In recent chapters, I’ve shared how music and wrestling shaped my teenage years. How they gave me strength, purpose, and a place to pour all the feelings I didn’t have words for.
But while those moments gave me joy and connection, they were part of a fleeting season. A calm before the storm I didn’t see coming.
Even my favorite songs and the rush of the wrestling mat couldn’t quiet the storm inside me.
I was caught between two worlds: one built on love and safety, the other sharp-edged and judgmental.
At home with my mom and Sue, life was full of laughter, connection, and people who showed me what unconditional love looked like.
It was a world rooted in truth and care. A place where I felt fully seen.
But the moment I stepped outside those doors, everything changed.
Whispers. Stares. Rules no one said out loud, but everyone seemed to know.
The world didn’t see my family the way I did, and I didn’t know how to carry that weight.
I wanted to protect the people I loved most, but I also wanted to belong.
And in trying to do both, I started to lose myself.
This chapter takes a darker turn.
It’s the story of how that confusion slowly pulled me off course, how I drifted further than I ever imagined, and how hard it was to find my way back.
The Circle Forms
Walking up that dark street with Andrea, the echo of The Cure spilling from a house up ahead, I felt something shift inside me.
The air was warm and still, filled with the faint sweetness of spring, like the world itself was holding its breath for what was about to unfold.
Under the yellow glow of a single streetlight, I saw them for the first time: Rick, Mike, Gary, Diane, and Tina.
They turned toward us, their faces half-lit, half-shadowed. Laughter hung in the night air.
For the first time in my life, I felt a rush of belonging so strong it nearly knocked the breath out of me.
It wasn’t the same kind of belonging I’d grown up with in Sue and my mom’s home, which was warm, honest, and built on love.
This was something different, sharper.
It felt good, but it didn’t feel safe.
I didn’t know it then, but that moment came with a cost.
This wasn’t just a fun night out or a chance meeting with new friends.
It was the first step onto a path that would eventually lead me into some of my darkest times.
The Group
Andrea was beautiful. Everyone saw it. But she was also guarded, almost impenetrable.
She didn’t share much, and what I didn’t know at the time was that she was quietly questioning her own sexuality.
That part of her life was hidden from me, and in hindsight, it adds a strange twist of coincidence to how we crossed paths.
Diane was different. She was gorgeous, with a dry sense of humor and a brutal honesty that could cut right through you.
There was always a chip on her shoulder, a toughness she wore like armor.
When I met her, she was still tangled up with Mike, but I didn’t care.
From the moment I saw her, I was drawn to her completely.
Then there was Tina. She was the best of us.
She was physically stunning, and even more beautiful on the inside.
Always smiling, always positive, always able to see the best in everyone.
Her personality was magnetic. The kind that made you want to be a better person just by being around her.
If I’m being honest, I never really understood why she was part of our group.
She seemed out of place at times, like she was too good for the chaos swirling around the rest of us.
But I was grateful she was there.
Rick was this wiry little dude with a constant smirk and restless energy.
He loved cars. Fixing them, racing them, talking about them endlessly.
On weekends, he and his family spent hours at the track.
But as much as he loved racing, he loved to party even more.
Rick was my best friend, my partner-in-crime, the person I spent most of my time with when I wasn’t with Diane.
Mike was the tough guy.
He was Andrea’s big brother and had been friends with Rick and Gary forever.
He tolerated me, but I don’t think he ever truly cared for me.
Looking back, I can’t blame him.
I went to prom with his younger sister, started dating his ex-girlfriend Diane, and then became inseparable from his best friend Rick.
It was a lot to ask him to be okay with.
And he wasn’t.
And finally, Gary.
Gary was the peacekeeper.
He got along with everyone and hated conflict.
No matter what drama unfolded, he stayed neutral.
It was often his basement where we hung out drinking, laughing, plotting our next adventure.
Gary’s house became our unofficial headquarters, the place where nights began and mornings ended.
Almost immediately, I became part of their world.
