After I realized the flaws I saw during my sentence as a drug and alcohol couselor, I realized what interventions might work when dealing with adolescents. I decided that instead of labeling every kid that walks through the door as an "addict", it was best to leave that label behind and let them fully develop mentally, physically and spiritually before calling them anything but their firstname and the occasional wacky nickname I came up with. The human minds prefrontal cortex is thought to still be developing as late as age 28. This specific part of the brain controls impulsiveness, decision making and many other important "grown-up" thought processes. Instead of labeling everyone, I think it is important to guide them through the great transition into adulthood. I would no longer focus on their drug dependeny, rather I would work on living skills, self worth,dealinng with life on life terms, and other challenges that come up during this uncomfortable period in life. Maybe these kids are addicts but maybe they are just kids with no self-control, direction, goals and discipline. I am no longer willing to assess someone and provide them with a label that will stick with them the rest of their life if even just in their own mind. If you call someone something long enough, you risk the chance of them evolving into the title.
Roles surround us daily. They change, they leave and they are how we define ourself. I am many things, and as I list them I realize I list them in the order I feel are most important: Mother, Wife, Daughter, Sibling, Friend, Student, Teacher, Aquaintance. There are plenty more but all of you know what roles you identify with. Before I decided to do a lot of soul searching and write this, I identified myself as an addict. The problem with this isn't that this is untrue rather it is not ALL that I am. For the last 15 years of my life, that is all I was to myself, it was my identity. This thought process was drilled into my head from 12-step programs. Alcoholics Anonymous relies heavily on these labels and it is dangerous in my opinion, mostly for young people.
If you have ever been involved with a treatment center, most of them boast success rates. But what is success for a person trying to straighten his/her life out after it has been ravaged by drug and alcohol abuse? If someone is sober for years, lives in his parents basement, is unemployed and plays video games all day, is he successful? I have seen many people in AA who are in this situation. They contribute nothing to society but they are "sober", so they expect all the praise they can get. My definition of success does not depend on how many days sober a person has. One of the most successful people I have ever met hasn't been
sober" by AA's standards for more than a week. Does this make him a failure? Not in my mind. I quit injecting myself with crystal meth 13 years ago today actually. Since then, I feel I have accomplished a few good things in my life. Have I drank...yes. Have I made bad choices.. yep....am I perfect...nope. But I, like all of you, are in this game of life trying to chase after and hold onto moments of joy and happiness while simultaneously trying to help people that I encounter in any way possible.
After pondering all of this I started to look at the needs of any young person that was sent my way. The most important thing that needs to be figured out in this transition is the ability to identify a passion. If I can help a kid find his/her passion, get them involved with it, while working on other life skills, what does it matter if he/she decides to have a beer i 5 years? Priorities. Now, I am not saying they should be partying at all throughout this time in their life but I certainly am not going to take away all fo the good things they have worked hard to get and send them to a treatment center if they slip. I have a new role as an advocate for these kids. An advocate that will stand by you through the worst and applaude you at the best. Someone that you can go to, determine goals, identify patterns and weaknesses and get you on the path to your own success, whatever that means to you. So far, it has been awesome. I think I benefit more from working with these kids than they ever do. There is nothing better than having someone I worked with 6 years ago call me, ask me to lunch, and still want to let me in on their World. This happens to me frequently and it is one of the definitons of my life's successes. The truth from my perspective is that no treatment center or other program can define an individuals success. The only way to attempt to ensure it, is to be there to watch and help along the way. This may take 3 months or 6 years, it doesn't matter I will do whatever it takes. So, if you ever find yourself, dealing with someone suffering from addiction, especially young people aged 12-30 consider their success not your definition of their success.
I often wonder what my life would have been like if someone just said "Shelley, you are lost, you are scared, you have no idea who you are, you have no idea what you want, you don't know what is expected of you and up until now, the only common factor in all of your problems is you, and its totally OK. We will get you there and I will always be here to guide you out of the dark back to the light." All I wanted is for someone to understand how awful I felt. The same holds true for youth today. I hope to help as many people as I am intended to help.
