I used to be a good person. Does that mean I’m a terrible person now? Not necessarily I just used to be better human than I am now. Or was as little as a year ago or so. I hope through my little reckoning I’ve improved. I’m trying to at least. Sounds odd when you say it out loud “I’m working hard to become a good person”. Is it that hard? It’s harder for some than others. Some literally have to try. Like so many other bad habits you pick up over the years becoming or remaining a morally upstanding person can leave your senses. Your wits, your scruples. Habitually it’s like taking up smoking, drinking, eating like shit, speeding in your car without a seat belt or maybe stealing a candy bar just for fun. Hell I’ve done all of that in one day.

Growing up I was always respectful to my parents, read the good book, hesitated before I cursed or even apologized after I did. I had a conscious, broke down if I lied about something, wouldn’t even hold a girl’s hand until I asked permission. I opened doors for them but never had a chance to do the jacket over the puddle part but I’m sure I would have just because it was the proper thing to do. Proper, is not a word I would ever use to describe me. Not yet. But by golly gee gum I’m working on it. Again, people like me have to work on these types of things. It’s part wiring, part environmental or combine the two and call it environment wiring. My wiring absorbs my environment. If you put me in heaven I’d be a hall monitor for Jesus. If you put me in hell I’d be a hitman for the devil. Just let me take it all in. I won’t let you down.

I can’t pin down when I became this person with low morals. Manipulative, narcissistic. Those two accompanied me when I became a restaurant owner. Manipulation was easy for me. I did it to survive and I was a little scared at how good I became doing it. Man I’d make one hell of a politician. Maybe that’s why I despise them so much. Problem with manipulation is once you get accustomed to it takes over your actions. You find yourself doing it without trying. It makes you lie, dodge the truth and stick a few knives in the backs of others. Business is hell sometimes and you’ll do whatever it takes to pay your bills.

Morals, scruples, values I used to live by them. I think years in the service industry changed my perspective at first and then drove me to be whatever the person I had to be to stay on top. At first it was a mask but later it wasn’t needed. The actor and character became one. Sort of like Heath Ledger and the Joker.

I played a character for so long I became him. Chad was swallowed up in the play/system. I thought I was playing a hero but there aren’t any heroes on this stage. No antagonists either. Just me absorbing the system of the service industry.

I used to be a good person. I would go see my mother once a week, call my family to wish them happy births and holidays. Always saw myself as the eventual torch for my family’s heralding. The oak that held all the branches together.

I was genuine.

I think I managed to hold onto this upstanding human until my late 20s. Maybe a little longer but I was already hanging with bad thoughts. Lifestyle choices, lying to my girlfriends, friends just living knee deep in shit and shady things.

Life has a way of throwing hundreds of different exits in your path along the way and although it may be possible to take the right exit most of the time your environment/system may make most of those right turns without the whiff of a second thought.

Man I’ve done some ridiculously terrible things. No I’ve never killed anyone, hit and run, robbed a bank or anything like that. You don’t have to break the law to be a terrible person although I’ve broken the law on numerous occasions. You know when you’re a being a terrible person. Unless you’re a psychopath. I was never quite there. I would acknowledge I was doing something wrong and took it for a ride anyway. The more you do it the easier the ride becomes. Then it becomes habitual and starts to control your decision making.

My thoughts would become putrid with lack of morals. Drinking only intensified it and honestly it was the potion for the excuse. “It doesn’t make you do a thing it just let’s you”

The binge nights I’d wake up the next day waiting for whatever I did that night to come knocking on my door. Often it did.

Alcohol turns you into it’s puppet. My life, my personality needs a filter. Alcohol took that away with a smile on it’s face. You do something you would normally process as volatile or inappropriate and the bottle tells you “it’s ok! Just don’t tell anyone you did it” or “you did it before and nothing bad happened so what do you have to lose?”

I consumed myself in the industry. I created another person inside of me to absorb it all. The late nights, long hours, high volume trauma, drugs, alcohol, drama. I took it all in and made my own inner Frankenstein and allowed him to live inside of me until we became one in the same. Two peas in a Chad pod.

There used to be an on/off switch. Not sure when it went 24/7 but it did.

My perception at the time was I had to be the alpha male. The strongest, baddest loudest mother fucker in the building. Once I got into cheffing around I knew what it took to conquer. I did whatever it took. And I did it well.

Other than a few professional accomplishments and of course having a small family I was not proud of what I had created.

Reflection is sobering. Taking that information and rebuilding yourself is a monumental task.

It’s become my new system. My new environment. I tweak my personality and lifestyle more than I tweak my camping layout in my truck. Both are constant.

Habits are easy to form and bad ones can seem impossible to let go.

I take one at a time and have a reckoning with it. I win some and lose some. Manic emotional outbursts are my bane at the moment. Had a small one yesterday but had the presence of mind to come back into the room and apologize to my wife for my volume even though it wasn’t directed at her. But she’s my wife and she absorbs my emotions and environment. It took me years to realize that my emotions are contagious in small rooms.. still working on not blasting my emotions on social media. It’s an outlet but not an appropriate one. Sorry I have to get things out sometimes.

It’s on my todo list

My brain has been hitting me constantly with nostalgia. Little view finder trying to send me still frames of good memories from the past. Well before I became that person. Sobriety opened just about every single tiny door in my head that was locked up hiding some essential memories.

Good memories.

Now they come to me like little gifts. The smallest things trigger them.

I take and reflect on them to remind me of the person I once was. I write them down because it feels good to do so. My brain is doing its best to bring me back home through memories and patience. My long forgotten scruples, morals and conduct.

Please and thank you. Continue please.

The nostalgia brings me back to the old upstanding character I felt I once had. I find myself re reading old books during that era, music and memories. It’s like my inner self saying “See?? You aren’t that far removed from yourself!”

Come back home. It’s time

Listen, I’m not saying sobriety guarantees to make you a better person.

It just gives you a better opportunity.

It has for me anyway. Doubled with a whole WHOLE bunch of reflection.

Writing helps. I don’t think about what I write beforehand. I just write what comes out. Which is why you sometimes get short sentences with tangents.

It’s how I think. I hold it together sometimes but if I’m journaling I don’t focus on the point I’m trying to make. I just like to get it out.

Whatever is manifesting in me at the moment is a little surreal. It’s hard to put into words what it’s like to have your mind change the way it thinks. It’s like driving on the other side of the road.

For me the correct side for the first time in awhile.

I look in the mirror somedays and see a different person. And then another.

Growth? Maybe? Hopefully. It was much needed. Still needed. I still have quite the pile of laundry to fold.

At least it’s clean.