First: A little about me.
I'm 41 years, 10 months, and 24 days old.
I was born on a Tuesday in Clayton County, GA.
I have an older sister and a younger brother.
We have six years between each of us.
We moved to Charlotte, NC at some point when I was very young.
When I was 6, my Dad left my Mom for another woman.
Yes, right after my little brother was born.
My brother and sister and I moved with my Mom to Warner Robins, GA.
I started playing organized football when I was 7 years old.
I stayed with my Mom until I was 9, but she couldn't feed my brother and I, so we were sent to live with my Dad in Charlotte.
I lived with my Dad and stepmother for almost four years.
At this point in my life the most intense feelings I had ever felt were sadness, thanks to my Dad, and intense hatred, thanks to my stepmother.
For the rest of my life I would grapple with these feelings.
I insisted that I be allowed to go back to live with my Mother when I was 12 years old. My Dad had to let me.
Leaving my little brother there gave me a third powerful and intense feeling: guilt.
My Mom had remarried and moved to Fairborn, Ohio.
In the middle of the 6th grade I moved to Ohio with my Mom.
The next 6 years would be the happiest and most normal years of my life.
I continued to play football through high school, and loved it very much.
At the time I didn't realize it, but my relationship with football was as much symbiotic as it was love.
By sheer force of will, I earned a partial (very small part) scholarship to play football at a small college in Illinois.
I was recruited to play middle linebacker.
I spoke to my Dad maybe once a month, and saw him maybe once a year.
I wasn't motivated in school, and got below average grades, which forced me to redshirt my freshman year, meaning I could only practice with the team and remained ineligible to play in games.
I was frustrated with only being able to practice, and hit the weights harder than I ever had before, eventually becoming bigger, faster, and stronger than I had ever been.
I earned a name for myself on the scout teams as a vicious hitter, and on the team as a workout fanatic.
I continued to be un-motivated in the classroom, but made good enough grades to be eligible my sophomore year.
I earned playing time in spot roles and on special teams, and was looked upon as the next in line to start at middle linebacker.
The last game of the season I tore my ACL on the first play of the game.
I stopped going to class.
I went home for Christmas break and learned that I had lost my scholarship.
On December 20, 1993, I had my ACL repaired surgically.
My Mom had divorced my stepfather, and lived in a one-bedroom apartment.
I recovered from surgery laying on her couch.
Depression and bitterness took hold, and I was lost.
I got and quit several jobs, but eventually ended up working in the kitchen and as a bus boy at a local restaurant and liked it.
I always thought about football, and wondered bitterly why it had been taken away from me.
In one of the most significant days of my life, I was bussing tables on a Saturday.
I had an epiphany that I will write about in more detail later.
The next week I drove to a nearby college that had lightly recruited me out of high school.
The coach remembered me, and offered to let me walk on to the team.
I earned a scholarship after my first year, and played my last years of eligibility there.
During my first year, my Dad told me they had found a cancerous tumor in his esophagus.
I visited him that summer.
I also got my girlfriend pregnant that summer.
In two-a-day camp during my second year, the head coach called me out of practice.
The next day I was driving to Charlotte.
On the night of August 24, 1996, my Father died. It was a few hours before I got there.
My Mom, in one of the most brazen moves I have ever seen from her, flew to his funeral and walked in to be with my sister and brother and I, even though she was threatened by my stepmother's family at the door. This is another story that I'll write later.
My Dad got lost in a swirling enigma of who he was, and what that meant to me...with unanswered questions following him into eternity.
On March 9, 1997, my first son was born.
He was premature and in distress, and stayed in the hospital for 10 days.
I was terrified at the thought of being a father, and vowed not to be like my own father.
That summer I married his Mother.
The next year in school I had an extra-marital affair.
I drank too much one night and picked a fight at school with a local thug.
I was way too drunk to fight, and lost.
Two weeks later I was kicked out of school.
I was 4 classes from my degree in Biology.
I left my wife and baby boy.
Even writing those words pains me with guilt so exquisite that it hurts my stomach...but I got better eventually. You have to read on.
I moved back to my home town at 24.
I maintained a relationship with my son, but often neglected him to go out and drink while he stayed with my Mom or sister.
I may have been an alcoholic, and was definitely a sociopath.
I had a relationship with a woman that was beyond toxic.
For the next 5 years I wasted my life, riding high when I was with her and sinking low when I wasn't, all soaked in alcohol and occasional drug use.
When I was 29, she broke it off for good and moved to another state to be with another man.
Around this same time I consolidated all my financial aid bills from the private schools I had attended. It came out to $120,000 paid back over 30 years.
I contemplated suicide very seriously, but thought that I might just be physically unable to kill myself.
One night, sitting at a bar watching a news flash, I had a second great epiphany. I'll write about that later, too.
The next day I was hung over, sitting in an Army recruiting station.
In three months I was on a bus to Fort Knox, with paperwork in hand stating that I had enlisted for four years under the "Loan Repayment Program" for the amount of $62,000 owed to the Department of Education.
For the next 16 weeks I was turned into an Abrams Crewmember in the United States Army. I'll probably write about this, too.
In September of 2004, I arrived to Fort Hood, Texas.
In true Soldier fashion, I acquired a girlfriend at the local Hooters.
In true Soldier fashion, along with my personal idiocy, I got her pregnant.
I married her in 2005, 1 month before deploying to Iraq.
My daughter was born April 16, 2006. I was not allowed to leave theater to be there. She would be the first of a few saviors in my life.
My '05-'06 deployment to Iraq was so many things...significant, horrific, transformative...I'll write about this extensively, most likely.
When I got home from this deployment, I buried my broken heart with the joy my little girl brought me. She was 7 months old the first time I saw her. She became the center of my world, even through the rocky relationship I had with her mother.
In 2008, I deployed to Iraq again. Leaving this time was one of the most difficult things I had ever done in my life. Seeing my little girl cry as we pulled away was very profound.
This deployment gave the word 'austere' a new definition.
About 8 months into this deployment, I was unable to contact my wife.
A few weeks before we left theater, I learned she was filing for divorce.
I came home to an empty house.
Facing the reality of very limited time with my daughter, I fell into another crippling depression.
Although I didn't know it, and even resisted it, my second savior, entered my life at this time.
I had found the love of my life. I'll write more about that later...
All the while, my repaired knee was deteriorating, and required another rebuild.
After the surgery the Army told me that I either had to change my service job, or become a civilian.
I took the latter.
While I remained in the Army and recovered from several surgeries, I finished my degree.
I had a good career in the Army, and was well-liked by my Command. They allowed me to get my teaching certification while I was still in the Army.
In the summer of 2012, I married the love of my life.
In 2013, I got my first teaching job.
I was excited and optimistic to return to football as a coach.
In two years, at two different schools, I learned that football meant very little to me anymore.
My heart dwelled in memories of my Army days, and with the men that I served with.
On February 11, 2015, my second son was born.
The happiness of knowing I will be with him is overwhelming.
I decided to start a blog.
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