Tony:
My mom was a Native American, full-blooded, and she was mean. I took severe beatings from her and my dad was just like a person who was there, who wasn't there. Kids are impressionable. And the only impression I got is I wasn't wanted, even at a young age, is I don't fit in, I don't belong here. Not even in the military where you're supposed to feel like teamwork and everything else. And I played on basketball teams, football teams, and I was an athlete in school and everything else, but I never felt that part of wanting to be a part of. It was lonely life. It was a very lonely life.
Well, the dark times really started in 1995. My brother was here in Denver and he died. I don't want to expand on that, but he died and I was hurt at the time, and that's when the dark really started happening. Within a year I had a son and he was killed and everything just started steamrolling. I ended up in the wheelchair. I went and smoked a lot of dope. I did a lot of cocaine and I drank a lot of whiskey. And I went to the bars and I said goodbye to my friends, and I went and said goodbye to my mom. And then I went to go try to check into the hotel room, and this hotel clerk who was there decided to call the police. It was a good thing he did. And I'll never know this hotel clerk's name. I'll never know anything about it except I call him my angel now.
But anyway, they put me in a rehab. Here I am, don't want to live, don't want to die. Sick of the way I'm living, sick of the way I'm dying, and these guys are telling me it's going to get better. Just hang in there just a little bit longer. And I've heard the cliches a lot of people hear. "One day at a time." Well, I didn't want that concept. I wanted two days, or three days, or four, or a couple weeks at a time. But I finally got the meaning of that, of living one day at a time. And that's when the loneliness started really ending, is that I could look forward to tomorrow.
Now, I love myself. I mean, what can I say? There's nothing, there's no better feeling. I mean, sure, you look at me and you see limitations. And at this point in my life, I'm really feeling that because of the 12-Step Recovery Program, is that I get a chance to give back. And that's what I've learned. There's other guys out there who've experienced the same kind of thing, but we just don't talk about it. You sweep it under the rug. You do what you got to do to not talk about it.
It's okay to be a man. It's okay to say it hurts. And I work with a lot of other people, a lot of other men in this recovery program, and I tell them that constantly, because I know what it's like to hurt. I know what it's like to feel that loneliness, that emptiness, that sorrow, that pain, the deaths, and even the livings. Those pains, those frustrations of life itself, and living life itself, are going to be there no matter what. It's how we deal with them. Asking of the help is probably the biggest thing that men, I feel, that is such a constant barrier in our lives because we grow up as men, you're not supposed to feel that. You're not supposed to say that, and they cut you off right away. And I found out different. My life has changed. I've changed, and I'm always grateful for it every single day.