The Day the Music Stopped

I was born on July 25, 1971, in Tifton, Georgia - one of those small Southern towns where the air feels thick with memory and summer, where people measure time by school years, holidays, and who you belong to.

My earliest memories are warm. Not perfect, because nothing ever is, but steady. We ate dinner at the dining table as a family. Summers meant being outside until the sky turned dark. My best friend Andy lived in the house right behind ours, close enough that our childhoods blurred together. We built forts in the woods, rode bikes until we couldn’t see the road anymore, played with Legos and watched cartoons like it was our job.

Saturday mornings were sacred: homemade biscuits and gravy (my favorite), cartoons, and then a whole day that belonged to us. Sometimes it was playing. Sometimes we went into town. Sometimes we visited friends and family or worked in the flower beds with Mama. Even chores felt gentle when she was there.

And Christmas… Christmas was magic, because my mother loved it with her whole heart. Our tradition was to put up the tree on Thanksgiving afternoon. Within days, she’d drape green holly garland on everything, place candles in the windows and on the porch, and turn our living room into something glowing and festive. The big console stereo would blast Bing Crosby, Nat King Cole, and John Denver. But it also played my Muppets Christmas album and my Chipmunks record - over and over - until Mama was tired of it and I was still begging for one more time.

Then came December 1983.

Friday, December 16th was my last day of seventh grade before Christmas break. I was twelve. That night, we went to my dad’s office Christmas party - he was in a wheelchair recovering from knee surgery, so Mama drove. Afterward, we rode around town looking at lights, drifting through neighborhoods where the decorations looked like promises.

On Saturday morning, December 17th, Mama woke me up to see if I wanted to help her make breakfast. I always did. That’s where my love of cooking started - not in recipes, but in being near her, in being included.

When I finally made it to the kitchen, I don’t even know if I said anything. If I did, I don’t remember it. What I do remember is her looking at me, suddenly holding the side of her head, and collapsing onto the floor in front of the stove.

This was before 911 existed in our area. I didn’t know the emergency numbers, so I had to look them up. I called for help. I called my cousin Connie who lived nearby. What was actually said on that call is lost to me, but I remember the way she seemed to appear instantly, as if my voice had pulled her through the air.

My memories of that morning are a blur. Mostly sounds, fragments, flashes - punctuated by a few sharp, permanent images. The paramedics asking questions. My mother not responding. The ambulance leaving. Me ending up at the hospital without any clear memory of how I got there. Begging to see her and being told no. My sister appearing at some point, like a figure in fog.

Eventually they transported my mother from Tift General to Thomasville. On Sunday, December 18th, a doctor asked to speak to the family. I didn’t want to go. I already knew what he was going to say. It was a gray rainy day, and I remember thinking it would never be sunny again.

We buried my mother a few days later.

People came to the house in droves. Food. Flowers. Voices. Condolences that felt like they belonged to someone else’s life. I thought the crowd would never stop, but then it did, and that was almost worse. Because when the last car drove away, the silence stayed. And I was expected to go back to school after the new year and continue living, as if the center of my world hadn’t been ripped out.

From 1984 to 1987, everything changed.

Home stopped feeling safe. It stopped feeling sacred. It stopped feeling like love lived there. My father started dating again within a couple months of burying his wife. He remarried in December 1984, one year after I lost my mother. Family life became something hollow and tense. We didn’t eat dinner together much anymore. There was no steadiness. No warmth. I drifted. My grades dropped. I started getting in trouble at school.

And I found alcohol.

Not at first like a party. Not like rebellion. More like medicine. It was the only thing that made life tolerable. It quieted what I couldn’t name. It softened the ache. It made the world make some sort of sense, even if only temporarily.

In 1987, I got a new family.

My cousin listened to me every day at lunch in high school. Eventually her parents, my aunt and uncle, asked if I wanted to come live with them. I said yes. They came and got me and my things almost immediately.

With them, I returned to something I recognized as family. People cared where I was. Who I was with. They asked about school and tests and homework. We ate dinner together. And I loved it. I still drank, but not the way I had been. It felt like I had a place again.

