By Marco Mura

Four years ago to this very day I was holed up in a dark motel room that the roaches had claimed for their own.  This sort of environment was nothing new to me.  I had walked away from a beautiful wife, two beautiful children, a beautiful home, a job, friends – everything.  I had traded it all in for a bag of dope and a needle.  I no longer believed in God or worshiped him.  Instead I worshiped the heroin and the needle that delivered it.  In reality what they delivered was a close brush with death and the prison cell I now call home – my only home, for there is no other.I never knew my father, who was Irish.  My stepfather was Italian and my mother was Greek, so I learned the traditions of the Orthodox faith.  But our primary religion was Catholic.  I went to St. Jospeh’s, a Catholic grade school in New York City.  I loved it there because the nuns and everyone else were very kind to me.  They knew my home was a painful place.  During gym they could see the bruises and cigarette burns on my arms and legs.  I carry scars from the burns to this day.

From one place to another

My parents could not keep it together.  We moved all over New York City in the 1960s and ‘70s, rarely staying in one place more than a year and never unpacking all our things because we knew the next eviction was right around the corner.  I could never keep any friends and never brought anyone home for fear of the shame and embarrassment.  That was my life – poverty, occasional homelessness when we slept in our car or in shelters, and the beatings and cigarette burns from my stepfather.

Stitches

I remember going to the hospital emergency room after a beating because I needed stitches.  I had to lie to the doctor about what had happened because if I didn’t I would be beaten again, and my mom would tell me that if I told the truth my brothers and I would be taken away and split up and put in orphanages.  I kept my mouth shut because I couldn’t stand to be separated from my brothers.  There were times when we kids were taken away and put in foster care, which was an emotional vacation for us.  It meant we didn’t have to worry every waking moment about being beaten, and we could relax for a while.  I took most of the beatings.  Sometimes when my stepfather was drunk and out of control I would climb on top of my brothers to shield them.  My brothers were my life, and I loved them so much.  They were all I had.  And now they are no longer in my life because of the path I chose – drugs, dirty money, living on the edge, tempting death in all I did.

I remember as a child praying to God in tears for help.  Still the beatings and cigarette burns went on until I got big enough to stop them.  I believed in God—always!—but could not understand why he would not help me.

My teen and early adult years were filled with trouble – drugs, loss, lies and loneliness.  I got married and we had two children.  As a child I had promised God one thing:  When I grew up, I would never beat or abuse my own wife and kids.  I am grateful I kept that promise.  But in the end I hurt them anyway.  I woke up one morning and just walked away and never went back.  I couldn’t see any other way.  I was an embarrassment to them.  I couldn’t maintain any stability.  I truly believed they would be better off without me in their lives.

Heroin

I drifted around, desperate for heroin or any other drug I could get.  I became sick and took drugs to make the sickness go away.  I broke the law to supply my habit. Eventually it wasn’t even a matter of getting high – I needed drugs just to function.  I was deceitful, evil at times, with no regard for human life or people’s feelings.  I found myself going to places no sane human being would go for any reason.  I saw dead bodies on the floors of crack houses, left there as though they were garbage.  I was lost – void of soul and spirit in a dark world – by the time I found myself in that bitter motel room alone with the vices of my desolation.

As I sat on the bed, I had in front of me several bags of heroin, a needle, a bottle full of pills and a six-pack of beer.  After the fourth or fifth beer, I noticed a Bible on the nightstand.  As I looked at it I became furious.  I had come to believe that everything in the Bible, every word was a lie.  There was no such person as an all-powerful, loving, compassionate God.

Where was God

I thought to myself, where was God when I was being beaten and burned and degraded and told time and time again that my birth was a mistake, that my parents had tried to give me away but no one would take me?  Where was he when I accidentally spilled a glass of milk, and some of it landed on my stepfather’s shoes and that night I was not allowed to eat at the table, and my food was given to me in the dog’s bowl?  Where was God when I got down on my knees in pain, pleading for help, crying that I couldn’t take it anymore?

As I sat there in the motel room, I tore out the pages of the Bible, crumpled them, and threw them on the floor.  Maybe the roaches will have better luck with the Bible than I have, I thought.  I cried harder, cursing God and saying, “It was all a lie!” – all those times as a child, praying to a God who never existed.  I felt so stupid.  When I had torn out most of the pages I threw the rest of the Bible against the wall, and the tears came more freely.

In my heart, mind, and soul I had come to the end.  I couldn’t take the loneliness and emptiness anymore.  I was physically sick from years of drug abuse and alcoholism.  I was emotionally sick of being ill all the time, chasing the heroin high, stealing whatever I could, selling my blood, my soul, my life to support my habit.  Begging for change on the streets, sleeping in a box in some alley, eating out of trash bins when I decided to eat at all (which for a junkie is not often).  When I looked in the mirror I could see my body had wasted away.  At six feet, four inches tall I had gone from 240 pounds to 170 pounds.  My eyes were lifeless and sunken.

