On paper, I’m a major fuck up. I lost my business, my beautiful home, my 401K, walked away from a high paying, “all you gotta do is show up” job, blew my retirement, got hooked on Xanax and picked up a drink after 40 years.

On August 14, 2016, I surrendered my fat, bloated, beaten and mortified ass to a VA Rehab unit where I was promptly scared straight.

After 14 days, they still didn’t want me on the street because they said I was a stroke risk and they didn’t want me dying “on their dime.” Then I find my life partner was a sneak and a phony.

I ended up in a grungy, depression era apartment in a place called Ayer, Massachusetts. I used to live in the upscale town of Groton next door and would shudder when I drove through.

On my first morning, I walked into my phone booth size bathroom and saw with sober eyes, the havoc I had wreaked on myself. I was a beaten dog. It was enough to make me pick up a drink. But I didn’t.

That was two and a half years ago.

In that time I have totally reinvented myself. I started going to a gym that was so strategically close to my apartment I could roll out of bed and get hit with a dumbbell. Divine intervention.

I became interested in fitness and started studying to be a personal trainer. Then I went after a nutrition certification, then weight loss, and then senior fitness.

I also studied for and passed two insurance license exams. Things I never thought I had the gray matter for.

I went from a 230 pound stroke risk, to a 73 year old elder athlete at 185 pounds. I can give as good as I get, I am physically competent, and my blood work is perfect, I have no aches and pains and I’m on absolutely zero medications.

Yeah, I’m a fuck up, a very grateful one.