A NEW ME A NEW CHAPTER Part 2 Final

The speaker shares a personal experience of a drug overdose that they were saved from while homeless. They emphasize the importance of sharing these experiences to remind others that homeless addicts are people too. The speaker describes the moments leading up to the overdose and the actions taken by the people around them to revive them using Narcan. They express gratitude towards these individuals and reflect on the significance of the experience in their own life journey. The speaker believes that the encounter was meant to happen and that our souls have agreements with others to help us evolve. As I stated in the previous episode, I have an additional disclaimer and warning for today's episode. I will be going into some detail about a drug overdose I was saved from while homeless and talking about suicidal thoughts and feelings. I believe these are important experiences to share. What better way for our souls to see how far we can rise and what good can come from it? So, I have been guided to share where I have been and who I have been. Much of this has never been expressed to another human being until now. I expect to be judged for this. I accept it. My love goes out to you, too. This message is for any human out there who has yet to remember their infinite power to change whatever you desire and reach for in your life. I am proof. All that being said, once again, I promise to do my very best to deliver my message clearly today. All I ask for is, again, your understanding for the times I do not succeed in that. Thank you. I love you. I am sharing these experiences because I want every human to know homeless addicts are people, too. We have hearts. We have souls. And there is a place for us here. There is a beautiful reason why some of us have gone through, are going through, or will go through this hell. You'll hear how the three that were with me the night I overdosed were pure angels in the moments that follow. Later on, it truly helped me to see the reason for many things. Every lost mind and heart can become found. And further, there is a purpose in being lost. The next part of this story was relayed to me by the three people in the room with me. Please remember, as I share this, I just met these people 24 to 72 hours prior to this. We were all homeless and deep into our addictions. The motel room was solely in my name and all paid for. All my belongings, including backpacks, a nice suitcase full of name brand clothes, a high-end laptop my partner had bought me that they had all seen me use, a coach handbag and matching wallet with the cash I had left, and plenty of high-end makeup, all from Better Days, were strewn all over the room. Shit, is she okay? One of the men asked. She didn't do much, but it's very potent with the fentanyl. I tried to warn her, the woman says with a bit of worry. She puts a hand on my shoulder, shakes it a little. Amber, wake up hon. Amber? Babe, can you hear me? Just nod if you can hear me, okay? I don't move. Two hands shake my shoulders a little harder. One of the men grabs my hand and says, Squeeze my hand, Amber. Come on, Amber. Just a little squeeze. He squeezes my hand, hoping to stimulate a response. Nothing. He sets my hand down. Oh my god. Oh my god, fuck. What are we going to do? The woman lightly slaps my cheek. Amber? Come on, girl. The slaps get harder, faster. Fuck, are her lips turning blue? The other man says in alarm. The woman leans down to put her cheek directly over my nose and mouth. I don't think she's breathing. Fuck. Wait, I have Narcan. I have Narcan. I've never used it before, though. The woman, this beautiful stranger, rips through her backpack, tosses anything in the way on the floor, and pulls out the makeup bag she was looking for with her supplies. She unzips it, drops three boxes of Narcan on the table next to the bed I'm lying on. It takes all three shots of Narcan to revive me. By the third shot, my lips were purple, and my skin was turning a bluish-gray color. After that shot, my eyes finally flutter. I take a little breath and open my eyes. I try, but realize I can't move. As my eyes slowly focus, I see big puncture holes in my bare thighs, and my pants pull down to my knees. What the fuck? My eyes feel heavy, but I force them open and try to move my head. It kind of lulls to the left, just enough to see really large needles on the floor next to the bed. I see a mess of stuff all over. My breath comes in shallow spurts. I can't take in much air. My head lifts a little, and I notice a woman and two men standing over me. I feel intense terror for a moment, as I do not recognize them, and what I have seen so far does not look good for me. I've been violated before. So, this horror is very real. Not to mention, my chest feels like someone is sitting on it, and I cannot remember how I got here. Or, shit, where is here? When my eyes finally find their faces, they are all completely drained of color. The woman is crying, and