Coming Clean with Blind Ambition

Deception has driven me into an abyss. From what looks like the bottom, there is a long way to go before I can get back to where the fall began. My insecurity, a lack of confidence in who I was, what I had done and what could be done, fueled by ethyl alcohol, burned my hopes and finances almost to a cinder.

But I've always had dreams and aspirations. From my earliest youth, I was aware of my capabilities but unsure of their genuineness, their reality. The faith that I had in my dreams translated poorly into action. Often, life itself was not stimulation enough to satisfy my curiosity and wanderings. Riding off at night, petty thefts, experimentation with drugs, were additional diversions and the "buzz" I needed to round-out and temper overwhelming frustration at my inability to accomplish what I needed, but was too young to do.

It seemed that my life was not ever really my own, or of my own creation; so, I created its' undoing. Risks taken and overcome were perhaps unconscious attempts to push things over the limit, to reach the point where people let go of their expectations of me and I could pursue my own:

First religion, then sports, then sex; sneaking out, stealing, burglary, chemical experiments and pyrotechnics, speeding, getting high or drunk and both, walking cliffs and bridges; they all pushed limits, defied authority and flaunted the trust adults and peers put in me because I was bigger, smarter, and unafraid of rules.

Rules were for losers and the meek. In a way, they still seem that way, but now I've seen the consequences of stupid defiance, blind ambition.