Secrets and Stars Tarot

My mother and I never thought I would live a day past 27 and somehow, even after battling a fentanyl addiction and overdosing multiple times, I am now 30, alive, sober, and sharing my story.

Here is a sample from Chapter 0, The Fool.

CHAPTER 0 - THE FOOL

The Fool, as a tarot card, embodies new beginnings, innocence, and the fearless step into the unknown.

The traditional imagery shows a young man with a knapsack over his shoulder, walking at the edge of a cliff with a small dog at his heels. His companion. His witness. The meaning of the card is both reckless and peaceful, full of wonder and dangerously naive. He and his friend have packed light and set out anyway, trusting the journey, oblivious yet daring toward the cliffs ahead.

As I sit here writing this memoir, I am one month away from turning thirty. The present day is not where I will begin to tell my story, but it mirrors The Fool in ways that matter. A new journey. A familiar companion. A fearless mentality. Wonder standing at the door, waiting to be let in.

What is different now is that my innocence is gone. If anything, that quality belongs more to my companion than to me. The classic three-card tarot spread goes: Past, Present, Future. So before we jump to any "happily ever after," I need to clear the canvas and paint the heights and depths of the foundation that is my past.

I was twenty-six when I left Winnipeg for good. Not in the cliché way people say it, like some dramatic montage fading into a sunset with a slow song that steals a couple of tears.

The slow part was the two weeks I spent getting my affairs in order under the radar, because I had just skipped bail. For those two weeks, court dates hung over me like a guillotine. The charges? Alleged trafficking, mischief over $5,000 for crashing into a police cruiser during a high-speed chase.

I was not running from Winnipeg as much as I was running toward something that did not exist yet. A version of me I had not met. A life that still lived in the realm of potential. New beginnings. A chance to start over. A leap of faith into the journey that would lead to the last rock bottoms I will ever allow myself to endure.

It started with me leaving my halfway house at 8 a.m. to catch a transit bus from the edge of the city into downtown. I had to meet with my lawyer about my charges. He was a young, cocky little fucker.

When I arrived, I was already unimpressed with the reception area. That only deepened when I stepped into his grayscale office: one lonely certificate in a frame on the wall, no art, no warmth. His desk was a clutter of papers and a half-open laptop.

He himself was put together. Tailored suit. Simple tie. Dainty watch. Black leather dress shoes. Short black wavy hair with a greasy sheen. The standard costume of everyday legal wealth. But when he opened his mouth, it sounded like he was speaking faster than he could think. Every sentence tripped over itself.

You can quote me on this, because I know I am not wrong.

As we talked about how much time I might be looking at, whether I pled guilty or took it to trial, it became very clear that no matter what I asked, he was pushing for the option that meant the least amount of work for him. I had made the mistake of pleading out and not taking my last case to trial. I regret that. A large portion of a later chapter covers that story in detail, but what you need to know here is that I could see him trying to get me to cave.

I know now I could have beaten that last case tenfold. He got lucky. Instead of spending an easy day in court winning, he filled my head with doubt so he could do as little as possible and still get a clean paycheque out of my 20-month conviction.

I wish I remembered the exact conversation word for word, but I know for sure I told him he could go fuck his hat before I walked out of that mundane office.

Waiting at the bus stop, heading back to the halfway and recovery house, there were three things circling my mind:

A person, a place, and a thing.

The person was me. The place was British Columbia. The thing was my 2002 BMW 540i.

It was like I skipped the whole concept of "weighing pros and cons." The path appeared, already paved, and all I had to do was follow it. Leave my social life. Leave my family. Leave my five-year trauma-bond of a relationship. Leave the city I was born and raised in.

It was too easy for me to jump past the decision-making process. I already knew that if I stayed in Winnipeg, I would die unhappy, in and out of jail, putting all my effort into an extremely toxic relationship with a narcissist.

So as much as that meeting with my airhead lawyer pissed me off, something flipped in my brain. A dopamine daydream. I smiled the entire bus ride back.