I know for a fact I have never seen two Mexican men as scared and sheet white as the ones I am looking at right now. My wife is a pretty light-colored Mexican, so that's saying something. When I get past all that, and I notice the fear has morphed into relief in all their eyes, it's only then that my own fear begins to subside a little. Finally, after the seconds of shock that I'm alive wear off, one of the men finally finds his voice. Oh, my fucking God. We thought you were dead. You were dead for, like, a long time. We were about to call an ambulance. You were turning purple. I could not remember anything that happened, or even my own name. It was one of the scariest, strangest moments of my life. They replay everything that happened. I'm really exhausted and can't really sit up, so ask them if they mind if I try to sleep. Yeah, sure. Lay down and rest, babe. You're okay. You're okay. I lay down, and the last thing I hear is, It's okay. Fuck. She's okay. After this experience, which likely only lasted mere minutes, I ended up sleeping for nearly 24 hours, only waking up twice, extremely uncomfortable and dazed, skin crawling like bugs were trying to get out of me, and no matter how hard I scratched, I could not make it stop. I had to go back to sleep. The beautiful souls stayed with me, checked often that I was still breathing, undoubtedly traumatized for life. No one forgets an experience like this, including me. I still have the khaki hooded jacket the kind woman who saved my life lent me six or seven years ago. I thought it was a small child's coat the first time she showed it to me, but it fit her perfectly. When it later fit me, I was blown away. The streets are the most fucked-up efficient diet out there, let me tell you. I treated the coat shitty for many years, pushing the memory out of my mind. When it was time for me to see this memory for what it meant, I found the jacket in the backseat of my car. It had been there through a wrecked beater, another car that died, and then two more cars. Oh, I forgot, it also made it through the next year of my homeless experience, up and down California, mental breakdowns and addictions. I know, it's magic. While moving things from my last car to the one I got recently, I found the jacket again. I was no longer mad at it, confused by it. I treated the stains from using it as a towel. I'll use whatever clothes of mine, too, but I'm not very proud of using hers. I just was not ready to see the gift in my surviving that night yet. But now, after healing and seeing everything with a different perspective, I choose to keep her jacket clean and folded nicely in my car. I drive for a living, so she's always with me. Sometimes, like tonight, I sit in my car under the stars of a dark night, grateful, writing, thinking. I reach back for the sheet covered in palm trees that I use to stay warm or when I go to the beach, but my hands find her jacket instead. It's been months since I've pulled it out, and it was just hours after reading this episode out loud for the first time. Coincidences do not exist when we become present to their meaning for us. I lay her small jacket on my lap as I write this, and I remember her. Our few precious moments sharing our souls in our darkest hours, helping each other through our suffering with connection. As women, as survivors with scars, she took me places with her, kept me safe for a time. She was a very kind and beautiful woman inside and out. Very strong, I learned, but also very broken, like me. I send out my love to her and the other two angels who were with her. I did not have the pleasure of getting to know them as well as her. May their souls have found or are finding their own peace. May my love reach any of them who are still lost. To remind them they are not alone. It will be okay. Just be patient, angels. Thank you so very much for staying with me instead of leaving me for dead. Your help is coming too. Thank you, God. A couple days after my overdose, I eventually became clear-headed enough to thank them all for saving my life. I tried to say it lightly, but there was no way to lighten the trauma they suffered at my expense. After bringing it up, I saw the dark cloud it brought and decided to leave it alone. It's not like I wanted to remember it either. We already had enough shit in our memories to last several lifetimes. Years later, it dawned on me how these three angels had zero reason to do what they did and every reason to do the very opposite. Other than, like me, they still had hearts not that deep down. They may have considered, if this happened to them, how they'd want others to treat them. Maybe they thought about running, calling an ambulance and taking off. I wasn't their problem after all. They didn't sign up for this just to have a room to kick it in. But they did not do any of that. They stayed. They fought with me. They waited. They saved me. And if they could not save me, they were going to call someone who could. I know