asking what faith meant. It started with learning how to have a conversation with another person. I had to put my trust in that person. I didn’t know how to do it, so I did it one little step at a time. It started with me asking a guy to help me out. I’d met a guy who had overcome all the problems that I was going through. He was a problem drinker like me, he was a gambler like me, he was a control freak like me, he was scared like me. He was me in another body. But the difference was that he’d found another way to live. And it started with having faith. Faith is a belief that everything is going to be all right. It starts with a belief, and I was not a believer. As a kid, I was told one thing but shown another. Even though we had a good life compared to a lot of other kids, we were still hurt. And hurt, no matter what colour or what flavour it comes in, is still hurt. When you are a child, hurt goes to the bone and stays with you. My belief system was constructed as a child. When I was told one thing, then shown another, I did not know what to believe. My little brain became confused about what to
believe. So I just quit believing. No matter what anyone said after that, I would not believe. I only believed what I wanted after that, which was that I had to do things on my own. That was the beginning of my self-will run riot. Because when you leave life-changing decisions to a child, then that child will fail, because he simply does not have the wisdom or foresight to make good choices. What I needed to believe was that I was worth love, security and attention, things essential to a healthy selfesteem. For whatever reason, I was not given that as a child. As much as my parents tried, they simply could not give it to me. I’m not going to pretend or protect them, because that does no justice to anyone. But what they did give me were the tools to figure things out. And that’s what I am doing now, figuring things out. Faith too is a funny thing, because all you need is just a little and then it grows from there like a seed. But I had to keep watering it, tending to it, cleaning it and paying attention to it, like a flower. How I did that was to create a relationship with this man who’d gone before me. I had to nurture our relationship. But instead of water, I had to use honesty. I had to be honest, for the first time in my life, with another human being. Up until that point, I had never been honest with others, let alone myself. I simply did not know how. I had damaged my spirit so badly that honesty was off the table, and it became a matter of survival.
