First Year Writing Award

The Education of Descent

By:  James Hurst

An entire life can change in the matter of one decision. The decision can be simple. It could be turning around in the crosswalk to pick up the pen that you dropped. Holding a door open for a person that is handicapped. Saying it is nice to see you to a person who is suffering from low self-worth. Standing on the train to forfeit your seat for an older person. The extra dollar you leave in the Dunkin Donuts’ tip cup could help pay for the diapers of a new­born baby.  Choosing to stand up for what you believe in, instead of falling to everything you fear in. Every day there are an insurmountable amount of decisions we need to make. Each one is just as paramount to our lives...

I grew up on a cul de sac in a middle-class family in Windham, New Hampshire. My home was a caring environment, and my family was not out of the ordinary. I played hockey when I was younger, and I had normal relationships with my peers. I was not spoiled, and I also was never deprived of anything. There was just always a longing in my heart for more. No matter what I received it was never enough. I remember as far back to when I could not stop collecting Ninja Turtles action figures for the life of me. I would get one, and I was already looking forward to the next one. Video games followed the same pattern, as well as food.

As I grew older the hole started to feel like an infinite abyss. I felt like I did not fit into social groups. I was terminally unique. The relationships in my life were being built on false foundations. Friendships were based around what I wanted to receive from them. I just wanted to feel like I fit in, so I became a chameleon. I wore the clothes the cool kids were wearing. I played the sports that the popular group played. I was afraid to be who I was, because I feared I would not be accepted. Little did I know I was locking myself into a dance that would transform my entire world.

During high school I was introduced to a variety of substances that would change the way I felt. Mushrooms, LSD, marijuana, and ecstasy were just a few of them. They gave me courage, calmness, and greatest of all: a sense of purpose. Substance abuse was widespread, so it gave me a group of people I had something in common with. There was not a dull moment in my time outside of class.

I began selling drugs to enhance my popularity. Parents, students, and town folk bought weed, hallucinogens, and pain killers from me. Drug dealers paid each other to have me sell drugs for them. Without any surprise authorities did not like me. The Salem Police Department was breathing down my neck. One officer would sit in his Ford Crown Victoria outside my family’s house waiting for me to make a mistake.

My “coworkers” had their house raided by a Mexican organized crime group. The crime group kicked down their front door. They came in with their assault rifle and buoy knife in hand.

They pressed their rifle into my friend’s back, and promised they would kill him if he did not cooperate with their demands. The following day I bought my first AK-47. I was paranoid a similar attack would happen at my family’s house. My innocent mother found the rifle underneath my bed, and cried uncontrollably. I asked for forgiveness, but the damage was already done. By the time I realized I made a decision I could no longer back out of, it was too late to repent. There was no turning back. I became more lost as each second passed.

When I graduated from Salem High School, the first thing I wanted to do was celebrate. I wanted to get higher than I had been to mask the pain that I was causing. It felt like I was wearing a backpack full of rocks, and as each day passed another boulder was added. This crippled my motivation to search for a better life. My friend helped me buy a percocet to achieve this incredible high I heard about from my clients. I went to my usual spot by the powerlines with my friends, and blew a $25 pill off of my diploma. I paid dearly for that one pill. I signed a contract with a deadly disease that would lead to a destiny unlike my peers. My friends were going to college and finding jobs. I found myself in situations I only heard about in movies like  Trainspotting and The Basketball Diaries.

You know the story of addiction. I lost everything. There was no hiding the progression of my disease. I lost jobs, family ties, money, shelter, and everything that is worldly. Each loss was another circle of hell I had to endure. The jobs brought me to stealing and manipulating to support my addiction. Losing my family caused me to live in eternal loneliness. When I had to live without money I committed treachery to everyone in society, and from doing so had to get higher each time. My moral compass pointed in the same direction no matter which way I was walking. When I lost shelter I lived in an absolute Hell. I lived on the street’s of the worst areas in Massachusetts. I could not even gain entrance into a homeless shelter, because I could not pass a drug test. This was my personal eighth circle of Hell.

Society became my ninth circle of Hell. I lived as a vagrant for months on end. I slept in tent cities and in the woods. I learned how to live off of what was available.  I hopped a train to Boston, because I figured it would be easier to hide in the massive population of the homeless. The ground underneath my feet became home after a while. It did not matter if it was the wet grass in the Boston Commons, the walking path around Boston Harbor, the subway entrance at Chinatown, or the concrete outside of parking garages on cold nights. The homeless helped me learn how to survive without society. What made this so awful was the everyday people of Boston. They swore at me, walked by me, helped feed my addiction, and would not even had known if I was dead on a park bench instead of sleeping on a park bench. The Police did not intervene at all, and nobody cared anymore.

My life had no worth.

My entrance into purgatory needed a guide. This came in the form of a police officer on a bicycle. I was sleeping on a park bench, and he woke me up to tell me I needed to leave. Instead of just letting me go my way he sat down next to me. The contrast of his clean cut look versus my unshaven, underweight, and filthy look was incredible. We talked for a little while. I could see that he wanted to help me. I went to walk away, but he wanted to run my name in the federal database for warrants first. I sat back down next to him, and gave him my name. We both knew what was going to happen next. Three Crown Victorias and a paddy wagon pulled up to take me away. The feeling of relief came over me as I was being escorted in chains to the back of the paddy wagon.

I woke up the following day with a stack of bologna sandwiches at the door my  8’x10’ cell. I must have not waken up for 12-hours. I was so grateful to have a night spent indoors, even if it was on a concrete slab the police department calls a bunk. An officer came to the cell, and brought me to the transportation van. They brought me to Lowell District Court. After waiting for two hours in the dirty basement of the courthouse the corrections officer brought me to the judge in Courtroom 6. He had a big decision to make. I either was going to prison for 5 years, or getting alternative treatment. He weighed my heart against the feather, and I passed. The Commonwealth gave me a slim opportunity to get clean in the hardest adult rehabilitation program in Massachusetts, but I had a 5 year suspended sentence lurking over my head.

I made a decision every day that I was going to reach for a life I could not even imagine. I learned how to be fully self-sufficient. I stopped asking society and my family would they could do for me; I began to ask what I can do for them. I was grateful about the littlest things, such as feeling rain on my skin, small conversations, and the aroma of coffee. It was like I was experiencing life for the first time again. Seeing my family for 30 minutes out of the 4032 minutes of the week was a gift worth surrendering my way of life for. Each second of the 1800 were accounted for. My head was not worrying about some term paper or workshop I needed to complete. I was there with my family.

I was at the end of the program, and I wanted to apply to go to college. I talked to my counselor about going to Salem State University. When I told her she immediately disapproved. I had a vision of where I wanted to go, and a counselor was not going to stop me from achieving my goals. I had a friend print out the application. He dropped it off, and I filled it out. The following day I sneaked it into the outgoing mail. When I completed the program, I had a missed voicemail on my cell phone. I lost my cell phone privileges, so I was a little behind on my mailbox. The message started by saying, “ Hi James. This is Salem State University’s

Admissions Office asking you to finish your application, so you can sign up for classes.”

That day I started a new journey of descent. Professors, peers, and coworkers have guided me in making decisions into a fall of a new adventure. Today I stand tall with over a year in recovery, a family man, I have received three promotions in the last year at a great job, and I am a full-time student at Salem State University with a 3.65 GPA.

James Hurst ’19 is a Psychology Major and was nominated for the First Year Writing Award by Professor Sandra Fyfe.