I’m 17 years clean and sober.
People hear that and think the fight is over.
Like there’s a finish line.
Like one day it all just… stops.
It doesn’t.
The fight didn’t end —
It changed shape.
For years, the drugs and drink took everything from me.
I was drowning in self-surrender, self-loathing, self-sabotage… all of it.
I didn’t see a way out.
One day I just said, fuck it.
If I get clean, it will either kill me… or it won’t.
That was it.
No big moment.
Just a decision.
And then came the hard part.
My brother was my rock.
He stood by me through every demon that tried to drag me back.
He never gave up on me —
And God, I needed that.
Because I hated myself
In ways no one should.
I believed all the negativity I’d grown up with.
I believed I deserved the bad things.
But him…
He kept telling me,
“You’re stronger than all of them. Remember, Dad loved you to the bone.”
And he did.
That love —
My brother’s, my dad’s —
That’s what got me through it.
Because if I’m honest…
I didn’t believe in myself at the beginning.
Not even a little.
But I do now.
When I couldn’t believe in me, they did.
And sometimes, that’s enough to get you through the next hour… the next day… the next step.
And that same fight —
The one that kept me here,
The one that refused to let me disappear —
That’s what lives in my poetry now.
Not the chaos.
Not the noise.
The survival of it.
The quiet strength.
The staying.
The choosing to keep going
Even when it would be easier not to.
People read my words and feel something.
What they’re feeling isn’t just emotion.
It’s that fight.
Seventeen years later…
I’m still using it.
Still carrying it.
Still shaping it into something
That can be spoken
Instead of swallowed.
I didn’t lose the fight.
I just found a different way
To use it.
Thank you for reading
🖤#DislexicPoet