What I didn’t have was a way to be honest about myself. I knew I was gay. I had no doubt. But I couldn’t say it out loud. I kept a girlfriend in high school like a disguise, because in the world I grew up in, being gay wasn’t just a difference; it was a sentence. When I was a little kid, just starting school, I was called “faggot” by older kids. I didn’t even know what that word meant. When I finally started figuring it out, one of the first lessons I learned was that being who I was wasn’t okay. Family talked about “those people” being evil, and should be avoided. Church said “those people” were an abomination to God, even though their own doctrine says God knew everything from the beginning, so he created me to condemn me. I tried everything I could to not be different. I prayed and begged God to let me not be “that thing” that was so evil. That thing everyone hated. That thing, supposedly, He hated. Instead, I just learned to lie, and pretend, and be a good actor, and just try to be what everyone else said I was supposed to be. And that was such a miserable way to exist.

Still, life moved forward. I earned a full scholarship to Abraham Baldwin College. I made friends easily. I ran for student government my first year and won a seat. I kept a 4.0 GPA. I joined Phi Theta Kappa and later became chapter president and state vice-president. I was elected president of the student union, planning social activities, and I went to San Francisco for our national convention. It was my first glimpse of a world wider than what I’d been handed.

In January 1991, I started Auburn University. I chose Auburn intentionally. Nearly everyone I had grown up with went to the University of Georgia, and I wanted to be my own person. I toured the campus in 1990, attended the Auburn–Georgia game that fall, and watched Auburn beat Georgia so thoroughly that something in me lit up. War Eagle, forever.

I met a guy in my dorm on my second or third day. I am going to call him Luke, because this is my story to tell, not his. We clicked immediately. He became the best friend I ever had, and I fell in love with him with a depth that still stuns me when I look back.

My alcohol consumption went through the roof. I never turned down an invitation. I kept dating girls to keep my cover, but my heart was tied to someone who was also deeply in the closet. We ended up as “roommates” in school. From the outside, I could almost pretend I was living a normal life. From the inside, I was splitting in two.

I graduated from Auburn on June 9, 1993, with a degree in microbiology and chemistry. I drank even during the graduation ceremony. That fact used to feel like a dark joke. Now it feels like evidence: I didn’t just drink to celebrate. I drank to survive.

In December 1993, I started work as a State of Alabama veterinary diagnostic microbiologist in Elba, Alabama. This was my first time living completely on my own. I loved the work. But psychologically, I was not okay. Luke took a job in a different town, about 300 miles away. I missed him so intensely it turned physical. My drinking became constant. I got my first DUI.

I missed Luke, so I drank. I hated being gay, so I drank. I hated living alone, so I drank. I had no friends, so I drank. When I finally made friends, they were bar friends. Drinking buddies. Luke and I spent weekends together whenever we could. Every Sunday afternoon when he left, I would sit by the door and cry. And drink. If I was at his place, I’d postpone leaving as long as possible. Then I’d just drink the whole six-hour drive back to Elba. I’m so thankful now that I never hurt anyone. At least not physically.

I wanted a life with him. I wanted us to step into the light together. He couldn’t. He said he’d never be able to come out to his family. Never even used the word gay. I hadn’t come out either, but I tried to convince him we could do it. He said no. So we stayed a secret for years, seeing each other about once a month, living a relationship that was real and not real at the same time.

Eventually I left that job and moved to Atlanta with friends. I tried to get on at the CDC (for a microbiologist, the CDC is like the dream job), and I would have gotten that job—except by then my drinking was so heavy I missed the call back interview. I traded a future for another afternoon at the bars in Midtown.

But Atlanta offered a new kind of escape: huge alternative bars, loud music, attention. For the first time I felt attractive. Wanted. I mistook that for love. Backstreet Atlanta was enormous. There were levels and dance floors and noise and bodies… and I could stand in the center of it, surrounded by people, and feel just as empty as I did alone. Maybe emptier.

When everything fell apart, as it always eventually did, I moved home to South Georgia briefly, but it was unbearable: hiding my drinking on top of hiding who I was. I hated lying. I hated myself for lying. So I took a job in West Point, Mississippi. I still clung to the hope that Luke would choose me. He never did. The last time I saw him was in the summer of 2000. I left a note saying I couldn’t do it anymore. I cried all the way back to Mississippi. He never reached out again. I never spoke to him again.

I got my second DUI.

