Preparing mentally for high school students

Imagine going to sleep, waking up and finding out you killed somebody. 
That's exactly what happened to me. 
Two years ago, I was drunk and fell asleep at the wheel. I'm not trying to make excuses.
But I never ever would have done such a thing on purpose. And if there were 
some way I could go back and change it, I would. 
In fact, I've been sober ever since.
Now I'm paying for my crime by being incarcerated two weeks a year for the 
next 10 years.
This blog follows my journey afterward, trying to put my life back together in 
between spending a week in jail at Christmas and at Father's Day each year.

In about a month, I will be facing high school students again to tell them about my tragic mistake.
It's always a sobering experience to relive the last days of my 20-year career with alcohol and drugs, culminating with the insertion of my keys into my ignition one more time for a ride down I-40 West that resulted in Eddy McCreery's death.
It sounds like it would be hard for me to do, but it's not.
I have told my story so many times in the last three years that it comes naturally.
The biggest thing it does is that it gets me out of myself.
I need that so desperately right now.
Perry Baggs III, the love of my life for 12 years, died two months ago.
It's all I can do to put one foot in front of the other.
I know how the McCreerys must have felt when their loved one was ripped out of their lives in an instant since that's what happened to me.

...

Whenever I go on these speaking engagements, I share my experience, strength and hope.
My experience this year will be different since the one person who loved me as much as my children do is no longer alive.
Dealing with a sudden death of a loved one is hard, but losing a significant other is a whole other kind of melancholy.
It's unbearable. It's debilitating, and no one around me understands what I am going through.
What I hope to weave into my delivery to the teenagers this year is that I know what it must be like for the McCreerys.
They will never get to pick up the phone and call Eddy.
He can't go out to eat with them anymore.
There will be no Christmases or Father's Days with his daughter anymore.
Death separates us from our loved ones.
I separated Eddy's family from him by causing his death.
And now, I've been separated from Perry until God calls me home.

...

I hope my suffering will make my presentation more compelling.
God gave me this testimony for a reason.
I intend to use it to tell every teenager I can about what alcohol and drugs did to my life and to the lives of Eddy McCreery and his family members.
Some cheap Chardonnay and half of a one-milligram Xanax cost us all.
It's my fault.
At some point in nearly three years, I had to decide whether I was going to lay down and die over the guilt I feel over Eddy's death, or go on living somehow, someway.
I chose the latter.

...

Each day, I make myself get out of bed, even though I'd rather lay there under the covers, all snuggled up so that I can grieve and hurt over Perry.
There's something to be said about walking through the pain.
God has a way of helping those who choose to help themselves.
In turn, we pass it along by helping other people.
That's part of what keeps me sober, one day at a time.
I pray that the students I speak to this year won't have to go through what I have to develop this wisdom.
I hope they apply my story to their hearts and minds, and that they tell somebody they care about.
I pray this prayer in Jesus' name.
Amen.