Our World is obsessed with labels. The DSM V is chalked full of identities for people. Why can't it be that someone is just different? I often refer to my son as having a beautiful mind. I am bias, but I think he has a unique brand of genius. He is sensitive and artistic. He is imaginative and kind. Does that mean he will sit still, learn everything he needs to and do all of his work during class? Hell no! He is 7. I am however, unwilling to pigeon hole him with a label that he will later identify himself as for the rest of his life. We want explanations for everyone's behavior. Explanations and excuses. I used to truly believe that I can't help it, I am an addict, that is what I do. Now, I am not saying that when I choose to drink I can control it all of the time, I can't. It is very rare that when I drink I don't drink for the effect. I see no real point in drinking for any other reason. The rare cold beer in summer is great but I would rather have 10. Where does personal responsibility come in these days though? Learning humility is one of the most important lessons I have ever learned and I did learn that is a 12-step program. I no longer mind admitting when I am wrong, I actually find it quite liberating. My kids are often shocked when I do it but I think it has helped them realize that nobody is perfect. I sure hope politicians start utilizing this asset! When I was in prison bootcamp, I recall one of the seargents telling me to hit the floor and do 50 push-ups. He would always tell us to "recover and carry on," when we were finished. I asked him why he always said that and he replied by saying that if I was able to recover and carry on from doing push-ups, I could recover and carry on through any obstacle set in front of me. These two principles are probably the reason I still have a family, am not dead and am able to hold my big head up for the most part. I would love to say that my struggles are over and that I have found total enlightenment but I would be lying. I have made progress though and for this I am grateful. I have made countless mistakes throughout my lifetime. I have been selfish, self-centered, cruel, heartless, and every other terrible thing a person can be short of the biggies like rape and murder but at some point, I have had to learn to say "recover and carry on." I could spend the remainder of my time hating myself for the things that I have done or I can be humble, admit my wrongs, and do my best to amend them. Amending the things I have done wrong is simple, stop doing what I was doing to hurt people in the first place. Change the behavior and I change the outcome. This is the basis for cognitive behavioral therapy but, at times, it is often easier said than done. People can say sorry until they are blue in the face but it never matters unless the action is there. I try and view my life as if it were on a kharmic scale. The scale has been tipped toward the bad side for the majority of my life. Now, all I have control over is what I do to tip the scales back in my favor. Everyday, I can do something that helps me feel better about myself and my life. I have countless opprotunities to make people smile, and make my little corner of Colorado a happier place. I hope everyone does this. Our World truly needs this now more than ever.
The other day, my best friend was on the phone with me when his car broke down. A man helped him push the car out of the street, then proceeded to extort my friend out of any cash he had. Then this POS tried to crawl into the window of his car. Can you imagine if everyone did this? What a hellhole we would live in.
Altruism is not truly altruistic. This concept got me into a heated argument with someone that was unwilling to see my point. Being good to others for no reason is the reward. The way we control our actions is truly the only control we have over anything. Control over anything else is just an illusion. I am stuck wondering what the extortionist would have gotten instead of $3 if he had just helped and asked for nothing. Guess I will never know. Well, this evening is coming to an end and I have a busy day of cleansing my home tomorrow followed by a day of bloeing glass and hopefully creating beautiful things I can decorate with or give to those I love. Creating something of beauty is something I have missed for a long time and I hope that I do a good job. Have a great day everyone and I hope to write at you soon. As always, thanks for reading.
Wednesday, March 2, 2011
Monday, February 28, 2011
mindfullness
The concept of mindfullness has recently been brought to my attention by several different sources. Its funny how that happens. I hear something once and it is new to me and then I start hearing it from all sorts of different people. I believe this is called the theory of synchronicity. One of the reasons I started this blog is because I was feeling really detached from myself, mostly my spirit. It was almost like I felt defeated. After ditching my career as a drug and alcohol counselor, I did not know what direction to go in. As a covicted felon, employment is limited to me. Our justice system is not set up for people to actually rehabilitate and enter the workforce. That one terrible decision will effect me for the rest of my life and I refuse to let it stand in my way no matter how harsh people can treat me. I am not a victim of myself or my environment. It was time to reinvent myself. School was where I needed to go. I enrolled in CSU's online program for teaching and learning in 2009 and I am set to graduate in December of this year. The funny thing was, kids I had worked with in the past started calling me for further help. As much as I wanted to put my counseling days behind me it seems like I will never be free of it completely and I am glad. Being there for them helps me remember where I came from. One of the few true talents I posess is the ability to listen and be empathetic. It could be the lady at the grocery store or a friend I haven't seen in years, people open up to me. It is amazing and it is an honor to be a part of so many people's path. I may never be famous, I may never write a best seller and I may never own a self sufficient house in the mountains but at least I can know that I have made a positive impact in a few people's life.
