T he earliest memory of my life was when I was about 3-years-old and my parents were in a fight. I woke up in the middle of the floor during a party and heard glass breaking. My uncle picked me up and took me outside and we looked at the stars. The stars have been a constant in my life. I feel like I always have my feet on the ground and my head in the clouds. Watching the sky is where I feel my serenity. My parents separated when I was three and my mom married an ex-Marine. He raised us in the Catholic Church and showed me what true love and compassion were. He taught me to be disciplined and right from wrong. We lived in poverty, which did not look like much of a future as I approached high school graduation. At 17, I enrolled in the Illinois Army National Guard and participated in guard drills. A girl at school was bullying one of my friends and I asked her to stop due to my
drugs. I started after my mother called me and asked me if I experienced the same sexual abuse my brother said he had experienced. I told her no and as soon as I hung up the phone I started having replays going through my mind. I thought I was going crazy. I started remembering things from my childhood I blocked out a long time ago, which I now know are called repressed memories. It was like movie reels playing back in my head. I couldn’t stop it. My roommate injected drugs and I told her I had done it before. She believed my lie and allowed me to inject methamphetamine. That sent me on the darkest road of my life. Anything I could fit into a needle I injected into my body in an effort to forget the pain of my childhood. I still did not remember large chunks of my childhood and I do not remember a lot of my using. My friends and family tell me stories and I do not remember them. I also huffed spray paint, Amyl nitrate poppers, nitrous oxide and ether for nearly a year. I went to two more residential treatment
programs and eventually violated my probation when I moved out of state to South Carolina and came back for court. I didn’t realize how serious felony probation was and the judge wanted to put me on five years of probation. He offered to let me go back to South Carolina if I could go across the street to the probation office and pass a drug test. I am pretty sure he knew I was high that day. I told them I couldn’t do five minutes on probation and asked for prison time. I needed an escape to save my own life. I had to do two years in the Illinois Department of Corrections at the age of 19. While I was in there I participated in the Gateway program
bullied friend becoming suicidal. She did not stop tormenting my friend and I decided to use my fists instead of my words and reason. I became a felon at age 17. I was honorably discharged from the military and lost my dream of going to school. My parents could not afford college and I did not see a way out. I began smoking marijuana, drinking alcohol, having sex, using methamphetamine, tripping on acid and mushrooms and snorting cocaine. I was put
I needed an escape to save my own life. I had to do two years in the Illinois Department of Corrections at the age of 19.
on probation and violated for leaving while on house arrest when I was high on LSD. I was offered residential treatment and went to a federal halfway house as well. After completing my programs, I got my own apartment. I was working at a local gas station and a cute guy in a new Mustang came into the gas station and slid a $20 bill across the counter, asked for the money to be put on pump 5, and placed an Oxycontin on top of it. He gave me his phone number and told me to call if I wanted more pills. I took the first pill and wanted more. Oxys and crack cocaine became my new passion. It was just a few months before I turned my apartment into a meth lab and ended up experiencing homelessness, walking around Marion, Illinois, with my kitten in my backpack. I had lost my Catholic roots and stopped talking to God. I was a lost soul. I experienced so much trauma during my addiction. I was raped on multiple occasions, I was held at gunpoint twice, and I began injecting
which was substance use disorder treatment. When I got out of prison I moved to St. Louis so I could blend in and wouldn’t be such a target in the small town I grew up in. I completed a year on parole and moved to South Carolina again. I had my daughter Cheyenne a few days before I was released from parole. I tell her she helped me save my life. I didn’t use substances for the simple fact I was pregnant with her. I would have liked the feeling of getting away with using while on parole. Two years later I had my son Chas. My best friend Roxy lived in Myrtle Beach also and wanted to go on the Grateful Dead tour. I told her to follow her heart and she ended up hitchhiking across the country. She landed in Covelo, California. She called me and said she was making money trimming marijuana and she was drinking a beer while she was at work for $20 per hour. I told her I was waiting on a bag of weed for like three days.
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HOPE is Now
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