Hello friends, today is Day 52 sober. I am back to the grind of the week. This week I need to focus on staying positive at work and getting enough sleep. Having to be up at 330am is hard even for a morning person but I have to man up and be a responsible adult. I have always been a hard worker. I started working at very young age, My first job was in middle school around 11years old, I would help set up tents at a local market on the weekends for like 20 bucks a day. The man I helped sold glasses. I also helped him sell. After that ended I became a paper boy outside grocery stores selling papers, that did not last long I was only making a few buck a day.  I kind of had to work if I wanted to eat, I knew at a very young age anything I ever needed or wanted I had to get on my own.

Sometimes illegally, I remember being really hungry and walking into groceries store in middle school and grabbing a lunch able, cheese string and a Reese than heading to the restroom were I would sit in the stall and eat because I knew I would go to bed hungry and there was plenty of times i did go to bed hungry. When i was younger In elementary school I remember my Mom and her boyfriend putting me in people doggy doors because i was tiny and steal food from their kitchen also they would make me and my brothers walk in Walmart change my old shoes and walk out with new ones. My mothers boyfriend sam would beat me and yell at me if i did not steal from stores, it was stuff we needed.  Its funny because I still have guilt for stealing at such a young age, as crazy as is it sounds. Middle school for me was the worst of my childhood because that’s when I realize I had to balance a crazy home life with middle school. There is this one incident that still brings tears to my eyes, I remember walking in my Apartment complex parking lot and seeing a car window rolled down and a purse sitting in the passenger seat. I grab it and ran inside a storage area that held the apartment dumpster. I took all the cash and threw the purse in the trash. When I open up the wallet I seen it had a food stamp card that people used to cash their checks. I was terrified but knew that money would help when I look back I knew that I stole from a poor person who had kids and need that money. When I went back home I gave it my mother her face showed relief and joy, I told her I found it. Later that day the lady son was walking around and asked me if I seen any guy walking around with a purse. I said know. I know at that age I had to survive and had to do stuff I am not proud of but I need to forgive my childhood self.  

I would love to find that family and pay them back one day. I am still writing my childhood down on paper, its difficult but I am pushing trough. My childhood Is very layered, complex and profoundly misfortunate. It did teach my how to be a survivor and how endure life and pain. As I got older I used booze to help me drown my past so I wouldn’t have to deal but the past will always learn how to swim and float back up to the surface… I love Frida Kahlo and she once said “ I drank to drown my sorrows, but the damned things learned how to swim”  I am grateful for the past lessons,  for writing and for my survivor skills that helping me survivor this mental and body disorder that is called Alcoholism. I will rise and nothing going to stop me now. Sober is the New Black..I recently heard this song by B.O.B-John Doe feat JoJo. I am coming home to myself.

Stay connect with love, Adolfo