While observing the kids I had worked with and reexamining my own experience I have come to the conclusion that drug treatment centers, while useful for adults, can be lethal for adolescents. Most kids go into treatment with a GED in marijuana and leave with a Masters in Methamphetamine. Treatment is a billion dollar industry, and although they are supposed to assess individuals to see if treatment is appropriate, more times than not, they will jump at the chance to "help" your kid. But what does in-patient treatment really do? It gives kids a chance to get clean maybe, and then they meet and hear all of the glamorized war stories of their peers and decide that they need to go try that. The kid goes home to the same environment with the same friends and their parents wonder why they get high immediately. Treatment centers also make money off of referrals. For example, if Johnny 15 year old goes to a 30 day treatment center, the family is convinced he needs more support so they either refer them to a sober living house at $5,000 per month or they extend the stay at the primary facility for $1000 per day. This seems extremely unethical to me and it is one of the main reason I got out. I decided that what these kids need is someone to help guide them into adulthood. Someone they could trust that has been through what they had gone through and gotten through it to live a semi-normal, happy, successul life. I still do some counseling stuff with them, try to find the root of the problem, work with the family on dynamic issues, and other cliche counselor strategies but my goal for all people I get the privledge of speaking with is to then help them find their passion and hold onto it. Young People don't perceive having a lot to lose. If I work on helping them put positive things in that persons life, if I help them find their passion, then I may have a shot in making a difference . Treatment centers focus on the symptom of drug use and they treat that primarilly. It is comparable to ripping a huge scab off, letting them bleed and sending them home before they have time to heal. How does that help in the long run?
Most kids I work with are terrified to grow up. Hell, I am grown up and stuff still terrifies me. Abandonment, self loathing, vices, fear of success, fear of failure, you name it, and I have feared it. I find that when I am being the best parent I can be, if I am helping others, and taking care of myself and my family, the fear dissipates. The problem with these fears is that they turn into self fullfilling prophecies. Over the last few years of ups and downs for me, I have lost many friends. Most of them left because it is very hard to be my friend during my times of crisis and I push the self-destruct button. The friends that have stuck by me are true angels masquerading as humans. When I am in those crisis' I want to leave myself but no matter how I try to get away and escape, I am always there. The friends I thought would be there forever are gone and some of the friends I never thought I would still have are here. Funny how that works. I am grateful to have lost them becasue if you are not going to stick through someone through the bad times, you don't deserve to be a part of the good times.
Back to mindfullness as I understand it. We live in a time where our focus is all external. For the few people that do try and make their focus internal, kudos, it does not come naturally for me. Being mindfull of what I think about, about what I am feeding my body, mind and spirit has really helped me try and find me again. If I focus on the negativity that pours out of the World I realize it is like a virus and a large quantity of the population is infected by it. Maybe everyone to some degree or another. What I have come to conclude is that the powers that be don't want us to be mindfull. They do not want us to be well. What else would feed the billion dollar industry of anti-depressants? I think that the World is heading in a direction that is really terrifying and that humanity feels it. If we are all running on energy from the same source wouldn't logic follow that we could feel it if we were destroying ourselves on a global scale? I hope that we can pull together and make a change for the better but we are fighting evil in the form of greed and the lust for power. It boggles my mind that socialism is shunned by the top 2% who holds the wealth but they relied on the government to bail them out when they were about to fail. Is that not socialism? How many billions is enough? How rich does one person need to be before they feel a moral obligation to give back? I don't claim to be affiliated with either political party because I feel they are all corrupted by the evil. I affiliate with right and wrong. A concept that seems to have made an exit from Washington and a concept that I hope makes a much awaited return to the powers that be. What right is right. I hope we all wake up no matter what we believe.
