One Mistake, A Life Derailed

Summary

One Mistake, A Life Derailed shares a journey through regret, addiction, and recovery—showing how healing, resilience, and renewal can rise from hardship.

The one mistake. One night, I had been struggling with my drug addiction for a few years. I decided to break into a school in Tampa, Florida. I was living there at the time. I was looking for something to steal. I needed money to buy a hit.

After getting onto the school grounds, I broke into a classroom via one of its windows. Upon entering the classroom, I saw a television mounted on the wall. It was the only thing that may be of value. Using a chair, I disconnected the television from its wall mounts without any problem.

With television in hand, I decided not to go back through the window with the set. Instead, I opened the classroom door. Then, I walked out into the hallway. As I scanned both ends of the hallway. I saw cameras mounted in certain spots close to the ceiling.

I knew I was being recorded. I didn’t care about it. I figured I would be long gone before the police arrived on the scene.

I took my time leaving the premises. It wasn’t because I was feeling confident. It was because I was numb from drug use. I reached one of the gates leading out of the building structure. A security guard met me, holding a gun in hand. He was on one side of the gate and I was on the other.

My first instinct was to run. Instead, I obeyed his instructions. I sat the television down and got face down on the pavement. I did as he told me to do because I just did not feel like running.

I worked as a day laborer during the day using all of my pay to buy my drug of choice. I had very little sleep and even less to eat. I was in no physical or mental shape. I couldn’t make a break for it when I encountered that security guard on the other side of the gate. He unlocked the gate and entered, handcuffed me and then told me to stand to my feet.

Once on my feet, he asked me if I had any weapons on me. I told him that I had a small pocketknife in my pocket, which he removed. Soon afterward a police car arrived on the scene, and I was taken to jail.

When I went before the judge, I heard my charges. It was like I was hearing a recap of one of Jesse James’s escapades. The security guard had exaggerated his report of the incident. He did this to make himself shine like a determined Texas Ranger. It was as if he had just captured one of America’s most wanted.

Even so, I was placed on probation and released in the middle of the night. This, of course, was a felony and also the first time that I’d ever been arrested. This one drug driven mistake in judgment now haunts me relentlessly.

Some years later after completing a six months’ drug rehab program I became clean and sober. Thankfully, I have remained clean and sober for many years. I prefer not to reveal the exact number because at the moment I am age sensitive. Sobriety did not and has not erased that felony from my record.

That one charge feels like a nail driven into the back of my neck. This happens each time I apply for a good-paying job in my field (Computer troubleshooting and repair). It has also kept me in the reject bin for all other non-computer related employment that pays well. These are jobs that you can feel good about going to every day.

It feels great to be clean and sober. My decision to use drugs changed the entire course of my life in a most unfruitful and unproductive way. My decision to steal has kept me in bondage significantly beyond my original jail sentence.

One bad decision and a lifetime sentence. A criminal record that can’t be expunged waits at the end of every job application. It is ready to turn my hopes to dust. It keeps me at the poverty level.

Yet I do not surrender. I know that I will be refused the employment opportunity once a background check is undertaken. I hope for a system error that will allow me to prove myself. I want to show that I can be an asset to my employer. I fill out applications, hoping for the best and expecting the norm.

The choices that I have made so far in my life have damaged me almost beyond repair. I decided to be a thief. Because of this choice, so many precious years of my life have been stolen away from me. Days, weeks, months, and years of life do not come with a refund.

There is only one opportunity to make it good within this physical sphere of realities. If you choose to do drugs, be ready to suffer the consequences of your actions. If you choose to steal, you must be ready to suffer the consequences of your actions. One way or another you are going to get it.

There is no such thing as getting away unscathed. The life-slayer waits at the end of a bad choice. It will destroy your hopes, dreams, goals, and future. Your rap sheet lurks in the background. It waits silently for you to try upward mobility. Then it can zoom face-front and deflate you.

But I have done this to myself. I have leaped upon my own neck and have strangled the crap out of my career ambitions and goals. I have created my own stumbling blocks by the choices and decisions that I have made. I have doomed my life to being unfulfilled and a heavy burden upon itself.

I have given the Grim Reaper my flesh and bones considerably beyond the appointed time of my terrestrial demise. I have done this to myself. I did not take command and control of myself. Instead, I commissioned my life and well-being to be grafted by cravings and passions. These are earmarked for my absolute destruction.

The end of me is at hand. The custom-built has been broken and slayed by the butchers thinking. The assassin has chosen himself for the next kill. The bullet was shot from the chamber the very instant that the muck and mire was conceived. The murderer has justly murdered himself. Finished. Done.

Feel free to read my autobiography “Fatally Pathetic: The Story of an Ill-fated Conception” at http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00U7YWVC4