I joined GT on August 27, 2013 under my original post “The World Breaks Everyone.” The quote is from Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms:
“The World Breaks everyone and afterward many are strong in the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry.”
62 days ago, I admitted to myself, to my colleagues and to my loved ones that I had a gambling addiction. And in that order because my compulsive gambling eventually led to acts of embezzlement, which resulted in legal/financial trouble and a fall from grace in the eyes of people I admired most in the world. Financial damage assessment to date is approximately $150,000, including loans from various friends and family members, credit cards and other personal debt.
During GT’s transition to its new website and format, I re-visited my old posts to see if my thread was salvageable. In the process, I had a chance to re-read my story with fresh eyes. During my first month of not gambling, I binged on TV as a source of therapy and a passive substitution for gambling. The TV show Breaking Bad embodied a particular inner struggle for me. (Spoiler alert: Jesse Pinkman lives!) Looking back, my story wasn’t only a story about how I broke bad, but also a testament to the good in my life. When I hit rock bottom, through the grace of their combined experience, kindness, compassion and forgiveness, my employers, my family members (not all), my very dear old friends, and some new CG friends supported me, loved me, and encouraged me to continue to beat my addiction. This restored my faith in others, and gave me hope for the future.
Through the filter of those early, fraught days of desperation and despair, I saw that I also struggled with huge fears of the unknown. It’s easy to see why I identified and resonated so strongly with words “breaking” “bad” and the world “breaks” everyone. I was broken. But I see now that I’m no longer in that place. And I’m also no longer that person.
In my second month of recovery, I moved from a state of “broken” to “wounded.” Somehow, I turned a corner and was fortunate enough to be able to come to some realizations about a new way of life. I began to build a life that incorporated my new-found CG knowledge into my daily living.
Now in my third month of recovery, I’ve started moving from a state of “wounded” to another, newer state. If I were to start a new thread at this moment on this new site, it would be called “And the Healing Has Begun.” (Van Morrison)