In this Perspective Series episode, we talk to Dustin Bailey.
Here is his Bio:
My story is a story filled with comeback power, second chances, and filled with heartbreak too. Yet at its very core, it is a love story; that is the first thing you need to know about me. That I know pain, addiction, suffering, and I know brokenness but more importantly I know that love is the entire reason, we are here.
I was told by my grandmother that I entered this world talking in the same way I communicate now. But those are fairy tales now to me for children when they are being tucked cozy in their warm beds. Beautiful and lovely words were placed in my soul by my father. My father read to me Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman instead of Dr. Seuss. My father was an alcoholic, a rambling and wild Osage, never meant for mass production. He was beautiful and ahead of his time regarding the way he believed communication in all its avenues was the single most significant event to occur for humanity. He made me read Shakespeare aloud, as if in preparation for an audience. At 8 years old, he walked me to where the thicket of trees outlined the horizon on our property and underneath a half crescent moon, he crooned that he was leaving but that I need not worry, that he had given me the greatest of tools, and also that inside our home, was a woman that’s love was more powerful than anything in the world. The night he left I would not see him again until I was 16 years old. My mother raised my brother and I, she taught me to play catch and she taught me about literature, music, movies, and the greatest of lessons, in her manner of unflinching love toward us. I knew my entire life that I had the greatest mother that ever lived. I was creative and outgoing. I caught on early that when I spoke everyone listened. I wrote short stories and poetry and painted abstract art. I was the starting Quarterback and voted most likely to succeed. My life came very easily the first 19 years. I never had to work for anything. I would pay a price for this lack of efforts. I wrote a short story and was told that I was going to be the next Joy Harjo. That never occurred for me.
I went to college on academic scholarship to a Liberal Arts school and studied Creative Writing and after school, I moved to Los Angeles and did modeling(print)for American Eagle and Old Navy. I did not have my first drink until the age of 21 years old. At 23 years old, my mother’s mental illness became so evident and evidence was my once promising life that had become cumbersome. Somewhere within me, I felt the world say that I was not good enough and I looked at that old world, and said, “okay I must not be.” I reached for a bottle and took a drink and as they say the drink took the man. From 23 years old to 11 months ago my life would be riddled with alcoholism and drugs. Felony charges, jail time, and children I would not know nor raise. My father would die when I was 26 years old and on the same evening, I overdosed for the first time. I worked meaningless jobs and lived 14 years so utterly broken and miserable. I was 80 pounds overweight and had basically given up on life. From the first drink until the last drink, I never wrote again. I never spoke in lovely and beautiful words. I would not paint either. I would die millions of daily deaths in my lies, my behavior, and perversion of reality. My mother would struggle with her mental instability but watching her oldest son die daily, took a toll on her. She would plead and beg for me to believe I was worthy to fight back but I was unwilling. In February 2018 while in Rogers County Jail on a public intoxication charge, my mother died in her sleep. The day she died I slipped even further down, roaming the streets like a stark raving lunatic. On Aug 25th my mother’s birthday, in a motel room I was drinking myself to death and Kayla Gregory and her father saved my life. They pleaded for me to fight back and that day began an unexpected journey.
I walked into a rehab and would not know that I would be reborn that day. That is the beautiful thing about dreams they do not wilt and die within us. They wait like a child wanting for the rain to stop so they can run in wild abandon into the sunshine. I began walking 1 mile a day. I began healing and I began to recover the person that I thought I had lost. Somewhere in that space I found my words. I found my voice. There have been so many people who love me on the days I could not love myself. But yes, I had to take massive massive massive action to overhaul the lunacy that plagued my mind. I began to cultivate my artwork and writing. I began eating healthy. I began to serve others. I found my stride and I found a way to live in my skin.
Almost a year later and my artwork is on the walls of others, I have been nominated for a short story award, and I sponsor other men as lost and broken as I once was. My children know their father today and I love and teach them the way my father never taught me.
It has been devastating and beautiful to heal and to now help others heal. There have been moments of despair and nights of wonderment and awe. When I was on my father's knee the evening before he left me, he told me that God had a plan with these words and images that live in my soul, and he said one day, I will give them to others.
Everything I am is because of losing my way and beginning to find my way. I once looked at my life as if the world never needed me, as if I never even mattered that I was unworthy to be exactly who and what I am. Today I know my purpose and I know why I was created. To show others that feel as broken as I once felt, how incredibly worthy they are to be alive. The miracle that they are somewhere underneath that hurt. I was told by my mother once; we accept the love we think we deserve. I would not have found my way if it were not for the love my mother taught me, and I would not have begun this if she had not died. Her life gave me life, and her death saved my life. There is no greater lesson in the world, than when a person teaches another person to love themselves.
THINGS I DO EVERY SINGLE DAY (I am unwilling to be who I was YESTERDAY)
1) WRITE 500 WORDS DAILY
2) ONE MEETING A DAY
3) READ 20 PAGES A DAY
4) PAINT FOR 30 MINS MINIMUM
5) 1 HOUR OF LIFTING WEIGHTS
6) 1 HOUR OF CARDIO (variation from running, sprinting cycling)
7) EATING PROPERLY
8) Pray and Meditate (Surrender daily)
9) AND the MOST SIGNIFICANT is to LOVE AND SERVE others. To give freely what was given to me.
I practice these spiritual principles in all my affairs.
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