I was sick, lost, lonely, hopeless, on the run from the police.  Death seemed the only choice, a welcome end to the misery.  As far as I was concerned I was dead already, and, if there was hell, I was already there.

In a cold, stony voice I said out loud, “If you are God, if you are for real, then I won’t die from what I am about to do.  If I am worth something in this life, then you will save me.  Then and only then will I believe.”

If you are God, save me

I loaded up the needle – enough to kill a horse – took three or four Percocet pills, finished my last half bottle of beer, and took a drag of cigarette.  I held the needle in front of me, just looking at it, thinking, Is there any reason I should live? None that I could think of.  My tears flowed again.  The needle found a vein, one of the few that hadn’t closed down.  “Please,” I said, “if you are God, forgive me for what I am doing.”  The last thing I remember was putting the needle and the pills on the nightstand and just floating away.

I awoke feeling worse than I had ever had in my life.  I was nauseous, my head was pounding, and I was having trouble breathing.  I opened my eyes and realized I wasn’t in the motel room.  Tubes and wires were connected to my body.  I could see on a monitor that my heart was steady but not strong.  An I.V. drip was in my arm.  My clothes were gone, and I was wearing a hospital gown.  My eyesight was fuzzy but slowly coming into focus.

The Awakening

“Welcome back, Mr. Mura.”  A nurse had walked in with a smile on her face.  “We almost lost you there for a while, but by some miracle you held on.  I guess it wasn’t your time to go.  The doctor will be in to see you shortly.”  She must have seen the questioning in my face. “He’s the one who worked on you when the ambulance brought you in.”

Seconds later the doctor came in.  “Well, well,” he said.  “We thought we’d lost you.  But you are a fighter – you wouldn’t give up.  We tested your blood and found that the level of heroin was higher than worst-case scenario.  But I’m sure you know that, don’t you?  You get some rest now.  I’ll come back later.”

After he left the room, a series of thoughts ran through my brain.  How did I survive?  Who found me?  Nobody knew I was there except the motel clerk.  No one could survive what I had shot into my veins unless he was found I a hurry.  The police must know – more than likely they’re here at the hospital.  Then I remembered my challenge:  “If you are God, then you will save me.”

Moments later a priest entered the room.  He had a serious look on his face.  “How are you feeling?”  he asked.  “Not so hot,” I said.  “I don’t really understand what’s going on or how I got here or who found me.”  My eyes teared up.  “I shouldn’t be here. I was supposed to die.”

“You are a very lucky man,” said the priest. “I was called to your bedside to administer last rites because it appeared you weren’t going to make it.”  He looked at me keenly, then said, “Do you believe in God, Mr. Mura?  Because there is no question in my mind that God had a hand in this miracle.  It wasn’t your time to go.”  He told me the police were at the hospital wanting to talk to me, and one of them had given him a brief rundown of what had happened.

“The point of interest for me,” he said, “was that they found most of the pages torn out of a Bible and thrown all over the floor.”

Where was God?

I said to him, “Where was God when I needed him as a child, when I was being degraded and treated like an animal – where was he, and why did he wait until now to do something for me?”  I told him of the challenge I made to God right before I shot up.  “I said, ‘If you really are God and you really do exist, then save my life and I will give my life, heart, and soul to you.”

“Well, I guess you got what you were looking for.  It is clear to me he did answer you and that he has a plan for you.  Now do you believe?”

Imprisoned

Eventually I was sent to prison on drug charges (a seven-and-a-half to fifteen-year sentence), but it turned out to be the best thing that could have happened to me.  The four years I have been here have given my brain and body a chance to heal and given me a chance to heal and given me a chance to find myself and be honest with others, God, and myself.

It took a couple of years to really accept God’s truth and his plan for all of us who believe and have strong faith.  I began to pray and study the Bible front to back, over and over.  I began to go to the Catholic chapel services at the prison.  My faith has been restored to what it was when I was a child, before I had withdrawn into myself from the pain of the world.

Days are like years here in prison.  I pray for help and strength to make it through each day.  I no longer exist, it seems, in the world beyond these walls.  Life has gone on; time has passed without me.  I have missed all those precious moments with my children that happen only once in a lifetime and can never be recaptured.

Master’s Degree

I have earned a master’s degree and a Ph.D.  through the accelerated correspondence programs offered by the prison.  I am in the process of finishing my second book and continue to do my portrait artwork, which I donate to public libraries, schools, and galleries throughout New Hampshireand Massachusetts.  Writing and art are more therapeutic than anything else and help pass the time.  That’s half the battle in prison – finding something to pass the time, day after day.

Only two years to go, and I will be paroled and pick up the pieces of my life.  My heart tells me I should work with addicts and alcoholics like myself to spare them from the hell that I lived (as did my family and loved ones).

In ancient shadows
and twilights where
childhood had strayed
the world’s great sorrows
were born and its heroes
were made
in the lost childhood of Judas
Christ was betrayed.

– AE (the pen name of the Irish poet, George Russell)