Whispering Wyrd

People have actually asked me in the past why I am the way I am. In all but one instance it definitely wasn’t a compliment. The most recent time I was asked that question was a compliment though, and that moved me to write this (partial) answer.
 
 The short answer is because I’ve seen what happens when people choose violence and I’ve seen what happens when people choose healing.

I didn’t have an easy childhood. Not because my parents were bad or anything like that. I was just lost. I don’t want to get into all the details, I’m not ready for a full tell-all. But I will say this, I was a sensitive kid who grew up without much sense of self-worth. Whatever natural confidence I might have had was slowly worn down. By the time 7th grade rolled around, I already felt like I didn’t matter much. The public school system of the 1970s and 80s was pretty rough.

If you were different, sensitive, anxious, or already carrying emotional weight, it could be brutal. Systems can be cold. And when you already feel invisible or broken, you start looking for belonging wherever you can find it.

By seventh grade, I was drinking hard liquor. Not just experimenting. Drinking. That’s how early I learned to numb myself.

At 16 years old, I got involved with people I had no business being around. It started innocently enough, I had a crush on a girl and started dating her. But her brothers were grown men involved in organized crime. Once I was in their orbit, walking away wasn’t that simple. Fear keeps you stuck. Survival becomes your primary goal.

I saw things during that time that changed me forever. Violence, drugs, death. People getting arrested, people going back to prison. People being murdered.

Eventually, that world began to collapse in on itself. Some went back inside. Some didn’t make it. And that was my opening, my chance to escape.

I took it.

Not long after that, I met a Tae Kwon Do master from Korea. He didn’t just teach me martial arts. He taught me meditation. Discipline. Self-respect. He helped me get off alcohol and drugs. For the first time, I started to feel like maybe I could become someone different. Someone better. Someone who mattered.

But life doesn’t always move in straight lines.

When he returned to Korea, I lost that anchor. Slowly, I slipped back into alcohol. What started as coping turned into dependence. Over time, it became full-blown alcoholism. Something important happened back then, though…

After everything I’d seen, I had zero interest in being a “tough guy.” I didn’t want violence. I didn’t want dominance. I didn’t want power over anyone. Other young men seemed to be constantly looking for fights. I wasn’t.

I’d already seen where that road leads.

Alcohol stayed with me for years. It affected my marriage. It affected my sons. It affected every part of my life, even when I tried to pretend it didn’t. I went to jail because of alcohol. But I didn’t want to admit I was an alcoholic.

Eventually, a doctor told me flat out that if I didn’t stop drinking, I was going to die. That hit me hard. I remember how that hit. They put me on Klonopin to help with the alcoholism and PTSD.

That decision cost me more than twenty years.

Those pills consumed huge parts of my life. They dulled pain, yes, but they also dulled joy, connection, clarity, and presence. I lived in a chemical fog for decades without fully realizing it.

Getting off them was pure hell. There’s no other way to say it.

Withdrawal stripped me down to bare nerves. Anxiety. Insomnia. Physical symptoms. Emotional storms. Waves that came out of nowhere. Nights when I didn’t know if I’d make it to morning.

But I did!

And now, at almost sixty years old, something amazing is now true, I am clean and sober for the first time in decades. Let that sink in. More than three decades.

I’m not sharing this for sympathy. I’m not trauma-dumping… I’m sharing it because this is what healing can look like. It’s messy. It’s nonlinear, it takes time, it takes support. It takes falling down and getting back up again.

And it changes you.

Today, I don’t want revenge on the past. I’m not angry at the world. I don’t want to harden myself. I want to help people. I want to do no harm at all.

I want to be gentle with those who are struggling, because I know how invisible suffering can be. I know how hard it is to carry unbearable and unspeakable pain quietly. I know a lot of people are just doing their best to survive another day.

That’s why I write. That’s why I share pieces of my story. That’s why kindness matters so much to me now.

If you’re reading this and you’re hurting, whether from addiction, trauma, anxiety, or just the weight of life please know this… You are not broken. You are not weak. You are responding to things that were too heavy to carry alone.

Healing is possible. But it doesn’t happen overnight. It doesn’t look perfect. But it is possible.

And if someone like me can find his way back after all of that, I promise you, there is hope for you too.

Amituofo
~Buck