book excerpt

Here is another excerpt from my book. The posts will not be in any particular order from the book. Enjoy!!

After living with Maria for a few months, my life, at least on the outside, began to show tremendous promise. However on the inside my past issues were back.

In the beginning, Maria made it very clear that the drugs had to go and because I wasn’t completely ready to stop getting high, Maria and I had a few ups and downs. There were times when I contemplated saying fuck it and calling Laura because the cravings along with the depression were barriers that I couldn’t seem to get past. I didn’t want to quit using and I think the only reason why I made an attempt at a sober life was for Maria. She really had her life together and making her proud became my number one priority. I had become accustomed to taking the easy way out and a line of coke or a shot of heroin made everything that much easier. After a while, the view that Maria had when she looked at me began to matter more than how I felt inside or anything else.

Time passed and with help of Maria, the excruciating task of opening up became bearable. We would talk about my childhood but I wasn’t always entirely truthful. It wasn’t so much what I let her know but more of what I kept to myself. Things between us were going so great and I felt that completely opening up to her was a cliff I wasn’t ready to jump from. My fear was that if she knew everything, than how could she stay?

 I remember with Laura, love being some rhetoric effort but with Maria, I wasn’t always able to read her feelings toward me.  She was never the one to let an ‘I love you’ slip from her mouth and I sometimes misinterpreted that as her not giving a shit about me.

A year into our relationship, Maria became pregnant with our son Trenton. Ill never forget how scared she was to call her parents and give them the news. He parents, for whatever reason, never really cared for me. I remember not ever being allowed inside their house. When Maria had to go over there,  she would drop me off on the corner to wait. I never said anything to her about how that made me feel but the truth is that it hurt. Being a part of a family is all that I ever wanted.  I used to wonder if Marias fear would have been replaced with joy had I been someone else. Today I’ve come to believe that her parents just wanted more for their daughter. Who could blame them?

After numerous attempts at landing a job, Maria and I decided that it would be best if I went back to nursing school. So that’s what I did. Things were going as well as they could and even though I was going to be a dad at 20, I felt that I could be the best dad possible. No way was I going to follow in the footsteps of my dad. I would be there for my son always. Love would be something he would never have to ask for. I kept this inside never, telling Maria. There was something else I never told her-I was constantly on the lookout for disaster because that’s what I was used to.

Although I couldn’t see it, my life’s metaphor was losing no time at finding me. The shit storm was on its way.