One day I’ll be sitting in a nursing home if I’m lucky. The challenge will be can I sit in the rocking chair on the porch, smile to myself and say “Yeah, I did that.” Hopefully there will be a plethora of good memories to look back on and fill my time.  That, or senility will set in and I’ll have to look at the tattoos on my arms that mark the chapters of my life. There is the ironman symbol that reminds me that on my 29th birthday I completed and placed third in my age group in the Boulder Ironman Triathlon. Then there is the bonsai tree that symbolizes the biggest growth phase of my life so far. It represents the period of my life that covers being diagnosed as Bipolar until I embarked on my career as a peer support specialist at the Bartow County Peer Support Wellness and Respite Center. You see, it was discovering peer support that convinced me that being diagnosed Bipolar was the biggest blessing of my life. After graduating from the University of Georgia (go dawgs!), I went into the IT field as a helpdesk associate. I can’t speak for anyone else but for me it was a soul sucking, cube dwelling nightmare. It did, however, get me to Colorado where I would meet my former wife and eventually become a father to an amazing human being named Dylan.  

Now, come sit a spell while I tell the tale of how a mental health challenge came to be a blessing. Bipolar, who wants to be bipolar??? Me me pick me! Why? Because it saved me from sitting in a cubicle for 8-10 hours a day putting out fires to sitting with who I consider to be my people. People that are real, resilient, and plain out cool as all get out. I went from being in tip top shape from my triathlon days to being told I would be sick and medicated for the rest of my life. My life had turned into a sad country song. My wife divorced me, I lost my job, and yes, I lost my dog. That meant moving back to Georgia and leaving my son.  I quickly settled into being a good little Bipolar person, believing that I would never hold down a job, become homeless, and worst of all end my life by committing suicide. All the things you hear in articles and the news. It was a therapist that thankfully implored me to pay a visit to a peer run respite center just down the road. Reluctantly I agreed. Little did I know that it would dramatically change my life for the better. It was there that I was greeted by Jennifer. I explained my diagnosis and what I believed to be my fate. She started telling me about how people can and do recover from a mental health challenge. She also explained how everyone that worked there, including the director, had lived experience. Shortly after that she introduced me to James, the director and I realized after hearing his story that he was going to be the role model and mentor that I had longed to have. You see I went to therapy groups, and nobody fit the bill of what I needed. Everyone was retired, had family support financially, or reinforced my beliefs about the horrific stigmas that I ruminated about. I needed a motivated successful man about my age that was thriving in his career and supporting himself financially. That was James. He believed in me enough to take a chance on hiring me to become a peer specialist.  No more dreary days telling people to reboot their computer and resetting their password for the umpteenth time. From now on it would be going deep with people and having lifechanging conversations. The work and living a life in recovery instead of illness allowed me to claw my way back to Colorado to live with my son. Along the way I met people like Tim Clark, Ralph Hanna, and Dee Waldron who I now work with at AFRC. Super small world we live in, right? I would like to say that the mental health challenge was the only hurdle, but alcohol reared its ugly head. It was out of control to say the least. I decided that it was time to quit (for the hundredth time). But something happened that I did not see coming. One day after a few weeks of sobriety my son says from the back of the car “Dad I’m glad you don’t drink anymore because you don’t just lay around and sleep when I am with you.” This was hard to hear but what I needed to hear. Since that time, we have been hella active and I intend to keep it that way. So, there you go, I’m not in the rocking chair…yet but I have a head full of memories already that make me smile. I’m looking forward to making more of those at AFRC. Thanks for taking the time to read this and hopefully our paths will cross in the future.