Somewhere in those years, I started to realize my drinking was even beyond just abnormal. I would cut back for a few days and notice how good my body felt, and then the depression arrived. The anxiety. The feelings I didn’t know how to survive. So I drank again. I wasn’t ready to call it alcoholism out loud. I didn’t want one more thing “wrong” with me. I already believed I was broken because I was gay. I had been trained and conditioned (brainwashed) to believe that meant I was unlovable, even to God. That nothing in me was good, or worth saving.

I looked at my life and saw a pattern: God took my mother when I was twelve. People left. Relationships faded. Rejection repeated. Alcohol took the pain away, temporarily. It became how I slept. Though it wasn’t sleep. It was collapse.

Before work. During work. Driving anywhere. I couldn’t even go to the grocery store without something to drink. I knew something was bad wrong. I kept going anyway.

In 2000, I moved to Dayton, Ohio for a man. It was terrible from the start. He was controlling, and abusive, and unfaithful. I stayed because I believed I deserved it. Because I was a horrible person. I was one of “those people” that would never deserve better. My drinking burned through five jobs. And now cocaine had joined the party.

I got my third DUI.

In December 2001, my aunt bought me a ticket home. I returned to Tifton, already carrying shame like luggage.

A week after I got back, a friend (an enabler, though I didn’t have that word yet) came to see me. She brought alcohol. We went out. We returned with me completely blitzed, and my family erupted. In the middle of it, in that chaos, I tried to come out (clearly horrible timing, but I don’t think I would have ever done it any other way). I was holding my cousin’s little girl. Someone pulled her from my arms. The yelling continued, and then they all left, literally drove away from the house, leaving me there. Said they wouldn’t allow me to embarrass the family.

My friend packed my things and drove me back to Mississippi. I have not seen that family since.

From 2002 to 2014, I stayed in Mississippi. I waited tables. I helped open a coffee shop and quickly became assistant manager, then general operating manager. I loved the job. I loved all my customers. I loved the owners. I loved being needed. But I was drinking constantly.

The shop opened at 6:00 AM. I had to be there by 5:30. Despite the drinking, I was rarely late. That detail says something about my determination, but it also says something about the grip alcohol had on me: it took alcohol in my system to get me moving. By 2 PM, when my shift ended, I was shaking so badly I could barely function. I’d go to a local restaurant bar, drink until late evening, get a ride home, pass out, and repeat.

After losing my license, I didn’t even try to get it back. I paid for rides. I relied on friends. Toward the end, every cent I had went to alcohol. I fell behind on rent. My house had no power or water because I spent the money on drinking instead of survival. Actually, drinking was survival.

By the end of 2014, alcohol wasn’t working anymore. I was sick if I didn’t drink. Depressed constantly. Terrified. Hopeless. My hands shook so hard I could barely lift a glass. I would sit at the bar each day trying to get the first drink down just to stop my body from revolting. It was no longer pleasure. It was maintenance. It was desperation.

In January 2015, I reached the edge. I had had enough.

I didn’t want to die as much as I wanted the pain to stop. I wanted the fear to stop. The self-loathing. The constant performing. Always giving people the version of me they felt entitled to. I wanted to be free of what my own mind did to me.

I made a choice I can’t romanticize. I left work. I ended up alone in a motel room. I drank. I did what I believed would finally end the agony.

And then something happened that I still can’t reduce to luck.

A friend sensed something was wrong. She retraced my steps. She found the cab driver. She found the motel. She got to my door in time.

I woke up in a hospital bed, restrained, alive, furious about it. I was not grateful. I felt condemned to keep living a life that had been nothing but loss and fear.

But a counselor came. People spoke to me like my life mattered even when I didn’t believe it did. I was admitted for treatment. And somewhere inside the shock and anger, I discovered one unexpected truth:

I felt safe.

No one could get to me there. No one could demand anything of me. I could breathe. I could exist without performing. I also knew another truth: if I walked out with nowhere to go, I would try again. And I knew exactly how to do it the next time. Not because I wanted to die, but because I couldn’t imagine living.

On the last day they could keep me, I filled out discharge paperwork and broke down. I told a nurse I had nowhere to go. That moment is one of the lowest points of my life. Standing at the edge of the world, holding a thin stack of papers like it was an exit plan. In fact, that’s what they called it.

