2012. The year where I began my journey into the world of recovery from MDD (major depressive disorder) and it was also when I began having many, many struggles which are still with me to this day. 2012 is also the year when, for the second time in my life, I met the one person who, to this day, remains one of the brightest stars in my life and who I owe for everything he has done for me even though he doesn't know it. His name? Noah Antwiler a.k.a The Spoony One or Spoony for short.
I first started watching Spoony back in 2007 one year after I quit drinking (I was an alcoholic and struggled with alcoholism for five years before I made the decision to kick my drinking to the curb) and the year my sister got pregnant with my nephew. His videos never failed to make me laugh and got me through some of the worst times of my life from deaths in the family and homelessness to alcoholic relapses and mental breakdowns. Next to the birth of my nephew, they brought me the most joy and reignited something in me that I thought would stay buried forever. My love for gaming. It's because of Spoony that I shared many awesome gaming memories with my nephew and passed on my love of gaming to him.
It's also because of Spoony that I discovered a love for pro-wrestling despite not being interested in it previously and being exposed to it via an ex-friend and my late stepdad in the past. The first pro-wrestler that held my interest for a long time was the Undertaker and he would go on to become one of my all-time favorite wrestlers alongside Kane, Shawn Michaels, Triple H, Randy Orton, Diamond Dallas Page, The Rock, The Ultimate Warrior, Jake "The Snake" Roberts, Batista, Dean Ambrose/Jon Moxley, Seth Rollins and Roman Reigns. I also made the choice to pursue a career in the wrestling business hopefully as a pro-wrestler and if it doesn't pan out then maybe, just maybe I can help others follow their own dreams by becoming a personal trainer (that's my backup career plan). If I can credit someone for my choice in career, for my love for wrestling and me being able to pass that down to my nephew, it's Spoony.
When I met Spoony for the second time back in July 2012, I had just begun treatment two months prior via medication for MDD and it was one year after I suffered a relapse thus restarting my sobriety for the fourth time (I relapsed in 2007, 2008 and 2009 before that). It was a fresh start for me at that point and meeting Spoony again just as I was starting my road to recovery both from mental illness and addiction felt amazing to me and a far out cry from the first time we met at ConBravo back in 2011 which to this day I still consider it one of my more embarrassing moments in my life. It was a very happy time for me and to spend it at ConBravo meeting the person whose videos helped me get through it all is something I can never forget and those are memories that I will always cherish.
It's funny how fast time can fly and how life change you in the blink of an eye. It's been seven years since that day and much has changed since then. I was homeless for six months back in 2019 and suffered the worst bout of depression that I've dealt with for a long time, came close to undoing years of sobriety and taking my own life because the pain was too much for me to handle. My life had been in shambles for the past year and it got too much for me to take on my own. Thanks to the love and support I got from my family, I was able to find a new place and start over. I was also switched to a new medication, was diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and got put on a medication for those two conditions. Little did I know that the month or so would challenge me in more ways than one.
December 7, 2019. That day was my 35th birthday and it was a day that I spent in quiet reflection. I looked back at all the events that happened in my life, the good, the bad and the ugly moments. In the midst of it all, one name popped into my head and made me smile.
Spoony.
I looked back to the two times we met, our conversations on Twitter and even the times where I would visit his Twitter page and looked in on him from time to time in the past seven years. At the time that I posted my Twitter post about him on my birthday, I had hoped that life had been kind to him. I was so wrong on that account as I later found out. I had always known that Spoony had mental health issues of his own and I thought that he had gotten that under control but again as I later discovered, I was wrong.
I'd be lying if I said that Spoony's tweets over the next month or so didn't have me concerned and even terrified for him but they did and still do especially his tweets over the Christmas holidays. Usually, a pleasant time of year for me, I wasn't excited for the holidays and Spoony's tweet on Christmas morning did very little to get me into the Christmas mood despite the cheer going around at my sister's house. I couldn't even tell my family what was going on because I didn't think they'd understand (and I still don't).
December 27th was a day I will never forget. I was at my doctor's office when a notification from Twitter came to my phone from Spoony and what I read sent me into an anxiety induced panic. Now imagine being in a doctor's office waiting room and you're waiting to be seen by the doctor then you get a notification from a social media site that someone you care about uses and they say that it's too late to change, that their life is not going to get any better, you'd get both very concerned and terrified for said person wouldn't you? That's exactly what I felt when I saw that tweet from Spoony and the fact that I nearly had a panic attack in front of a crowd of people in a doctor's office waiting room was stressful enough as is.
So what did I do after I got home from the doctor's office? I'm not going to get into details here but I will say this. After a little back and forth between us on Twitter, Spoony opened up to me a little bit (I was shocked when he did because I didn't think he would talk and open up least of all to me) and I shared some of my own experiences with him in regards to mental illness and addiction. I told him that whenever he's ready to talk, I'm always online, I'll always be there and I'm never giving up on him.
This whole situation with Spoony has challenged me in more ways than one. There were times where I cried myself to sleep out of fear and worry for him and there are times where I would get both angry and frustrated with him over him not recognizing that he needs help. There are also times where after I do some mediation and other self-care methods, I was able to get myself back on track in terms of my recovery and at the same time keep an eye on Twitter in case Spoony or one of my friends on Twitter, sends out a tweet.
The questions that I get from Spoony's former fans are these:
1) Why am I wasting my time trying to help someone who is a lost cause?
2) Spoony is never going to change so why bother trying?
3) You're trying to get into Spoony's pants, aren't you?
I wasn't going to answer those questions because I don't have to explain myself to anybody but after some thought, I decided to do so and explain why I support Spoony at the same time. So here it is.
1) When I was nineteen and started going down the road of mental illness and alcoholism, I was exactly like Spoony. I refused to stop drinking, I pushed away people, denied that I had a problem with both my mental health and my drinking habits and got angry when someone tried to offer me help. People say that Spoony is a lost cause. The same was said about me and guess what? I quit drinking cold turkey and even though I relapsed four times, I've been sober for seven years and I'm being properly treated for my mental health issues. I changed and what it took for me to stop was the birth of my nephew and I remain sober because of him.
What I'm trying to say is that if I can change and get the help that I needed, so can Spoony. I believe in him that strongly and that's why I do what I can to let him know that there is a better way.
2) How do you that Spoony won't change? The answer? You don't. So how do I know that he will? I don't. But as someone close to me once told me "A person can and will change if or when they want it bad enough".
3) Trying to score a date or getting into Spoony's pants was never in the cards for me and doing that is the last thing on my mind. I'm in no condition mentally to be in a romantic relationship especially when I'm in recovery from a really bad depressive episode that nearly ended in suicide. Spoony is also in no condition mentally to be in a romantic relationship even after a messy breakup and I would never take advantage of someone like that just to get into someone's pants. That's not who I am or how I was raised.
Besides my best friend/brother, Spoony is one of the few people in my life I looked up to and still do. He deserves the best that life has for him and he still has his whole life ahead of him. He's a funny, brilliant man with an abundance of talent and full of potential to make the world his. He deserves to have people in his corner and to be his shield against the people who try to cut him down with their sharp words.
That is why I stand with Spoony and will continue to stand with him. When the time comes that he does reach out for help and he wants someone to talk to, I'll be there.
I won't be far away.
