How My Greatest Regret Inspired Me To Write

I once asked my Creative Writing professor “How do I become a writer…Like a professional writer?” I waited weeks for the response. I was a correspondence student taking classes from a prison cell.

Every day I waited to see the Ohio University seal and my name on the incoming mail list. Nothing. Day after day. Nothing.

When the envelope finally arrived, I’d forgotten I was waiting.

I ripped it open. All I remember seeing:

“Dear Donnie,

Becoming a professional writer is simple — Write. Tell your story.”

Here’s the first story I decided to tell.

I’m betting $75,000 a hand trying to dig my way out of an $800,000 hole. It’s the grand opening at Cosmopolitan and the high-stakes area is packed with quasi-VIPs. The eye-in-the-sky tracks my every move like a hawk stalking its prey. A buzz in the inside of my Dior blazer rattles against a transparent vial of blow. It’s mom.

“Yes, my dearest mother?” I mumble as I watch the dealer pull four cards from a shoe that will determine my financial future. “You can get it all back in this shoe.” Greed whispers seductively in my ear. The shoe, six decks of cards, is God. The omnipotent, our-father-who-art-in-heaven God. It means everything to me.

As the dealer flips the fourth card, I pull on my Parliament Light cigarette and listen to Mom bitch, a habit she’s picked up since I’d experienced the fruits of upward mobility. “What good is all your money if you never have enough time for me?” She nags me to tote her around like a diva’s clutch. What goes through her head? How does she think it’s possible for me to pay for her yacht-club apartment, first-class tickets, boating trips in the South of France — stacks and stacks and stacks of crisp bills whenever she asks. Doesn’t she realize almost every night I pass out with a warm laptop on my chest, a cell phone vibrating in my hand, a half-empty bottle of Black Label, and an ashtray flooded with half-smoked cigarettes on the nightstand? How does she think I provide this goddamn, glamorous lifestyle?

My head’s in a vice grip. My daughter’s only a year old. I manage twenty-seven million dollars of other peoples’ money. I’m under an FBI investigation for someone stealing the money I invested with them. And I’m only a child myself. I just turned twenty-two, for fucks sake! I’m not raised for this shit. For years, I lived in White Lake, Michigan. We barely had enough money for a gallon of milk if the disability check was late. Now they have a life insurance policy out on me and it’s got six zeros. Maybe they’d be happy if I take the easy way out. But that’s not me.

“Keep it coming baby!” I blurt out after my eight trumps the banker’s seven. Baccarat’s an easy game. It’s based on intuition, zero skill. Pick player or banker and place the chips. It seems the last rail I snorted sharpened my intuition.

“What happened honey?”

“Mom, can’t you hear the slot machines? I’m playin’ cards, takin’ a break from work. Can I call you later?” I hold the mouthpiece away from my lips as I pull on my cigarette and watch the dealer push six pumpkins across the pasture-green felt. Goosebumps infect my skin as I envision the orange chips piling in front of me. My stack’s finally on the rise.

“Nice play Mr. French.” The robotic pit-boss echoes the script. He probably laughs at me as soon as he takes his break.

“Don, honey, I’m not feeling well. I really want to come see you tomorrow.”

“Ok Mother,” I snap, “when you step inside my suite who do you want to meet first: Ashley, Tiffany, Jessica, or Candice? They’ll all be half-naked waiting.” I can’t believe I just said that. Is this who I’ve become?

“Please, Mom, I’m slammed at the moment. I’m just now recovering from jetlag and already I have to turn around and fly back to Rome. I know you want to be in Italy with the baby. This time I promise I’ll buy you a ticket to be with your granddaughter as soon as I get back. Sound good?”

“Whatever Don, that’s what you always say.”

Somehow it’s as if Mom knows I’ll never dig myself out of this hole, as if she feels the dried blood peeling inside my nose, or as if she had a stethoscope to hear the irregular drum of my heartbeat I don’t tell anyone about because I don’t want to look like a puss. Mom’s willing to sacrifice every disk in her titanium-fused spine, allowing me to step on her back to hoist me up and out of trouble. This is a mother whose boyfriend has shoved her backward down a flight of stairs. I’m the son who found her, wrapped my arms under her armpits, and carried her to bed before I called the cops. Something greater than DNA links Mom and me. Unlike my intuition that has me in this mess, Mom’s is right on, especially when it comes to her first-born son.

The next morning two IRS agents storm the Cosmo, bang on my penthouse door, and wake me out of an Ambien-induced coma. Overnight all my bank accounts were frozen. $11 million of IRS levies are raping any money attached to my name. I feel like that dude in the movie Inception, plunging from one dream to the next and there’s nothing I can do to escape. I need to get the hell out of the US.

I close my Cosmo account, check out, and slip away with nearly a million dollars debt. No Hollywood studio could’ve paid enough to stage this bluff. I’m damn near unconscious.

In one hand I chug a tumbler of whisky, in the other, I squeeze my carry-on so tight my fingerprints brand the dead cows back. I salute my host from the Rolls-Royce window as I leave for the airport. I board the Alitalia flight, recline to horizontal, and praise God when we touchdown in Italy twelve hours later, seemingly free and far away from any potential arrest. I step outside Fiumicino’s baggage claim and turn on my phone. My friend Gabri and I embrace, a kiss on each cheek and a cigarette offering before we hop in the car. He’s oblivious.

My phone buzzes in my hand. Emails arrived during the flight, I assume.

Unknown number.

Shit, I’ve got to answer. It might be the IRS.

…

“Donnie she’s gone!”

“Who’s gone?” I say, struggling to hear the muffled voice on the other side.

…

“Mom’s dead.”

I feel as if the enforcer has dragged me into the basement of the casino, taped me to a chair, shattered my nose with brass knuckles, and fired a bullet between my eyes. I’m dead. I’ve lost. I’ve failed. No status, no privilege, no money can alter that blow to the facade. No emotion. No soul. No reason. Except in this case, there is reason. I had the count. The deck was stacked and I ignored it. Mom told me countless times she had a bottle of pills next to her bed in the event she had no other choice but to “end it.” I was trippin’ so hard I missed the tell. Now, nothing could bring her back.

As I sit here today, in prion, perched in half-lotus, thinking about Mom and looking back at the contrail of disaster I left behind, a lump rises in my throat and I start to see tunnel vision. I melt into another dimension. In this heightened state, I have a conversation with my True Self: Would I feel this regret if I had listened, if I had avoided the superficial distractions and booked a flight? I ask. Would she be the one looking after my daughter while I’m trapped in prison? Would any of this regret matter? Would she forgive me for whom I’d become?

“Stop, Donnie.” My True Self says. “Don’t punish yourself. Remember what she was asking…what she needed…find that authentic memory and embrace it.”

But I could’ve — “No, you couldn’t have. She decided. Not you. Let it go. Be the unconditional love she wanted. And trust me. That’s the only bet you’ll always win.”

…

Today, nearly ten years later, I’m a fulltime writer, professional writer, helping others deliver content that fulfills their dreams. It’s never too late to use your experience, share your truth, and do what you love. Ask forgiveness, spread kindness, and as Gandhi says, “be the change you want to see in the world.”

Be inspired by your truth. And if you love the craft, all you have to do is write. Write when you don’t want to write. Write when you have to write. Never stop writing. Watch what happens!