15 Years of Sobriety Today - And A Story I Haven't Told Yet:
“Make sure she knows that I love her endlessly.”
15 years clean and sober today.
In all honesty, a sobriety anniversary is the most important day in any recovered addict/alcoholic’s life.
There are other dates of equal importance, but few, if you went to the depths of “no return” and were resurrected from the living-dead.
I am going to honor life today but I am also going to honor the departed.
When surviving a war that has killed more people than it spares, there is no way you can look at one without the other.
I give thanks this morning for my sobriety. I also give thanks for every departed soul who I love so much and who helped save my life along this journey.
I am going to share something I haven’t shared before.
Before I do, as far as my back story, I’ve written about it before in Reason to Live: Transformation of a Junkie. My sobriety date is 11.27.09, my drug of choice was heroin.
I will include other posts related to sobriety and the recovery journey at the bottom of this, but today I’m going to tell a story that hasn’t been shared yet.
I’ve also included resources for anyone seeking recovery and anyone who is affected by the addiction of a loved one at the bottom of this post.
Last night, a good friend I’ve known a long time messaged me.
She had a dream about me, her, and my former fiancé, Dylan, who passed away in 2021.
She said it was so vivid it woke her up in the middle of the night.
In the dream, Dylan was standing right next to me, and he put his hand on her shoulder, and began telling her things to tell me.
She said to me, (in the dream),
“Tess, Dylan is here!”
She said I responded, “I know!”
She asked, “You can see him?”
And I said, “No, I can feel him.”
Dylan then started telling her things to tell me.
Dylan has contacted me in dreams several times, but dreams where a direct message was given hasn’t happened since around the time he passed.
I felt his presence within the last few months, in the space between dream realm and waking realm - long story, but I knew it was him.
She said she had a hard time remembering everything he said, but the main thing she remembered him telling her to tell me (in the dream) was:
“Make sure she knows that I love her endlessly.”
I wish he was still here.
He is… just not in the same form.
I wonder what he’s doing. I wonder what realm he’s in. Does he move through all of them? Is he waiting in one of them in particular?
I think he’ll be there when I cross over.
But until then….
I will live.
I will know that no matter how crazy this world gets, aside from God, I do have someone I loved on a level that is indescribable, and spent a third of my life with, on the other side who is still very much alive.
Just not in the way we recognize it here on earth I guess.
Dylan and I got together at a very young age.
Dylan and I went down the bad road of drugs together.
Ultimately, that is what separated us. When I was 20 and he was 22, I got sober and went into treatment. That was not the path he chose. So, I ended the relationship.
I don’t think I ever fully processed it. I thought I was going to be with him forever. I don’t think he ever fully processed it either.
It wasn’t a natural ending to something as long-running as that was. But this is what addiction will do. It kills everything - in very unnatural, sudden ways.
We never had bad blood, it was more a thing of.. I had to get sober, and he did not, or could not, and so our paths had to end.
11+ years later, in 2021, he and I were talking again.
We’d still talk intermittently throughout the years leading up to that, but this time, he had gotten off the hard stuff.
He may have smoked weed or whatever but he wasn’t using heroin. He had been off of it for about two years.
This was summer of 2021. I was back in Oregon from LA.
He wanted to come see me and catch up.
Of course I would, we spent a third of our lives together, and his family was still like my family, I lived with them at the age of 16 after all.
However, I was working multiple gigs at the time, and shooting a few music videos that summer; things were kinda crazy.
He lived in Portland at the time, and I was back in my hometown, Eugene.
Since every week and every weekend were booked for the next two months or so, we decided to get together after the videos were done and things had calmed down.
Unfortunately, that didn’t happen.
His birthday was October 17th, and on October 17th, 2021, he died.
Or rather, the very early morning hours of Oct 18.
He had relapsed. And the drug took his life.
I did not get to see him again in the flesh.
His brother contacted me when they found him.
I had never considered it would be possible for one of us to be on Earth without the other — until then.
I couldn’t pick my jaw off the floor for a solid thirty minutes.
Then — I made the conscious decision to suppress nothing, and… had I known what would hit me after that, well, I still would have done it.
Ive never felt grief and agony like that - those aren’t even appropriate words for it.
I’ve had a lot of loved ones die from addiction.
Never in my life did the most significant relationship of my life become one of those “ripped away suddenly” cases until then.
It wasn’t possible. It wasn’t fathomable. There must have been a mistake. This wasn’t supposed to happen. There’s been a glitch in reality.
I wondered if I could find a spell to rip a hole in time and go backwards to warn our teenage selves to never touch that shit.
Even if it meant I’d die, I didn’t care, as long as I could go back and tell us not to do that stuff.
I couldn’t find such things.
I wondered if I could work for the CIA and hunt people who sell fentanyl for the rest of my life until I found my way to the source and eradicated them from existence.
I googled at 3 AM, “does the CIA hire people with a history of PTSD?”
Looks like the CIA is off the table for my documented ass, because no, allegedly they don’t.
If any of them got pinged from that search, you’re welcome.
