believer

I will never forget that day over on Portland between 10th and 23rd. It was in a non-descript office... an office you could easily drive by every day for 20 years and never know it was there. That pivotal moment in time when maybe God hisself maybe came into my life for once. I forget her name, but she was the second psychologist / marriage counselor a wife and I, hoping to save a never-was and never-could-be marriage, spent time with.

I don't play games with doctors, especially when they make $100 an hour or more, paper that comes straight out of my pocket and all they do is sit and listen, and it's my mental, emotional or physical health that's at stake.

With both wives there were several visits. Hundreds of *my* dollars were spent. I always went in w/ the real... no nonsense... both times hoping to save a marriage that was not meant to be. My thing was: I'm paying hard-earned money, you're working for me? Okay then: I'm saying what's on my mind, straight up. I didn't play. Not at all.

At a certain point of the proceedings, I was blaming myself... beating myself up pretty good about all the my/our failures... all the years I'd wasted. Yeah, it's all my fault. All of it.

Bullshit.

"God" bless her. Instead of siding with the woman all the time, this one Doc seemed to come to my defense that one day. At least not siding w/ the woman all the time, she said something positive toward me. Magic words. An incantation, almost: "but Todd. You were a believer."

You'd have to have walked in my shoes for 30 yrs, been denied much, and heard the words that day to understand the weight that was lifted off me... to understand why those words were so pivotal in my life. In all my years I've never heard words more important than what I heard that day.

Heinous, rusty chains were broken. Weight was lifted off my shoulders. It was like: a slave got loose and headed North, and dude running t'ward Freedom....

... made it.