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    Unpacked Sparkle: A Story of Grief and Recovery
    Unavailable
    Unpacked Sparkle: A Story of Grief and Recovery
    Unavailable
    Unpacked Sparkle: A Story of Grief and Recovery
    Ebook201 pages3 hours

    Unpacked Sparkle: A Story of Grief and Recovery

    By Patrick A. Roland

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    Over a year ago, I left a Mariah Carey concert in Las Vegas after six songs. I had gone on the trip as a present to myself for turning forty. But I couldn't enjoy it. I was high on multiple drugs, but mostly crystal meth, and extremely drunk. I had been this way the majority of the year and a half since my partner Pack had suddenly passed away.
    I found him dead on the bathroom floor one January morning while I was getting ready for work. The police told me I had no rights in my own home and asked me to leave. This was before gay marriage became legal. Life as I knew it changed instantly.
    His family pretended I didn't exist. They mauled our home the day he died, leaving it a ravaged mess. I was kicked out of that home. I was also disinvited to his funeral. In eight days I lost everything that mattered. Not even the law protected me from this.
    So I got high in an effort to shoulder the pain. It didn't work. I carried the heavy weight of unresolved complicated grief and addiction on my back. It was like an elephant. A large, unwieldy elephant that wanted me to die.
    No longer able to participate in anything that mattered and unwilling to bear this burden anymore, I went back to my hotel room on the twenty-sixth floor of a casino and looked out on the sparkly lights below. I wanted to be in the light. So I opened the window and decided to jump.
    But God intervened. My mother had somehow found me. Help came and I surrendered to the powerlessness of my situation. I asked God to help me. I stayed and I fought and I learned how to love myself. I put on a pair of sparkly shoes I had bought for that barely attended concert and I walked into the rooms of Crystal Meth Anonymous. I had bought the sparkly shoes hoping Mariah would see me in the audience. Though she didn't get the chance, you did. You all embraced me and my sparkly shoes. They have become my calling card of experience, strength, and hope.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAz Publishing Services
    Release dateDec 7, 2016
    ISBN9781944826321
    Unavailable
    Unpacked Sparkle: A Story of Grief and Recovery
    Author

    Patrick A. Roland

    A new voice in self-help, author Patrick A. Roland, in partnership with Az Publishing Services, has released his new memoir about grief and recovery, Unpacked Sparkle, now available on Amazon. Unpacked Sparkle chronicles Roland's transformative journey upon finding his partner Pack dead in January 2014. It begins on the day of the funeral that he was uninvited to by Pack's homophobic family and details the nearly two year journey back to a now thriving, joy-filled life he experienced after attempting to jump out of a twenty-six story Vegas casino after a weekend of intended Britney Spears and Mariah Carey concerts that he mostly missed in the throes of grief and addiction. He was instead hospitalized there after his mother miraculously found him. There, he began to take the vital steps necessary to take back control over his life.

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