When I walked out the front door, a car was waiting.

A man from the recovery community, someone who had tried to help me before, had come for me. He took me to his home. He put me in a comfortable bedroom. He made sure I had food. And he told me he’d already arranged an appointment at a rehab facility for Monday.

I stayed that weekend under watch, not because I was a criminal, but because I was fragile in the truest sense of the word: not weak, but breakable. I wasn’t going anywhere. I was tired. For the first time in decades, I let myself be held in place by kindness.

That January, I entered a recovery treatment center in Columbus, Mississippi.

I know how it sounds, but it’s the truth: I loved rehab.

I arrived terrified, expecting humiliation, punishment, maybe chaos. Instead, the first night I slept on an industrial mattress with worn sheets and a lumpy pillow and slept better than I had in more than thirty years. The reason was simple: I was safe. A tiny spark of hope, almost invisible, appeared.

At breakfast the next morning, I looked around at the other men lined up: younger, older, my age, black, white, Hispanic, different backgrounds, different stories. And then it hit me with surprising force:

We were all the same.

I wasn’t alone. I wasn’t a freak. I wasn’t uniquely broken. That realization alone felt like oxygen.

I learned the physiology and psychology of addiction. I learned it was a disease, not a moral failure. I learned shame is fuel for relapse. I learned there was help if I would take it, and if I would do the work.

And I did.

I became a leader, partly because I was older and the younger guys listened, partly because I’d survived enough to speak without pretense. I told the truth about where I’d been. I told them I was proud of them for showing up now instead of waiting until they were my age. I told the older ones it wasn’t too late. Hope was not a myth.

When my ninety days ended, I didn’t want to leave. But I transitioned into sober living and built a new life one practical day at a time. I returned to work at the coffee shop part-time and earned trust again. I joined AA. I started sharing pieces of my story. I started leading meetings. I became a house manager.

Eventually, I got my driver’s license back. I became manager at the coffee shop again. I handled payroll. I had a company credit card. I had the capacity to truly show up for the job and the people. Sales boomed. The shop stayed crowded. I learned a new kind of pride: the pride of being reliable, of living in the light.

When the coffee shop was sold and the new owners and I didn’t align, I switched fields. I started at a medical clinic, and within months I was clinic manager. I was rebuilding what I thought I’d destroyed permanently.

And I traveled. It was something I never imagined I’d do again. Manhattan at Christmas in 2017, finally crossing off a bucket-list line by seeing Billy Joel at Madison Square Garden. Then Phoenix.

Phoenix was supposed to be a trip. It became a revelation.

I flew there in 2018 and also saw the Grand Canyon, as if the universe decided to give me a bonus. In early spring 2019 I went to Albuquerque and drove up to Santa Fe, another bucket list destination. My world widened again. My mind started believing in “later” again.

In May 2019, my father died.

The sadness was strange. Our relationship had never been whole after my mother’s death, and by then I’d already mourned the father I needed and didn’t have. As I got older, I could see it differently: when I lost a mother, he lost a wife. Neither of us knew how to navigate that. I was the child, and I believed it was his responsibility to make sure I was okay. I still believe that. But I also believe now that he did the best he could with what he had.

That year I made a decision born of good intentions and bad boundaries: I moved in with a friend who had been sober with me but had relapsed. I thought if we lived together, I could fix him.

We can’t fix people who don’t want to be fixed.

And alcoholism is not something you “beat” and then forget. It waits. It watches. It whispers. It wears a thousand disguises, and one of the most dangerous is pride.

On December 18, 2019, incidentally the anniversary of the day I lost my mother, I took a drink.

That fact still chills me. I didn’t choose that date consciously, but addiction has a way of circling back to old wounds. After the first sip, it was as if a sleeping animal woke up hungry. I bought a case of beer that day. The next day I called out of work. I drove out of town so no one would see me and bought whiskey to mix with fountain drinks. And I drove.

I began drinking at work almost immediately. I was still clinic manager. I was drawing blood. Running lab tests. The lie couldn’t hold. The consequences came. The medical clinic let me go, and my good friend who owned the clinics, someone with a heart of gold, was put in the devastating position of having to release the man she had believed in. I am still sorry for that.