this. To be honest, I don't think anything crossed their minds except to save the life in front of them. I believe we all come here with a plan of what we're trying to accomplish. There are people we will meet and experiences we will go through that will be instrumental in our lives. This was one of those moments. And I know, without a shadow of a doubt, my soul had an agreement with theirs to make this experience happen. The outcome would be my free will, but the experience was meant to happen. I was meant to be reminded of the plan, the plans that help our souls evolve into what we wish and what we have intended during our life here. When I first learned of these lifetime plans, it took a bit to open my mind to it. I was meant to throw my 4.2 GPA and potentially successful life as an engineer in the trash, to be arrested weeks after I turned 18. I planned to be in a toxic relationship for 15 years. It was my idea to be a homeless drug addict who could not care for herself and her child. I must be out of my mind. I was fucking meant to feel worthless and be unlovable. I chose to be a gay female. I was meant to love someone who did not love me back. I was supposed to live life wanting to die. I made a plan to live in and bring pain to myself and all those around me. I thought, Christ, why the fuck on earth would I put myself through all that? Little did I know, the energy that Christ represents would end up teaching me a lot more than just that. The rest will be for another day. But today, on the eve of 2024, the plan for my life all came full circle once again. I can tell you now, the answer to all those questions is a resounding, unquestioning, and definite yes. As I said earlier, I am so used to fucking things up and self-destructing, just like I have during all those 7 year cycles. It crosses my mind occasionally, what if I am opening up about my life and then I fall apart again? It will be in front of everyone. My wife and son, my parents, our many new friends, and now, even complete strangers. All people who are or will be counting on me. Be it 10 people or 10,000, it will be humiliating. I cannot even imagine the shame that would come from that fall. And I will have a little area for feedback, for people to tell me whatever the fuck they want. So it will not just be me mindfucking myself by myself, judging my failures, wallowing in my self-loathing while hurting all those around me. I will have other people's opinions to help me dig my mental grave. Maybe even my physical one. Like, I do not need extra shovels, people. I have a whole shed full of them in every size imaginable. I even have a jackhammer. Because my rock bottom took some serious mining before I found its core depth. I tell myself these are rational fears, healthy even, given where I've been. But I might be kidding myself. I figure if I just acknowledge these fears, accept them as just how I feel from my programmed past, and keep moving, then I'll be okay. Right? Even if I do fall, maybe that can actually help others see it is okay. We just have to get back up. Sounds good. But then I have nights, like this New Year's Eve, that not only squash all those worries and fears for a special moment in time, but that also fill my heart up all the way to overflowing. This night, my soul reached out and did what I hoped God and I had in mind for this project. It gave me a full-on mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual experience of the purpose for my pain. The reason I am absolutely meant to, planned, and came here to go through everything I did. About a week prior to this New Year's Eve, I told myself I intended to cut down on smoking pot again, since it had gotten a little excessive during the holidays. To do this, and to also motivate me to write and record, I decided I would make the intention that I'd only smoke pot on the completion of an episode. Not just the writing part, but also the recording and editing part. It had to be ready to post. Then, I'd celebrate and have a smoke sesh with a friend. Tonight, that's exactly what we are going to do. I am bringing in the New Year with one of my closest friends. He is a special person in my test audience, an inspiration for this project in content, art, and ideas, and one of the rare people I feel very safe with. He's actually that one friend I'd had that I mentioned in the first podcast, before I started playing pool and had a social life. Not only are we celebrating putting 2023 in its place in the past, we are also celebrating the completion of my second podcast episode, and the fact that tomorrow, I will have two full months without nicotine. Not a single cigarette, or even a drag of one, and zero vaping. And during the holidays, everything is absolutely possible. I definitely feel on top of the world. The podcast still needs some sound adjustments, but I am done with all I am going to do, editing the writing, and have completed the recordings and editing of same. However, he already heard most