Packing Up

This morning my wife and I (actually mostly my wife!) started packing up our things. We started with our garage. We went through the cabinets and boxed up the things we are going to take as we depart this house. Yes, it appears most likely on the 31st of this month I will be going away for undetermined period of time which will cause my wife and children to move out of this house. This house is no longer ours since the sale closed last week. We negotiated a short-term rent scenario with the buyer so the children can finish school in June.

As of June 30th my wife and children will move out. We are still not sure where they will be moving to because it all depends on how long I will be incarcerated. If I am incarcerated over one year then they will be moving back east with my wife's mother but if for some reason my sentence is less than one year my wife may stay out here. Yes, I altered the lives of not only my family but my in-laws and my friends. I do thank each one of them for standing by us in this time of crisis.

I digressed a little there, sorry!! Getting back to packing up the garage. I realized a few things as my wife and I were boxing up our belongings. One; I am pretty much worthless when it comes to unspecified tasks involving my wife; I always defer to her. What I am trying to say is I wait for my wife to start the task and tell me what she wants me to do. I have found that when I do things without my wife's blessing I get myself into trouble. So I stand around a great deal and look to my wife for guidance. Right or wrong this is how I operate. I would rather have my wife tell me what to do rather than have to do it a second time because I didn't follow directions.

Secondly; and more importantly I was a messed up compulsive gambler for a long long time. This may not come as news to most people but as I was going through my files from 10 years ago I found something I completely forgot about. In 1994 I declared personal bankruptcy from all the gambling debts I had amassed over the previous years; yes, I did remember this. However; in 1996 I entered a football picking contest while we lived in Las Vegas. The entry fee for this contest was $25 and it consisted of picking just the winners no point spreads of the weekly NFL games. At the time I thought this was harmless fun but as it turns out this harmless fun lead into pitiful and incomprehensible demoralization (Gamblers Anonymous terms).

The worse thing happened I won money from this seemingly harmless contest. When I was cleaning out my files I found tickets to this contest and realized I won $1500 by finishing 20th over 10,000 contestants. After winning this contest I decided I could gamble "normally" because hey I beat out almost 10,000 people picking winners so I must know something. I slipped back into my old habits without even realizing it. After winning the money I bet a few basketball games and then a few baseball games and then I discovered how I could hide my gambling through the internet.

As I have recounted my story over these past 14 months I completely forgot what got me back into gambling the third and hopefully final time. I thought it was the internet and the anonymity of the internet where I could place wagers and no one would know. What I didn't realize was a simple contest for $25 gave me the green light to start gambling again. In the Gamblers Anonymous Program we call this a "trivial reason".

Yes, they are so correct and I blocked this trivial reason out of my head until today. I am glad I found those tickets because it showed me that I was really screwed up and I have no will power when it comes to gambling. I need help and the help I have found is in the GA Program. I do realize now that I cannot EVER get complacent because a simple lottery ticket or sweepstakes entry could send me on the path to self-destruction. I want to avoid this self-destruction at all costs and the only way I know how to avoid it is by NOT gambling and following the principles in the Gamblers Anonymous Program one day at a time.

I came across a few articles earlier today detailing the pitfalls of a compulsive gambler. The first article comes from Missouri and it details the sentence a woman was handed as a result of her embezzling to feed her compulsive gambling addiction. The second article comes from Wisconsin and it is a little twisted. It appears this woman had many issues with compulsive gambling being one of them. It just shows me the power of the addiction. Finally the third article is an editorial from Northern California which makes a great point.

Again, I am not against gambling for anyone except for myself; however; the point made in this editorial is spectacular when the author wrote; "But if the priority is quality of life and encouraging one another to be the best we can, then we can do without gambling in Glenn County." This is how I feel about my life. The quality of my life is so much better without gambling and each and every day I try to be the best I can be and to help another human being. My life is so much better this way as opposed to the gambling way. Life is wonderful and I am grateful for each and everyday.