The Courage to Go On: (Escape from Addictions)

By Gary G. Milner

Born in Annapolis Royal and raised in a little backwoods country Rd: called Guinea, I was raised in an Alcoholic family and went through many abuses; verbal, emotional, physical and sexual, I really didnt have much of a chance for survival from the start. My father was a very miserable drunk, and he put my mother through hell. If you knew my mother, than you would know that she did not deserve the abuse that he inflicted on her or us children. The only values that I learned as a child was how to drink, lie, beat on a woman, cheat and steal.
I carried these values from childhood to now, going through four marriages and many jobs and covered myself with alcohol and drugs.
This is the compelling story of my life, and how after forty years of addictions I found a way through faith to climb out of that cesspool. All of my poetry is based on my own true feelings, which comes from a deep dark part of my very soul.
Through my poems I am able to put my feelings out and forward, to be able to free my demons and how I survived from the world of drugs and alcohol.

G.G.M.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jul 20, 2009
• ISBN: 9781462830763

Gary G. Milner

Born in Annapolis Royal and raised in a litt le backwoods country Rd: called “Guinea”’, I was raised in an Alcoholic family and went through many abuses; verbal, emoti onal, physical and sexual, I really didn’t have much of a chance for survival from the start. My father was a very miserable drunk, and he put my mother through hell. If you knew my mother, than you would know that she did not deserve the abuse that he infl icted on her or us children. The only values that I learned as a child was how to drink, lie, beat on a woman, cheat and steal. I carried these values from childhood to now, going through four marriages and many jobs and covered myself with alcohol and drugs. This is the compelling story of my life, and how aft er forty years of addicti ons I found a way through faith to climb out of that cesspool. All of my poetry is based on my own true feelings, which comes from a deep dark part of my very soul. Through my poems I am able to put my feelings out and forward, to be able to free my demons and how I survived from the world of drugs and alcohol. G.G.M.

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Copyright © 2009 by Gary G. Milner.

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Contents

When Is the End

When is the end

Turmoil

Turmoil

Wake Up

Wake Up

Sharing the Sorrow

Sharing the sorrow

Spring

Spring

Strength

Strength

Medical Machines/Borrowed Time

Medical Machines/ Borrowed Time

My sister

Sister

Nightmares

Nightmares

Prayer

Prayer

Take the Man Down

Take the man down

Tears

Tears

The Cold Hard Truth

The cold hard truth

Tree Roots

Tree Roots

Trust

Trust

Mask

Masks

Happy/Sad

Happy/Sad

Locked

Locked

Breathalyzer

Breathalyzer

Courage

Courage

Insomnia

Insomnia

Drunk

Drunk

Hangover

Hangover

Demons

Demons

Fear

Fear

Looking Back

Looking Back

City Slums

City Slums

Dala Class 2009

Dala Class 2009

Cancer

Cancer

Emotions

Emotions

Love

Love

Little Boy

Little Boy

Free

Free

Gods Love

Gods Love

Broken Spirits

Broken spirits

Feelings

Feelings

Cocaine

Cocaine

Spiraling Downward

To my three beautiful children

Jeffery

Sarah

Guy

This poem is just for you, because I have and always will love each and every one of you equally

Daddy’s Love

I pray that you don’t travel the wrong road

I pray that you, don’t carry a heavy load

All I ever wanted, was for you to know

How I loved you, and to watch you grow

Daddy carried the burden, and felt the shame

Of not knowing love, I buried the pain

Deep inside of me, a large dark hole

Keeping my feelings in, I could not grow

I pray that my children take a look at their path

For there is a road, if you do the math

I don’t want you, to travel this route

Just know that I love you, without a doubt

Get your feelings out, put them on the table

Then, make them heard, and you’ll be stable

Ghosts from the past, made me insane

I used alcohol and drugs, to cover the shame

Always know that, I am your Dad

Being my children, you make me glad

Love always—Daddy

G.G.M.

Where do you go when you’ve been to hell and back?

My mind was so confused from all the abuse that I had suffered from childhood that it made it very difficult to know right from wrong. The emotional, physical, mental, and verbal abuse, as well as sexual abuse, clouded my judgment. Always being told that you were a mistake, that you were not planned, and you would never amount to anything made me feel so unloved and unwanted that I started to believe these things.

My father was a mean, miserable drunk, and I can still see him beating my mother or one of his children. I remember one time when he came home from working two weeks in the woods and he only had enough money to buy his alcohol, but hardly anything to buy food with. The more he drank the meaner he got. He would pick up a piece of wood from the wood box beside the kitchen stove and hit my mother with it sometimes. I thought he was going to kill her. I still remember her screams from the pain he inflicted. I would hide in a dark closet and not make a sound, in fear that he would come after me like he usually did.

When he could not do something, or things did not turn out the way he wanted them to, he would get so angry that you knew it was better to run and hide than to be around him.

One time when I came home from school and there was some change missing out of his jacket pocket, I was the one who got the blame for taking it. I tried to tell him that it was not me, but he called me a liar and picked up the chain from the chainsaw he was repairing and hit me over the head with it. The teeth on the chain were so sharp that they cut me. Then he grabbed the five pound steel fire poker and hit me over the back. I was in so much pain that I thought he had broken my back. I had to admit to him that I did, even though I did not, because it was the only way to make him stop hitting me.

My father was about six foot six and weighed about two hundred and fifty pounds and I was really scared of him. I use to have nightmares about him and a friend of his trying to kill me. Every night it was a different way of trying to kill me, but it was always the same two people involved. This made me even more afraid of him.

Sometimes when there was no food to eat he would force me to go with him in the night to a neighbor’s garden to steal vegetables. So therefore my father taught me how to steal, to take things that didn’t belong to me, he taught me that it was o.k.

He would give alcohol to my two older brothers, hug them and carry on with them. After awhile I thought that if I drank alcohol also maybe, just maybe, he would love me too.

I was eight years old when I stole his alcohol. I ran down across the road and hid in the bushes to drink it and, boy was I drunk and sick. Then instead of getting love, I got another beating for stealing. Now I was really confused. I learned it was o.k. to steal as long as it was not from him. These are the values that I was taught, that I carried into my teen years.

Twelve years old and things began to get really tough for me. We had chores to do everyday. Getting wood in, hunting for food and lived mostly on squirrel, rabbit, frog legs, partridges, deer, bear and even porcupine. Whatever wild meat that was eatable and of course there was a mixture of vegetables, turnip, parsnip, cabbage, carrots and potatoes which usually belonged to someone else.

At this point of my life I had learned that the only things my father could do was hunt, steal and drink.

My father had a friend that came down from the city about every two weeks to go hunting or fishing, but there wasn’t much of either being done; only drinking. His friend would buy deer, rabbits or fish from people and then go home and tell his wife that he shot these animals or caught the fish. This would cover his tracks for the weekend.

That old man was a pervert, being short of beds as it was, he was told by my father to sleep with me. One night I woke up sometime through the night and he was feeling me between the