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@ SethMac
2025-06-05 18:10:34
Post 2 – The Gap Got Bigger
Even while everything was slipping, I kept winning.
I was still killing it in sports. Still showing up and performing. Still making people proud on the surface. From the outside, it looked like I had it together. Better than most. But on the inside, I was digging a hole I didn’t know how to climb out of.
The gap between who I was and who I pretended to be just kept getting bigger.
Getting my driver’s license changed everything. That’s when I really got loose. More freedom. More distance. And less reason to go home.
That’s when I started selling. It wasn’t just me. I had a few close buddies and we kind of came up together. We each picked our product, and we built this little system that made way too much sense for a bunch of messed-up teenagers.
We weren’t just using anymore. We were building something. A routine. A hustle. A way to keep the feeling going and the money moving.
Most drugs were on the table. Pills, weed, coke, psychedelics. Whatever worked. We told ourselves we had standards. Lines we wouldn’t cross. “We’ll never do heroin” became something we’d say out loud to feel better about what we were already doing.
But painkillers… those became a necessity. Not a party thing. Not an escape. Just something to feel normal. Something to take the edge off of everything else we were avoiding.
And through all of that, I was still showing up to practice. Still performing. Still making just enough of the right moves to keep the mask in place.
But it was getting harder to hold both lives together.
And I didn’t realize it yet, but the clock was already ticking.