of that episode, so instead of replaying it, I decided to have him test out what I had so far for the third episode. It was near completion, and from the things in his own life he'd been sharing, I thought this one might be more applicable, and maybe even helpful, hopefully. We work out connecting to his nearby Bluetooth speaker, my nerves do their little dance before anyone hears something I've recorded, but I take a breath, remind myself that we are celebrating, and turn it on. A little over four minutes into it, he's relating, making mmhmm and yeah sounds as I talk about the dark times. It touches my heart and overcomes me in a very unexpected way. As we listen to the part about falling down the mountain of life and it feeling too big, he says, yeah, I barreled down the mountain of life and am now lying at the bottom a bloody mess. As the recording continues, my chest gets tightened, my throat squeezes, I feel pressure behind my eyes. Casually, I look up and around, trying to stop the tears that want to escape. I don't know what's gotten into me, but I'm a pro at drying up the waterworks. But not this time. A couple cross the threshold of my lashes, and I quickly wipe them away, hoping he does not see. I try to refocus my attention on my words, on him, and see him nodding. I remember the pain, but hear the hope in my own words, and the damn breaks. I know I am safe, I will not be judged, and I am trying really hard to remind myself that crying is not only natural, but so damn healthy and necessary to live a full and real life. I let go. I let him see me cry. I hit pause to tell him how much I appreciate his reactions. How important it is that he's willing to listen to this stuff with me, because he and I are my ideal listeners. We've both been in dark places, separately and together, and just want to know there is more to this life than pain and misery. He said, I know the circumstances are different. Our situations may not be the same. But I feel what you're saying enough to easily relate. It's inspiring. You've come a really long way, Amber. I've seen it. And you sound real. The stories are obviously real. And your emotion to it feels very authentic. I let the tears fall freely as I tell him how crazy it is to hear myself say these things. Jesus, it is so new to feel the way I am sharing about life today. I spent 40 years in emotional and mental misery I felt I had no control over. I remember vividly, like it was yesterday, thinking, feeling, and doing all the things I'm sharing. To find I not only have the power to change my life, but that these changes get to bring calm, happiness, and hope to me. My family, friends, and maybe others is just crazy. My crazy has a new crazy. And it's unbelievable to me. I am still amazed with myself. That's how extraordinary it is to witness my pain no longer living inside of me. My life has come full circle. Many times and in many ways. And with such perfection and beauty in all the uncertainty and pain, I have trouble finding the right words for it. Probably because words just are not enough to express this. I had to experience it to understand. These words are a guide, yes. But ultimately, we have to choose happiness ourselves. And then we get to experience it over time. This right here, his reactions, my own reaction right now, are the reasons I came into this life. This connection to mental pain in myself and being able to find relief and heal it is my purpose. So I can share that experience with him. With you. It's why I chose my childhood and the parents I had. It's why I never met my biological father and had an agreement with my great grandma that I would lose her when I was very young. It's why I was meant to experience mental illness, addiction, a toxic relationship, and homelessness. And yes, even suicide. This purpose is the exact reason why my soul kept using its free will to choose to live when I was between life and death. It's why those miracles, those three angels in that Motel 6, the doctors and nurses who pumped my stomach in my teens and healed my liver in my 20s, were all able to save me. My life was not a mistake. I am not a mistake. Nothing was or is a coincidence. My life, your life, they have a purpose. A big fucking purpose. I promise you. You are not a mistake. You have been created exactly as you are. Precisely with your circumstances, thoughts, feelings, and experiences for this time in our species evolution. For your soul's evolution. Your life has meaning. So much meaning, my friend. Whether you see it or feel it yet or not. That's okay. Just hang in there. Please. Keep listening or reading or doing whatever you can that gives you the hope you need to make it another day. Until the desire and intention to find your purpose is created. Your thoughts, feelings, and heart, they will guide you. Listen to them. Then decide to take that next tiny step towards your infinite power and the freedom it will give you. You will find what's meant for you if you look