Andrea and I never really dated after that prom, but through her, I kept showing up. First tentatively, then all the time.
Before long, Diane and I were together, and Rick had become my closest friend.
My world revolved around Diane and Rick, though rarely at the same time.
I was either with her or with him, and the three of us were only together when the entire group came together.
What I didn’t realize at the time was that Rick, Mike, and Gary weren’t kids like me.
They were out of high school, almost twenty years old.
That age gap didn’t register then.
All I saw were people who accepted me completely, no questions asked.
For a kid who had always felt like an outsider, that was intoxicating.
For a while, they weren’t just friends, they were my entire world.
Diane, Rick, and Tina
Diane carried her own weight of struggles.
Her father wasn’t in the picture, and her mom had ongoing health issues.
But what kept her mom away most nights wasn’t her health, it was her choice.
She spent a lot of time at her boyfriend’s place, leaving Diane and her older sister largely on their own.
That absence shaped Diane, leaving her both fiercely independent and deeply wounded.
We were two young people carrying more than we knew how to handle, clinging to each other for comfort and escape.
Tina was Diane’s confidante and closest friend, and over time, she became a trusted friend of mine too.
Her presence brought balance to the group. A lightness we didn’t always deserve but desperately needed.
When I wasn’t with Diane, I was with Rick.
When I wasn’t with Rick, I was with Diane.
And most of the time, we were all together, the six of us in some combination.
When I was with them, there were no conflicts, no questions, no judgment.
They accepted me completely.
But underneath it all, we were a group of lost souls searching for a place to belong.
None of us knew how to navigate the world we were living in.
That truth wouldn’t hit me until much later.
A Different Time
It’s hard to explain now, but this was the 1980s.
There were no cell phones, no texts, no easy way to check in.
When I was gone, I was gone.
Unless you knew exactly where to find me, you couldn’t reach me.
That distance made the separation from my mom, Sue, and my chosen family even more stark.
When I was with the group, it felt like nothing else existed.
The Spiral Begins
At first, it all felt like freedom.
Late nights, loud music, the thrill of being with people who didn’t judge me or try to control me.
Most weekends, we’d pile into cars and head into D.C. to go drinking and dancing.
Back then, it was surprisingly easy to get into clubs when you were underage.
The legal drinking age in D.C. had recently changed from eighteen to twenty-one, but they were still in the process of grandfathering in everyone between those ages.
That left a wide gray area, and we took full advantage of it.
We had two regular spots:
The 9:30 Club, a legendary place for alternative music.
Poseurs, a punk and new wave club in Georgetown.
Poseurs was just up the hill from the famous Exorcist steps, a landmark every local knew.
And lucky for me, not far from Poseurs was a White Castle.
There was nothing better than grabbing a greasy bag of sliders at two in the morning after a night of drinking and dancing.
It became our ritual: music, chaos, and White Castle before heading home as the sun came up.
It was a different kind of world than the one I’d been raised in.
Sue and my mom’s friends gathered in living rooms, talking, laughing, sharing food and stories.
In D.C., under strobe lights and cigarette smoke, the noise drowned out everything, even the voice inside me that knew this wasn’t where I was meant to be.
At first, those nights were exhilarating, like we were part of something bigger than ourselves.
But slowly, it stopped feeling like fun and started feeling like normal.
And that was when things began to shift.
The Breaking Point
After about six months together, Diane and I made a decision: we were done with school.
Partying and being too young to navigate everything definitely played a role, but it wasn’t just about being reckless.
I didn’t feel like I belonged at Meade, or at any school.
The hallways, the classrooms, the whole structure of it felt like another world I didn’t fit into.
I was tired of pretending.
I just wanted to be an adult, living my own life, free from the confusion and constraints of high school.
So we quit. Together.
In January of 1988, Diane dropped out of Laurel High School, and I dropped out of Meade.
When I dropped out, my mom made me a promise.
