Dance with meth

My dance with meth started around 1994. My mother and I were driving out to her house next to the Disston Store and she offered me some. It was between Schwartz Campground and the Dorena Dam. I snorted the line, and was hooked on it. I had just started working at NAPA in CG then. I kept it pretty low key at first. Always slept, always ate, kept a full time job, never got arrested over it. When my ex-wife left me and took the kids in 1995, I started smoking it, and got into it a lot deeper. Most of the next fourteen years is a blur. I still worked full time at NAPA, until in 2008 my new family and I became homeless because I was buying meth instead of paying the rent. I had to quit my good paying job, and we stayed in a homeless shelter for a couple of months until I got my tax returns. We bought a motorhome and parked it in people's driveways for about 8 months. I was working at Autozone in Springfield when I got hired at the NAPA store in Creswell. On my last Autozone payday I went and bought some meth. I smoked some and went to bed. My son Braedon came in to the motorhome and laid down with me. Apparently I have blood vessels in my brain that aren't connected right (It's called a cerebral arteriovenous malformation. You can look it up) and it chose that evening to start bleeding. Next thing I know I'm waking up at Riverbend Hospital with my dad standing over me telling me I'd had a stroke. The next couple of months are really fuzzy to me. I remember my older daughter Corrin spoon feeding me in the hospital. I remember I was always reaching for the nurses' breasts, and my fiance Crystal yelling at me for it. I remember the song California Dreaming ran through my head a lot. Crystal told me later that I was singing Metallica's Am I Evil. I remember they put me in a damn zippered cage bed because I was trying to get out of bed. The drain bamage (brain damage) was fairly severe, and they didn't know if I would recover. That was almost seven years ago, in August of 2009. I have been meth-free ever since, and I have made some amazing progress in my recovery. My philosophy on life since is that any asshole can be a father, but I'm a DADDY! I'm a better daddy for my kids, a better boyfriend/fiance for Crystal, and just generally a better person. Crystal and I are getting married on the 29th of this month. I am itching to go back to work, be it auto parts or something else, but I think I'm a few years from that. This is getting rather long and I don't have the stamina I used to, so I think I will stop here.