I heard a strange voice of my own tell me, “thats it, your chips are out, that was all you get - something went wrong and this is it. You’re done now.”
Meaning - no more love or good things in life for you. You were supposed to live your life out with him but things got fucked up, you guys fucked up, and now you have to ride out your existence until you eventually reincarnate at the same time together again.
Essentially, something had gone horribly wrong in this reality, and now I was just “stuck” on the ride, when I shouldn’t be.
Either I wasn’t supposed to be here or he WAS supposed to be here, and this was never how they were supposed to go. I cannot explain the feeling, but it wasn’t just a “feeling”.
I spent several months “in the void”. Physically I was on Earth, but inside my mind, I saw myself somewhere else.
This was three years ago.
Other things came to me that weren’t so dark.
That was when Death taught me in a way NOTHING else ever could - the deafening silence of all the noise except love. Except memories. Except love.
Literally nothing we concern ourselves with means a thing if it isn’t love and the people around us. Absolutely nothing.
Everything was silent.
And then, Dylan showed up.
He showed up multiple times. Mostly in dreams. Once when I was… not so much in a dream.
After about six months I had to pull back my energy.
The grief felt like It was going to break me. I was working on a project he asked me to do in one of the dreams.
But I was not ready.
I don’t even know if I’m ready now, that’s not why I’m writing this.
He died about a month before I celebrated 12 years of sobriety back then.
Now I’m celebrating 15 and he showed up in my good friends dream, a friend of mine he also knew very well and for just as long.
We all knew each other for 20+ years. When I went to his celebration of life after he passed, she went with me.
I remember not wanting to celebrate or even acknowledge the 12 year sobriety anniversary right after Dylan died. Then my mom told me, “No, you need to acknowledge it, especially in his honor.”
So I did.
And I will do the same thing now.
I will acknowledge it, be grateful, give thanks, give praise, grieve if I must and be joyful if I must - I will live for myself and for all who have crossed over.
Sometimes it gets lonely with so many loved ones on the other side, so many have been lost to fentanyl alone.. but they are not gone.
And at least they are there to guide me in ways that I cant begin to fathom, at least they have taught me how to appreciate life in ways I could have never imagined, and at least… at least I truly do know what it is to love, and to be loved.
I will continue on.
Perhaps that is my message this year.
At 15 years. I will continue on.
Through death I come to live more fully. Through loss I come to love more deeply. And I know they love so deeply too.
I am grateful to see this side of life, some of the unseen things.
The sobriety journey has been anything but “boring” - it’s hilarious to me when people think it’s just about “not getting high” or “not drinking”. It’s also highly concerning because you likely won’t make it if that’s as far as you’re willing to go.
Nah dude, get ready for the ride of your fucking life. Congratulations, you get to live again.
Memento Mori, because all of time is a gift. What will you do With the time You have Left? Love. Live. Grieve. Revere. Create. Revolt Against Tyranny. Be a Soldier of Love. And make sure you laugh a lot, and play a lot, and be free. Open the cage, so the heart can have its way.
Everything you would have done with them, do it. Everything they would have cheered you on and encouraged you to do, you better do it.
It ain’t just you.
I suppose some people have that feeling of “It ain’t just about me anymore” with their kids.
I don’t have kids yet, so for me, the people I surely have to live for, are the ones who have passed on.
They all mean so much, but Dylan.. well, our story together is so extensive that I could easily write a book about it.
And I probably will.
But first, I will do what he asked, all those years ago.
And today, I will continue to live on, and I will be more brave and more bold and release myself from fear.
He was always trying to help me with that. Trying to help me find peace.
So, I will do it.
I dedicate this to every single person we have lost to addiction.
I dedicate this to every single person who still is suffering in the snares and slavery of addiction.
There are SO MANY SOLUTIONS.
I know it’s the hardest thing you’ve ever done, but it’ll be BY FAR the best thing you’ve ever done.
For the love of God, don’t try to fix shit on your own- if you’re addicted it’s too late for that.
Reach out, ask for help, and jump into the abyss of the unknown.
I had to do the same shit.
It will be scary, but you do understand that when it comes to the alternative… there are no exceptions, right?
You have less time than you think you do, if you are in this group. Get help NOW.
Find a treatment center in the United States, including ones who accept medicaid, medicare, and those with no health insurance. These are both through SAMHSA:
https://www.samhsa.gov/find-help
To find community and find a meeting:
Alcoholics Anonymous - https://www.aa.org/
Narcotics Anonymous - https://na.org/
Celebrate Recovery - https://celebraterecovery.com/
Refuge Recovery - https://www.refugerecovery.org/
If anyone has any questions please reach out.
Much love to you.
Oh, and if you are someone who has a loved one struggling with alcoholism or addiction, there’s resources for you as well. Find community in your area - start here:
Al Anon - https://al-anon.org/
You’ve done it, Sis…15 years! Soooo proud of you! Sending much love and blessings 💙🙏💫🤗🥰
YAY!!! So happy for you Tesstamona. It’s great that you have the courage to share your story. Thank you for doing so and here’s to the next fifteen years. 🙏💖