for it. And never stop looking until you find your personal freedom from pain. Then your road to happiness. And finally, the purpose for all of it. You will not regret it. It is there. Underneath the pain is your power. Do not give up. Your reason for being here is just around the corner. Do not believe me. Take the step and go look for yourself. When I did this and turned that corner, I was eventually guided to my buried, beaten, and battered heart. The band-aids were no longer enough and had not been in quite some time. It was time for some true healing. Real and permanent healing. Today, I have to trust myself and see what happens. Today, I make the intention to surrender to the flow of life instead of fighting against it. I remembered it's in my nature to want to nurture, heal, and encourage. When I stopped trying to be someone and something I was not, emotionless, careless, loveless, and in pain, I found who I really am. Highly sensitive. Very unique. Sometimes I care too much and love too hard. But I am a survivor. A fighter. A fucking warrior here to help share peace, love, and hope. And the best part? I am free and happy to be me. Most days. Please, never forget. Everything is possible. If I can find this freedom, I know you can too. Sorting through the pain is not as hard as it seems. I thought that was an impossible feat in the beginning. It might not go as fast as you want. I was pretty impatient. But you'll likely be surprised, as I have been, that it is not as long as you think it will take. It took a very small percentage of my life's years to heal and find happiness than it took to hang on to my pain and become miserable in my suffering. The last six years have been such a roller coaster. Even the last year has been a ride. But just hearing my stories, right out of my own mouth, from where I've been to where I am now, is still so overwhelming. Bringing in the new year is different this year. I have to look for what's different in my life to keep creating new and empowered experiences. Instead of making all the resolutions to be better, quit smoking, start working out, I'm just telling myself to focus on my words for 2024. Well, no, I lied, and to work out. I put on my standard holiday pounds this year, after all. I think it's an even ten pounds. I guess that's not different, yet. Anyhow, my words for this magical year of 2024 are discipline and adventure. I intend to have a little more self-discipline this year, because if I want this podcast to reach the people it is meant to, like you, I actually have to work on it, consistently. I also have to discipline myself to take time for me and make time for my wife and son. Balancing this new project will take some time. I'm not quite there yet, but I'll get there. I want to keep adventure in the forefront of my mind as well this year, because I want to renew and re-energize. Is that a word? If not, it is now. I am going to re-energize my bond with fun, experience new things, embrace the unknown, continue to face my fears. And see life as the adventure of my own making. Truth be told, if I can make it through what I have so far, I'm sure I'll be shown the way to make it through everything else. That's a confident mindset I'm still trying to apply more than most days. Hope, joy, and fun are precious commodities nowadays. Stress, anxiety, and pain have become the norms. But they don't have to be. Not today, if I don't choose them. There can be beauty in the ups and downs when we practice accepting what is and has happened. Let's be what we are meant to be, exactly who we are. Let's think about our next tiny step. When it's time to take it, be it in the next moment, next month, or next year, we will have the courage to do so. And when we take the unavoidable steps backwards, we will have grace for ourselves. We will accept them, and then when guided to move forward again, we will move. Our time right now is the only time there is. Let's create the desire to feel better right here, right now. We fear being in pain. We fear being stuck in life. Let's use those fears to motivate us to move away from misery, to set down whatever is bringing us down. Then we will remind ourselves, feeling like shit takes more energy than feeling better. It is time to unlock your infinite power, your energy, and your purpose. Take that next step. You know in your heart what it is. And let's reclaim our mental, emotional, and physical well-being. Happy New Year, dear friend. I am so honored you've chosen to spend your time with me today. Truly. Don't stop here, beautiful soul. Keep listening to anything and anyone who inspires you to be your best self. You deserve it. Did you hear that? You deserve to be your best self, living your best life. Please continue this new chapter to the new you. We have a new book to write. Your soul is patiently waiting around the corner. Let's go meet our true selves. Be well, dear friend. May you be blessed with your personal truth this year. Take care for now.