Clarke's Third Law, part 2

When I did live to see 25, I wasn't particularly grateful for it. I hadn't graduated college; I wasn't self-sufficient; I'd fallen in love and had blown it. Addiction, depression, and Sickle Cell had me fully in their shared grip; each was worsening the others in a pas de trois that left me off the stage. I had made a halfhearted (and half-assed) attempt at suicide, and failed even at that. The only thing left in my daily life that generated any sense of self-worth was my skill with a karaoke microphone; this did not exactly leave me inclined toward sobriety. To say that at this point I couldn't picture myself at age 30 is not entirely accurate – I didn't want to live to see 30, and was terribly afraid that I would.

I despaired: my life was going to be an endless tailspin of misery, pain, and self-defeat. I was not cognizant enough of my own addiction to label my substance abuse as a problem. Quite the contrary: those brief escapes from the gray hopelessness were my only coping mechanism. Stolen moments of artificial peace; a silence obtained not through the cessation of sound but through the plugging of the ears. An overinflated bouncy castle in the sky, whose resident is given to clothing himself in thumbtacks. And it was all I would ever be; all I ever could be.

I'm writing now from the Grand Hyatt Doha. I sit at an office desk in a king-size suite; the balcony door is open to allow the faint desert breeze through. My view is of palm trees, gardens, and a white-sand beach on a blue-water bay. I am paid to be here, all my expenses covered by our client. I'm here to provide substance-abuse prevention: to tell my story and speak my truth to children, some of whom feel as I have felt. I'm here to give them the answers I didn't have in my youth, to questions I didn't know enough to ask. I have found a productive use for all of my past experiences; there is a vindication here, for each prior version of David Sherrell who suffered and despaired. This is redemption; with it comes an indescribable joy. (And a paycheck.)

This is my point: to have been where I've been, and to live the life I'm presently living, is as indistinguishable from heaven as any sufficiently advanced technology is from magic.

If I were to describe my life to 25 year-old David Sherrell, he would not believe me; moreover, he'd be hurt and would resent me for dangling such impossibility before him. It would seem to him the cruelest of taunts, the notion of this heaven on Earth. To an extent, that disbelief still exists within me. When the gratitude and the joy are upon me, I often look around my life and think, this cannot be right; this cannot be me. Then that small part of me cocks a disbelieving eyebrow, lets off a sardonic snort, and waits for the other shoe to drop.

Granted, there are areas of my life ripe for further improvement: I’m not fully self-sufficient, despite the literally incredible job, and I’m still pretty socially awkward at times. I could be doing more to find that special someone. My perspective is often lacking, and I deem that the gratitude and the joy aren’t upon me nearly often enough; I still have depression, although I’d say I’m living with it rather than suffering from it. And as long as I live there's the chance that I will at some point forfeit my redemption for a fresh hell of my own making; such is the nature of addiction, and only an addict would ever make that choice (or, really, even contemplate it). But for now, I'm still "one of the ones who did," and I don't have to wait for an afterlife to revel in this joy. So when that small part of me strikes the disbelieving pose, I remind him: the other shoe may indeed drop, but I’ve earned this, and while it’s mine I will give thanks and enjoy the ride.