Seeking help is a Strength... I've had to do it before, too. · 11:04am Feb 15th, 2013
I mean everything I say here. If you need help, please seek it. If you want someone to talk to, by all means, send me an email. I'm a friendly guy and I've got nothing but time for those in need.
This subject is near and dear to my heart, because I've been there. I've seen myself wasting away to nothing but a withered husk of my former self. I may not be all that smart or have much common sense, but that sense which I do have was hard won by way of my many mistakes. Life Sucks? Stupid people got you down? Feeling like there is no hope for a brighter tomorrow or that there is nobody out there who "gets" you?
I've been there, and because of my friends, I made it out the other side. Let me tell you a little story about myself. I speak not as the dude writing this story, but as a simple human being; I speak from my experiences as a person, and what it almost cost me.
BOTTOM LINE UP FRONT:
If you need a helping hand, a friendly voice, or just someone to talk to, contact me. I am NEVER too busy to help somebody in need. Here is my personal email address; it goes straight to my phone and I can check it from anywhere. I do not judge anybody for their beliefs, preferences, politics, or anything else.
DCAMPBELL4410@GMAIL.COM
Anything you talk with me about will stay between the two of us and be entirely confidential.
My Story
As you've probably figured out by now, I am Dave; Dave is me. The first 3,000 words of A Dream That Wasn't are all true. The motorcycle, the fighting, the drinking, and the speeding; it’s all a shameful truth. That however, is not the story I am here to tell. That story begins here.
My name is David Campbell. My wife and I were married in May of 2010, exactly 12 hours before I left for basic training. At the time we were married, my wife Devin was about 8 weeks pregnant. For the next seven months, we hardly saw each other, and we barely spoke. I was, still am, and will always be, a recluse by nature; because of this, I didn't see anything wrong with this. I went to Basic in May, and I went to Advanced Individual Training (AIT) in August. Basic is just that- basic. It teaches you how to be a soldier, how to work as a team to accomplish a common goal. AIT teaches you how to do the job that you signed up to do, give you the skills you need to be effective in your chosen field. In the last month of AIT I bought the motorcycle, and that was the tipping point. The tenuous communication that I'd maintained with my wife was severed entirely, as I spent every waking moment riding the bike.
I left an 8-month pregnant woman to fend for herself without so much as a phone call to tell her I loved her. There is nothing I can do to make up for the terrible way I treated her during this time, and as you can imagine, this added an incredible amount of stress to our lives. My son was born in December, and I got to come home for a few weeks to help her recover before I had to fly halfway across the continent to go back to work. Between December and April, contact was minimal at best, and tensions were at the breaking point. Whenever I did call her, all I got was hostility from her. There were many reasons for this, but I’ll not get into it. Suffice it to say that lack of contact was the big one. In April, she said she was going to leave me and take our son. At the same time at work, I got in some bad trouble.
All of these factors kept piling up and piling up on top of me faster than I could dig myself out of them. To escape, I used alcohol and my motorcycle. I rode so recklessly that it was legitimately suicidal, though I didn't see it that way at the time. I just saw myself as the baddest thing on two wheels, pushing the limit wherever I could. I've done over 150 miles per hour through traffic. I've sat on my gas tank while weaving through traffic at 80 miles an hour. I cannot count how many times I'd endangered my life and the lives of those around me for my own stupid, selfish self-destructive purposes. I never stopped to consider how incredibly selfish I was being. As much as my wife wanted to leave me, she loved me ten times more. Because she loved me so, the way I ignored her was that much more painful. Eventually, she decided that it would be better to live on her own than to remain attached to someone who wasn't there for her. She still loved me, and I chose to be worthy of her love by trying to take myself out of her life forever, to leave my son without a dad, my mother without a son, and my sisters without a brother.
Luckily, I was stopped before I succeeded. I was pulled over for riding 120mph in a 60mph zone, my bike was taken away for a year, and I was given a second chance. Just after I was released from police custody to my chain of command, I was pulled aside by a close friend of mine, who wanted to ask me what I was thinking by doing something like that. He had to walk away before he punched me in the face for being so selfish. That was when I started to realize what I'd been doing on that bike; I was a suicide looking for a place to happen. In retrospect, it seems so incredibly obvious to me what it was that I was actually doing, but in the heat of the moment I was too caught up in the adrenaline rush to care.
In that year that I was forbidden to ride, Devin and I came together to work out our problems. We still hadn’t solved all of our issues, but we were far better off than we were before and we were slowly getting better with time. If not for a police officer’s intervention, my friends would never have known what I was doing. Without my friends talking some sense into my idiot head, I probably wouldn't have known what I was doing before it was too late. But because all of these things came together the way that they did, I'd been saved from myself and given a second chance. Above all, I am thankful that there was someone for me to talk to, thankful for giving me back the time I needed to change these things in me. I am thankful that I was given the time and perspective to see exactly what it is that I almost threw away, to see how valuable the little things are. The little things with two feet and big blue eyes, the little things that call me “Daddy”.
Even though, in the end, things between us didn't work out the way I'd hoped they would. I've decided that in the end, we just weren't meant for each other. I don't regret the time we spent together, as it has made me into the man I am today. With every failure comes a lesson. With every lesson comes the chance to grow as a person, to be better because of it. So that's where I am now. I will not let the failures of my past keep me down, I will learn from them and carry on with my life, searching out all of the adventures that life has to offer. There are great and wonderful things in my future, in all of our futures, and all we have to do is take the time to look for them.
The Moral of this story is to please, please seek help if you need it. It may seem like there is nobody out there who cares, like there is nobody on your side.
This is not true. You have me.
If you need a helping hand, a friendly voice, or just someone to talk to, contact me. I am NEVER too busy to help somebody in need. Here is my personal email address; it goes straight to my phone and I can check it from anywhere. I do not judge anybody for their beliefs, preferences, politics, or anything else.
DCAMPBELL4410@GMAIL.COM
Anything you talk with me about will stay between the two of us and be entirely confidential.
So I’m looking through the notifications of the different writers I follow and by chance I spot this. Utmost respect to you for telling your story and offering support.
I myself was a very unpleasant person in the past, but with the help of the Danish military and MLP (weird mix, I know
) I was made into the person i am today. Active, helpful and happy (Among other things)
But it does mean a lot to have someone willing to support you, so again. Tons of respect to you for writing your story and offering your help to complete strangers.
839122
Sometimes, all it takes is a kind word from a stranger to make a difference. Thank you for doing what you do, and for your wise words. I just waned people to know that they are never alone; that they can turn to me if nothing else. In my blog, back towards the very beginning, I posted something about the Equestrian Creed. I intend to uphold those values in day to day life.