by Brian Bishop

Created on: March 14, 2007   Last Updated: April 23, 2007

Have you ever heard someone say, "She completes me" or, I don't know what I'd do without her"? Well, in this case, it is true. You see, when I met my wife I had just about given up on life. I was a worthless alcoholic/addict who was trying to kill himself the hard way. I had been through two very tough relationship and did not think I could get any lower. I had been living under a bush in the park. My days consisted of begging strangers for spare change and converting that change into booze. I weighed 145 lbs and looked absolutely terrible. I had no self esteem and I just did not think I was worth anything. Then one day, I met a woman who told me something I had not heard in many years. She told me that I was a good man and that if I wanted to, I could stop doing these terrible things to myself and be somebody. I did not believe that but just the fact that someone else did was truly amazing to me. Somehow, the things that she said to me, those positive, edifying bits of hope crept down through the booze and the drugs and made it to my subconscious. I wanted to hear more. I started trying to be around her more and I totally expected her to have me arrested or tell mew to leave her alone. That she was just being nice and that she didn't care whether I sobered up or not. But that did not happen. Everyone else I knew laughed at me when I started to talk about cleaning up and being a real human being for a change. My own family said I would be dead before I would be sober. I was told I was just like my father (who died an alcoholic when he was just 40 and I was 11) and would never be anything but a drunk. I suspected that was true but she never did. She believed in me and believed that somewhere under all that mess was a real man who could survive and be a productive member of society. But the alcohol and the drugs and my self esteem had a very tight grip on me and for two years I resisted the idea that I could change. I was in and out of the hospital with the kind of medical problems that kind of lifestyle produces. I would collapse, wake up in the hospital and as soon as I was able to stand up straight and walk I would hit the street and the bottle. Finally, the last time I was in the hospital I had sclerosis of the liver, and enlarged heart, high blood pressure, anemia, pancreaitis and the list goes on. A Dr. told me if I continued for even a week I would be dead and I might die anyway. My first thought was, mission accomplished. My second thought was that I

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