When I got to the house, I checked in with staff like everything was normal, then went upstairs, quietly and quickly packed my shit, and called for a ride. I said goodbye to the people I trusted, the ones I had lived with for the past four months, and a few I had known for years. Then I grabbed my suitcases and slid out the side door, practically floating to a nearby parking lot where my "partner" at the time waited in the driver's seat. In the passenger seat was my deceased best friend's mom.

Whenever I found my boyfriend, D, hanging out with my friends without me, it always felt like betrayal. Not from him, but from them. I had grown to absolutely fucking hate D. There were many times he went out of his way to make my life hell. One specific time, he tried to turn one of my own best friends against me.

Normally, I would have had something sharp, sarcastic, and vulgar to say about seeing him with people I considered mine. Not that day.

My warpath had begun, but I knew to tread carefully. One wrong comment and D might act out of spite and completely kibosh my mission before it even left the ground.

They asked why I had decided to ditch the halfway house and go "on the run." Neither of them had done time or been caught up in the system like this, but they understood more than I expected. Especially once I explained how backwards it felt. Halfway houses are designed for people getting out of jail, taking steps back into society.

I was in a "halfway to jail house," living there while on bail, waiting for a trial that was almost guaranteed to send me back inside. No matter how well I played the part of the recovered, changed man who was very sorry for his actions and totally rehabilitated by six months of house programming, I was already a reoffending criminal on paper.

Everyone in that courtroom would smell the same bullshit from different angles, no matter how good the performance was.

As the two in the front seats talked during the drive, I reached into the cupholder from the backseat, grabbed a bowl of speed, and lit it. Just like that, I ended my recent six-month stint of sobriety.

D made a sour face. When he opened his mouth to say something, I cut him off before he could get rolling.

"So where are we off to?" I asked.

He let out a sigh, glanced at me in the rearview, then back at the road. "Walmart."

I took my shirt off and changed into a plain white tee. "Good. What for?"

Hope does not always feel like inspiration. Sometimes it feels like static before a thunderstorm. When I closed my eyes and tried to picture my future, it did not look grim. It looked bright. Golden. Almost sepia.

Throughout my life, I have collected many relationships and many belongings. I have lost a great deal of both. This was the first time I deliberately chose to give up the people who meant the most to me. The belongings were always just "things." After you have had enough of them stolen by friends, enemies, or police, you eventually understand they come and go.

What you do not expect is how easily people can come and go too.

It should not be easy to walk away from the people who have had your back since day one, just because you have your own reasons. But for me, it was.

Do not get me wrong. It hurt. It was one of the ugliest crying fits I have ever had. When you are consciously choosing to cause that kind of sadness in the people you love, it feels like taking a sledgehammer straight to the solar plexus.

Saying goodbye to my mother and grandmother felt like I was never going to see them again. I imagine they felt the same.

Keri was the only person willing to come with me in that Jeep Traverse, and the only one I wanted by my side. She had originally been my ex's friend, and she had a warrant of her own, so it did not take much to convince her. As soon as she found out I was preparing to leave, she offered.

We drove through the prairies, the boring and strangely eerie flatlands of Canada. Music from my Spotify blared through the speakers, loud enough to drown out any thought that might grow into worry. The prairies turned to hills, the hills to mountains. I waited for something to stop me. Cops. Guilt. Fear.

Nothing came. Just more yellow lines on the road.

Crossing into Saskatchewan gave me a small dose of relief. We checked into a cheap motel and laughed for hours before grabbing a few broken pieces of sleep. We were getting along effortlessly, and I did not have to perform or pretend. I have always been a people person, no matter what I might think about certain people.

I was not worried about whether we would make it to British Columbia. I knew, deep in my gut, that I would. I was more ready for a new beginning than I had ever been. Even the RCMP station sitting eerily across and a little down the street could not shake me. I was high, exhausted, and somehow more certain than I had ever been.

I did not really sleep. I passed out for about two hours. Morning came, and just like that, we were back on the road.

Somewhere my name did not echo. Somewhere my past had not left claw marks on the walls. Somewhere I could start all over again.