/self-tormented boy within.
Up to that point on the cot, my self-sabotage had been pillared by these crutches:
— father left when i was born
— childhood physical/emotional abuse
— institutionalized at age 5 (to escape physical/emotional abuse)
— disparaging worldview/self-talk
— age 14: alcohol/drugs circus began
These things justified my approach to life. They were my sob story — my excuses to drift and sink, to build/destroy/rebuild
So I didn’t know what the hell to do. I had never existed in another way than depressed-anxious + drunk/occasionally stoned.
But that approach to life had proved severely antithetical to a healthy and satisfying existence. It had landed me on this shitty little cot. In this room of 100 other lost men.
I wound up getting out of jail a few days later.
My son’s mother and I got back together soon after.
A year or so following this, we decided that I’d become a Stay-at-Home dad to my son.
I stayed home with him until he reached school age.
The changes i experienced during this time is one of the primary reasons that i started this site.
If i was able to find my way to a better approach to life, than anyone can do the same—so long as they are ready to want to—in other words: if they are ready to be accountable for themselves.
So if the necessary accountability piece hasn’t scared you off, than i have no doubt that you will make progress in becoming the hero of your own MF heart. I am very grateful to be here on this part of your journey.