Death of a Sales-teen

As a teen just over a decade ago, I embarked on a journey that would completely alter the direction of my life. You hear it all the time, "If it sounds to good to be true, it usually is.". I found this lesson out the hard way, and I have spent the last decade searching for a way to steer people away from the life I endured as a teen.

I was eighteen years old and my life in Toledo, Ohio seemed out of balance to me. I had picked up a habit of drinking alcohol, and I felt that I was going down the wrong road. I was out of work and not attending college classes when an ad appeared in my local newspaper. The ad read "Adventure, Travel, Rock-N-Roll.", I was intrigued and decided to find out more.

One week later I was living out of my suitcase in a hotel in Detroit, Michigan. I had taken a job as a door-to-door magazine salesperson. Yes, I was the less than wholesome looking teen who approached your door with a line directly off the showroom floor. The experience began as an exciting opportunity to see the world, and ended as a frightening nightmare, too scary for prime-time television.

Forget all you think you know about the door-to-door sales profession. I want to tell you, that there is a huge underground society of people traveling about the country on a daily basis preying on the unsuspecting. Not just the innocent consumers whom rarely receive a product of value, but the people like me who thought that life would be better escaping the problems of normal society.

Like I said previously, I was struggling with excessive drinking at home and somehow thought that a change of scenery would treat me well. Boy was I ever wrong, I was now part of a group of seventy or so teens with a bigger appetite for self destruction. I may have been riding down a bumpy road before, but as I took to my new life, the road ran out of pavement and I had a flat tire.

I only spent about three weeks with the magazine crew. I learned how to lie directly to the face of a customer, do more harm to my body, and the meaning of solicitor. I was ready to move up in the underground sales society.

Enter citrus cleaner. Magazine sales was the minor leagues when compared to citrus cleaner sales. I now sold primarily to businesses, instead of innocent homeowners. The game was the same though. Deceit is the best word to describe the business.

Lying had became such an integral part of my life, that I had began lying to myself. I was in a drug induced haze of betrayal on a daily basis. The sick part was, that I believed I was having the time of my life. This seems to happen to most of the people on a sales crew, as a feeling of invincibility overwhelms your being.

Traveling state to state, week after week, month after month allows you to be whoever you believe you are at any given moment. I was a successful magic cleaner salesman, peddling my amazing product across the country most of the time not even using my real name. My teammates were a wonderful supporting cast, there was never a shortage of mind altering substances available to keep the reality of life blurred.

Eventually the high wears off and the realization that the kool-aid is actually poison sets in. Escaping the life on a crew is where things get dangerous. I was cult property, I was the meal ticket for my master. How do you just walk away in a strange town with no money and just the clothes on your back? It wasn't easy.

I escaped just outside Washington D.C.. Threte of us had hatched a plan to get away and find our way home. I spent my next few days pan-handling for money on the streets while sleeping outside in any place I thought may be safe. In D.C. just blocks from the White House, safe and place certainly did not go together.

I remember sleeping in a stair-well on Florida Avenue, awakening to rats the size of cats inches way from my head. I thought, "there had to be better sleeping arrangements", so I checked out the train station, only to be told that sleeping was not allowed. During one visit to hustle some cash for my ticket home, I met a lady whom seemed very eager to help me as I told her my story.

The woman told me she was getting me a cab ride to place where I could get a meal, a shower, and some much needed rest. As I arrived to the place, I was stunned to find out where I was. No meal, no shower, and no sleep, I was in a drug abuse shelter. The ten foot high barbed-wire fence would only open twice a day, 9 a.m. and 9 p.m.. People who I felt were much worse of than myself lived there, and on any given night a user would overdose and die in a trailer on the property. I had escaped the sales crew only to find myself saying thanks, but no thanks, to the shelter arranged for me.

Once again I was on the street, I decided to eat my pride and call home for the money to get a train ride home. I was so hesitant to do so, because I had lied to my wonderful parents, then had just stopped calling to let them know I was alive. I was ready to go home.

Finally awake from my nightmare, it was time to look in the mirror and figure out who I was. I had dwindled down to under 120 pounds, rib cage showing, sunken eyes, I couldn't believe what I saw. I struggled with the adaptation back into society. I was chemical dependent and ungracious of the support I received from friends and family. I broke many promises and was at an all time low.

I don't know the proper definition of a nervous break-down, but I feel that a five hour shower in cold water, unable to stop crying and yelling was my turning point. I vowed to stay away from drugs and become a functioning member of society. Over the next few years, I worked at becoming who I felt I really was.

I relished in the idea of telling my story to help others. I spent years trying to find my outlet to help teens stay away from the mistakes I made as a teen. In late 2010, my attention shifted from teens, to all people who need help understanding life. With the help of God, I coined a word to describe my outlook on life. Bloomsayer is the word that helps people look at each day as an opportunity to do something different with their life.

Today we have people from over 20 countries following our progress on Facebook, a website, and a mission to change the world through helping our neighbors. If you would like more information on the pitfalls of door-to-door sales jobs, don't hesitate to contact me at betterlife@bloomsayer.com. If I can help one person not make the mistakes I have made, I am doing great works.