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 was about to hurt someone I cared about. All those years of not having anyone who cared. Years of living on the streets and drifting from town to town and mission to mission. Panhandling and eating out of dumpsters, it all came down to do or die and I was ready to die. Except for one thing. This beautiful, wonderful lady who would not give up on me. Who continued to tell me that I could do it and would do it. I continued to drink for six more months. I could drink a half gallon of vodka in eight hours and still walk and talk. But then one day, in September, after trying for so long to get up enough courage to do it, I told her I was ready to be who she thought I could be. She believed me. That really blew me away. She just believed it when I told her I was ready to quit. Her belief in me was enough. It was all I needed to actually stop killing myself. She begged me to check into a hospital but I refused so she rented an apartment for me and she sat with me for two weeks while I went cold turkey on drugs and alcohol. I lay on a mattress on the floor of that apartment and I went through withdrawals and DT's and I vomited everything I ate or drank and I bled from every orifice. I had severe hallucinations but I refused to let her get me help. I convinced her that if she interfered with the way I quit, I would not quit. She told me the hardest thing she has ever done in her life was to watch me go through that and not be able to do anything other than try to give me food and water and clean me up.
That was 1995. On April 19th, 1998 she and I were married. We are still going strong. I became the man she knew I could be and I became the man I never thought I would see again. She completes me and I don't know what I would do without her.