By Matteo — Share Your Story
I don’t really know why I’m writing this.
Maybe because for decades I thought my life was already over, that there was no point in telling my story.
Maybe because I finally realized that some stories need to be told — especially the ones that almost ended too soon.
My name is Matteo.
I’m around fifty now.
I live in Illinois, but my life started in a very different world.
I was born in Southern Italy.
My parents moved us to Canada when I was five, chasing a fresh start that, honestly, never happened. They argued from the moment we arrived. And when I was seven, they split. That was the beginning of everything that went wrong.
The Things Kids Should Never Have to See
My mother fell deep into drugs.
My father disappeared — new city, new address, new everything.
We lost contact completely.
From that moment on, I didn’t belong to anyone.
I bounced between foster homes, institutions, back to my mother, then out again.
I can’t even remember most of the adults who were supposed to take care of me.
What I do remember is the fear.
The confusion.
The way I learned, way too young, that nobody was coming to save me.
By the time I was twelve, I had already figured out that you either toughen up or get crushed.
Gangs didn’t feel “dangerous” to me.
They felt familiar.
Like family — broken, messed up, but at least they noticed you.
At fourteen, I tried drugs.
At sixteen, I was stealing.
At eighteen, I went to jail for the first time.
And then again.
And again.
The revolving door people talk about?
Yeah, I lived it.
I Had Become My Own Worst Enemy
People like to say, “He fell in with the wrong crowd.”
The truth is, I was the wrong crowd.
Drugs became my routine.
My escape.
My punishment.
My everything.
I wasn’t living.
I was just breathing.
I didn’t think about the future because I didn’t think I had one.
Who would care if I died?
My mother couldn’t even care for herself.
My father was long gone.
I didn’t have siblings.
I didn’t have anyone.
And then came the day everything changed.
The Night I Should Have Died
It’s been over twenty years, but I can still see it clearly.
I overdosed alone.
It happened fast.
One moment I was there, the next I wasn’t.
They found me and took me to a hospital.
When I woke up, I could barely breathe.
My chest hurt like someone was sitting on it.
I looked around — unfamiliar faces, fluorescent lights, machines beeping.
And that’s when it hit me:
No one came.
No one asked for me.
No one wondered if I lived or died.
I was completely alone.
That kind of loneliness doesn’t just hurt — it cracks you open.
Lying there, hooked up to tubes, shaking and ashamed, I said one thing to myself:
“If I don’t care about myself, no one ever will.”
“I don’t deserve to die like this.”
And for the first time in my entire life, I chose me.
Climbing Out of Hell One Inch at a Time
I checked myself into a rehab program.
Not because I was brave, but because I was terrified.
Terrified of dying.
Terrified of living like that for one more day.
Rehab wasn’t pretty.
My body fought me.
My mind tried to drag me back.
There were nights I cried harder than I ever have in my life — and I’m not the kind of man who cries easily.
But someone there looked me in the eye and said:
“You can become someone else. Not today. But you can.”
And I believed them.
Just a little.
Just enough.
After rehab, I enrolled in a second-chance school.
Me — a guy who had never finished anything.
I studied English at night, with a dictionary next to me.
I learned to write.
I learned to think differently.
I learned to hope, even if hope felt uncomfortable.
Day by day, something inside me shifted.
I wasn’t just trying to stay clean.
I was trying to build a life worth staying alive for.
The Life I Never Thought I’d Have
It took years.
Hard years.
Ugly years.
But I kept moving.
I worked wherever I could.
I saved every dollar.
I attended workshops.
I asked for help — something I had never done before.
Eventually, I started working in marketing.
I learned fast.
I pushed hard.
And one day, a crazy thought popped into my head:
“What if I opened my own agency?”
I had no degree, no connections, no family money.
What I had was grit — the kind you only get from surviving the worst version of yourself.
Today, I run my own advertising company.
I’m married to a woman who saw the good in me before I saw it myself.
We have a daughter.
She is my whole world.
Sometimes, late at night, when the house is quiet, I sit in the kitchen with a glass of water and I think about that hospital room. I think about the boy who grew up without parents.
The teenager who joined gangs.
The addict who nearly died.
And I realize something:
I saved him.
No one else.
What I Want You to Know
If you’re reading this because you’re struggling — really struggling — I want to tell you something honestly:
You are stronger than you think.
Stronger than your past.
Stronger than your worst night.
Don’t wait for someone to rescue you.
Rescue yourself.
Even if it’s slow.
Even if it hurts.
Even if you fail a few times — or a hundred.
People say life is about second chances.
For me, it wasn’t a second chance.
It was a decision.
You don’t need permission to change.
You just need one moment where you say:
“Not like this. Not anymore.”
And if I — a kid who grew up with nothing, a man who almost overdosed alone — if I can end up here…
Then you, whoever you are, wherever you’re reading this from,
you can get out of your darkness too.
You can rebuild.
You can become someone you’re proud of.
