One of my biggest mistakes was flying Amber to California when I first got there. Truth be told I think I was scared to be there by myself and wanted someone with me. She seemed like a good candidate since she just got out of rehab and it seemed like there might be a chance for our relationship to work.
But it is the one decision I’ve made that I would have changed. The scars on my hand from putting a lamp though a wall will never go away. They will always be a simple reminder of a terrible decision that I made. When you fall in love with a junkie, these are some of the things you might deal with. During my birthday week in 2016 when I was in Atlanta filming a television show, Amber was sleeping with someone else in our bed.
When I came back she admitted this to me and once I looked through her phone, I decided the next logical step would be to smash a lamp through a wall. That produced about a three inch gash in my hand and I had to be taken to the ER immediately. I probably had fifteen or so stitches put in and my hand got infected from the stitches. I still stuck it out with Amber, even after that.
At least until December when I found out she had fallen back into heroin addiction. Finally, I cut the ties. There were a few encounters before I left Los Angeles and the last time I saw her was right before she was about to join the streets of Los Angeles as a sex worker and prostitute.
Soon after I left California, I heard, she was pregnant and still living there while her first born, Sara, remained in Pittsburgh without her mom. Truly one of the hardest and most trying experiences of my life. And I know, looking back that I went through a nervous breakdown or two throughout the time that we dated. I don’t mean that to sound dramatic but rather factual. Looking over symptoms of a breakdown, I was 100% there.
More than once.
She was the worst decision of my life… or was she? …
The way my mind was so set on living in California, there would have been nothing to sway me into wanting to live in Pittsburgh. Let alone fall in love with living in Pittsburgh. Nothing except maybe something so terrible that it fully broke my heart and when it healed there was a new love for my home. When you are ripped in half and heal, you’re no longer the same person.
If you didn’t die, you grew
I grew into a person that I had no idea could ever exist. To look outside and see a gray sky and snow on the ground would have done anything in the past but make me smile. When I look outside today and see that, I smile. How many other things in my life that once brought me unnecessary pain because of limited thinking and perspective are now only looked at with a smile? How much of my life has been put into a perspective that is new and fresh and full of life and love for having gone through what I went through? Was she the worst decision of my life?… maybe not… maybe not.
“Where is the good in all of this bad?”… If it didn’t kill you, you grew. And if you’re aware, you grew into something better than you were. And obviously something very much stronger. What if I told you, only good can come out of bad?
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