The relapse lasted a year. It wrecked everything: relationships, stability, self-respect. In a strange way it was worse than before, because I had rebuilt a life and burned it down in less than twelve months. But there was one difference that mattered: I knew what happiness tasted like. I knew freedom existed. And I wanted it back.

In 2021, I surrendered fully.

Not bargaining. Not “I’ll cut back.” Not “I’ll do it my way.” Surrender.

On February 20, 2021, I became sober again - this time with urgency, humility, and a deeper desire to safeguard myself. Treatment was different because I was different. I was honest in a way I had never been.

I told my counselor everything.

For the first time in my life, I said the words: I am gay.

And something unexpected happened: my cousins, two of the few family members I had left who still loved me, showed me that the God they serve had room for me, too. Their acceptance gave me courage they will never fully understand.

I faced grief I’d avoided for years. My counselor arranged a kind of service for my father since I hadn’t attended his funeral. She made me write a eulogy. I cried until I thought I would dehydrate. And then I forgave him. Not because he was perfect, but because I was tired of carrying that weight.

I forgave my stepmother. I forgave my aunt and cousins who, I felt, threw me away. I forgave bullies. I forgave the church. I learned a crucial truth: forgiveness doesn’t mean reopening the door. Forgiveness is releasing the burden so it stops poisoning your own bloodstream. It doesn’t deny the hurt. It doesn’t erase injustice. It simply says: I will not live chained to this.

And I learned to keep my ego where it belongs, sealed in the bottom of the last bottle I drank. Not buried so I could pretend it didn’t exist, but visible, so I could remember its power. I don’t have to carry it. But I have to respect it.

After treatment, I lived in recovery apartments with no money and no income, trusting the process and doing my part. I got a job at Starbucks. I discovered I was great in the drive-thru. People told me I sounded like a radio personality, and my early-morning peppiness made them smile. One day my former manager from an eye clinic drove through, recognized me, and asked me to come talk.

She hired me back.

I didn’t have a car, so coworkers ensured I had rides. Then she helped me get into my own townhouse. In December 2021, I spent my first Christmas in my own place, alone, and it was amazing. Not lonely, but peaceful. Proof that solitude could be sanctuary.

I kept working, kept saving. I bought a car. I made amends at the medical clinic and was hired back Saturdays. Somewhere in the middle of rebuilding, I started making fudge for Christmas gifts. Then cupcakes and cookies. With encouragement and a little faith in myself, The Georgia Sweet Shop was born.

Today, I am employed full-time at the eye clinic, where I am now a Certified Optician, and I’m preparing for another certification. I’ve had multiple raises. I still work Saturdays at the medical clinic. The Sweet Shop is going strong. I write and publish books.

I pay my bills. I’m rebuilding my credit. This past June I bought my first brand-new car.

I live in a cozy townhouse with just myself and my moody little cat, whom I love to pieces.

I travel again. I just spent another week in Phoenix this past July. It was my fourth trip to the Valley, and number five is on the books for March.

Phoenix still feels like a promise that will be kept.

I won’t pretend everything is perfect. I still have bouts of depression. I lost my sister several months ago. I miss the desert, and coming back to Mississippi after being out there can feel like grief. I miss the childhood I wasn’t allowed to have. I hate the years I lost to alcohol. I wish I could reclaim the time, undo the choices, erase the damage.

But I can’t.

What I have is today. And a future that is wide open.

I’m not racing anyone. I’ve earned the right to move at my own pace. I know who I am now. I know what I can survive. I know what I can build.

And the people I forgave? All the ones I released from my anger, my obsession, my need for explanation? Well, I’ve recently added myself to that list.

I deserve grace too.

I deserve happiness. And peace.

In my mind, I can see it: mountains, saguaros, hot city streets, and faces that are smiling because they’re alive and still trying. I look out at that horizon, imagined for now, and I feel something I never trusted for most of my life:

Home.

And the best part about knowing where your forever home is - that place your mind and body recognize as belonging - is this:

It can’t be taken from you.

By anyone.

I’ve claimed it. It’s already mine. Not today, and maybe not tomorrow, but I will make it home.

I have possibilities. I have a hope that one day I will know what it feels like to be someone’s favorite person. To walk into a room and have someone light up to see me. I have no idea what that might feel like.

But I think I deserve the chance to find out