She was a high school dropout too, and she told me she would take her GED at the same time I did, sitting right next to me as we took the exam together.
It was her way of showing me that education still mattered, even if we had both taken unconventional paths.
By April, we both had our GEDs in hand.
It gave me a small sense of accomplishment and gave her a moment of redemption.
For me, though, it also felt hollow.
I had cut ties with school completely, and in doing so, cut away the last piece of structure in my life.
Life Keeps Changing
Then, in May or June, my mom and Debi took a big step.
They moved in together.
It was a huge moment for them, a celebration of love and stability.
They gave me a choice:
I could stay in the townhouse by subletting it from my mom, or I could move out completely and find my own place.
I decided to stay and sublet, bringing in two roommates.
My roommates and I were never especially close, but we got along well enough.
It wasn’t family, but it was stable.
And at that point, that was enough for me.
Not Fully Gone
Even as I built this new life, I never stopped going home altogether.
Before my mom moved out, there were still nights when I would get home late, after she’d gone to bed, and sleep in my own room.
The next morning, I’d wake up after she had already left for the day.
After she moved out, I saw her even less.
Our paths rarely crossed, and the townhouse began to feel more like just a place to crash than a true home.
The love was still there, it always was, but the connection grew thinner as I drifted further into my own world.
Her love was steady, like a light I could always see but couldn’t bring myself to move toward.
The women who had raised me had built a world of truth and care, but I was too caught up in a world of distractions and chaos to notice.
At the time, I thought I was free.
In reality, I was just lost.
A Mother’s Strength
Looking back now, I realize how hard this must have been on my mom.
She had raised me right. She had given me nothing but unconditional love and surrounded me with good people and strong examples of what family and friends should be.
But there was nothing she could do about the confusion being caused by the outside world.
I’m sure all she wanted to do was protect me and keep me safe, but she also had the wisdom to understand that I needed to find my own way.
Damn, that had to be scary and hard to watch.
The Breakup
By August, things between Diane and me had started to unravel.
Neither of us wanted to let go, but deep down, we both knew it wasn’t healthy.
The unraveling took time.
We’d argue over something stupid, break up for a couple of days, and then end up back together.
That cycle went on for months. The constant push and pull, the drama, the pain.
It was horribly unhealthy, and it wore us both down.
After more than a year together, we finally ended it for good.
It wasn’t sudden or dramatic.
It was just the slow, painful ending of two young people who had been trying to hold each other up when neither of us had solid ground to stand on.
When it was truly over, I felt hollow.
For the first time, I could see how much I’d given up: wrestling, school, friends, stability, even parts of myself.
I had traded all of it for a world that was never built to last.
That clarity was painful, but it was also a gift.
I realized I wasn’t in a good place, and if I didn’t make a change, I’d lose myself completely.
Leaving It Behind
As things with Diane came to an end, I knew what I had to do.
It was hard leaving the group, especially Diane, Tina, and Rick.
But I knew the only way either of us could heal was to cut it off completely.
So I walked away. I walked away from Diane, from the group, and from the unhealthy lifestyle I had submerged myself in.
Around the same time, I landed a job working the night shift at UPS, thanks to a friend of my mom’s who helped me get my foot in the door.
So there I was, living on my own in the townhouse, getting ready to turn eighteen, finally working a real job. But leaving behind the only people I’d been with for the past year and a half.
It was one of the hardest things I’d ever done.
I didn’t know exactly what came next, but I knew it couldn’t be what I was leaving behind.
I headed back to my neighborhood, back to the townhouse, and tried to start over.
One of the first things I did was try to reconnect with some old friends.
The first stop was Chris’s house.
I knocked on the door.
But it wasn’t Chris who answered.
It was his younger brother, Dave, and his best friend, also named Dave.
When Dave opened that door, I didn’t know he and his best friend would soon become my lifeline. The kind of friends who would show me what true loyalty looked like.
Next up: I finally learn what it is to have true, meaningful friendship of my own.
Dave and Dave ❤️❤️❤️