Years ago while active in my addiction I walked from my living room to my fourth floor balcony with several beers, a pack of cigarettes, and a cellphone.  I sat down on the floor as there had never been furniture on the balcony despite living there with other people for several years.  It was cool but not yet cold and the sun was just going down.  I peered across the roads and the tree tops to gaze at the Potomac river and then across the river into the neighboring state.  I opened several beers so I wouldn’t be heard over the phone and I placed a call to my brother. 

I honestly don’t remember much of the conversation.  I sat as the sun moved below the horizon and the temperature dropped.  I drank the beer that I had opened, and then the first that I had preemptively opened, then the second.  I made trips back inside the apartment to get more my concerns about being overheard drowned out by the intake of alcohol.  I smoked cigarettes and flicked the butts watching them sail downward and seeming to shatter in a shower of sparks as they impacted the blacktop below.  I am that I spoke animatedly and with passion because the only times I could communicate with others was with the fragile earnestness and artificial brightness of intoxication.  I made promises that I know for a fact I broke although I have no idea what promises I may have made.  I made plans that I did not follow through because I did not follow through on plans.  But there is one thing from that conversation that I DO remember.  I am not totally certain on the words that I said but I am absolutely certain on what the response was. That I can recall vividly.  My brother said “I believe you….”.

That evening as I made that call and talked to my brother I had virtually no belief.  No belief in myself.  I had no belief in the value of the life that I was living.  Indeed I had no belief that I should continue the life that I was living.  I had no belief that god would intervene in my life, nor did I believe that any human would.  I did not believe that I was worthy of intervention either human or divine as I knew that I was flawed.  I knew that I was a burden to everyone who knew me and knew that they would be better off without me.  I felt that way before I called and I felt that was when the call ended.  My brother did not give me belief while we talked that evening and into that night, nor did he give me hope though I am sure he would have had that been an option.  But I do, at this point in my life, believe that he accomplished something while talking quietly on the phone.  I believe that he provided something.  Something that, with the right combination of circumstances and experiences, could turn into something far better.

I did not know it at the time but the hardest part of my life was still to come.  It’s fortunate that I was not aware of what the future would bring because had I known then what I had to look forward to I may have followed my cigarette butts down from the balcony to shatter on the blacktop.  I would have missed so many things had I done that.  Of course I would have missed negative experiences including jail, homelessness, suffering from mental illness, and repeated exposure to the various other consequences of my bad decisions, but I also would have missed the transformative consequences of my good decisions.  I would have missed out forever on what has become the primary purpose of my life.  Planting seeds so that others might grow.