“Now There is The Man I Married…”
It was two weeks after my arrest. I had been coming down hard off the meth, and was just getting back up and around, working out, and eating. I had a visit from Kimberlly, my ex-wife and the mother of my youngest son. Kimberlly sat down at the glass, lifted the phone to talk to me and said, “Now there is the man I married.” To think, that during my year long run I had become so unrecognizable. I was still around 60 pounds under weight and worn down, but the look in my eyes was not the same.
Those words have replayed in my head for almost a decade now. When my appeals and other post-conviction processes were denied; every time I see laws passed up that would affect my early release; when my compassionate release was shot down, and I asked myself “why am I even bothering?” When I see my projected release date of the year 2040. Those words remind me how horrifying the thought of digressing back to that man, the one I was on drugs, truly is.
I look in the mirror every day now and like who I see, because I see a better version than yesterdays version of me.