About a month ago, my husband and I were called into the principals office. My son's second grade teacher was there and informed us that our son possibly suffers from ADD. She went on to tell us that she has seen medicinal interventions work miracles and that we need to take him to see his pediatrician. Mike and I both cried. They also informed us that they think he is depressed. This broke our hearts. Soon after the sad, hopeless feeling left my body, anger took over. It consumed every fiber of my being. How dare she suggest I put my son on speed so that he would conform to her class. I am not going to dope him up to make anyone's job easier, including mine. Don't get me wrong, if it works for your kid that's fine but I am not ready to do that and I will probably never be. What message does that send? Addiction is already in his genes and if I put him on that wouldn't that say "drugs help you, but these are different drugs, these are the good drugs." ADD drugs are a form of methamphetamine. I hope more than anything that we can utilize other interventions to help him in his struggles. He has A's and B's. Seriously, if he is that bad, why is he still passing?I understand in extreme cases that medicinal interventions are necessary and I am not passing judgement on anyone who is a true believer. I am sure they work. But I truly believe that we over diagnose some of these childhood behavioral issues in order to try and label our children, medicate them, and hope that they get fixed. My son has a beautiful mind. He is loving, he is an amazing artist, he is empathic, funny, creative, caring, giving and has good manners. For the most part, he is amazing and I am aware of my bias. Now, I am still in the middle of this obstacle but recently, he was changed to another class. The first day of that class he came home a totally different kid. He was happy. Now for the depression, wouldn't you be depressed too if all the feedback you received from your teacher was negative? Mindfullness. For me, I need to be mindfull of what comes out of my mouth. Will it hurt someone? Will someone perceive this as a negative message? If I am truly being mindfull, and it is a new thing for me, I tend to hurt people less. Parents model behavior for their kids. If you model hate, your kids will hate. My kids hate to clean. Wonder why? I hate to clean.
Mindfullness has been left behind in our society. We are too busy being distracted by our gadgets, and other shiny things we focus on rather that looking at the real problems. At least, I do.
Someday, our dream is to build a nice home on our property in the mountains that is completely self suffiecent. When this day comes, the concept of mindfullness for me, will be realized completely and until then, I just have to remember to work as hard as I can to focus on what matters to me and keep the rest of the garbage out. If I focus on not being able to be mindful until we get out house, I am being the opposite of mindfull.
Now that all of you know most of my story, I am not sure if I will continue writing. I am not of the opinion that what I have to say is important enough to subject you to it. I believe everyone has something wonderful to give to this World. Words are one of humanity's most powerful tools. There is so much that I omitted however that I may remember things that come up. Life throws situations our way everyday and it helps me to write about them to get it out of my head. It helps me sleep better at night. I am just an ordinary woman, living an ordinary life with a less than ordinary backstory. I am grateful for the good, bad and the ugly. I apologize to anyone who was hurt by what I have written and I have done my best to make amends to you all. This was not supposed to be about anyone but me and my life. It is difficult to give a backstory without mentioning other key players. I intentionally left several incidents out becasue I thought they would hurt people and I realize now that I should have been more mindfull of what I did write. Several people have asked me why I feel it is necessary to share this story on the internet and the only answer I can come up with is "I wanted to see if I was alone in the way that I feel and maybe by some chance, I will help people feel as if they are not alone." In this World, I can find hate around every corner, on most channels, in all media outlets and walking down the street, if I choose to look for it. On the other side of the coin, if I choose to live in a place of gratitude, live in the moment and remember that I am not where I should be and I am not where I could be but, for whatever reason, and a lot of hard work, I will never be where I once was, I can find love. Some people think that the idea of peace and harmony is hippy crap that can not possibly happen and if I over analyze it, it may not happen. It is a tall order. It is my choice to try and work at living as an example to my children. Show them that love, tolerance and acceptance of all others will help ensure that the microchasm we call our life can embody all of these things and will transend the crap. This blog was a good start. Thank you to all that took the time to read it and to those that have messaged me about it. There is nothing like getting a message from a complete stranger saying that you have helped them. It is this reason that I will find time to write whenever I can. Hope to write more later this week and I hope that all of my readers take the time to smell the flowers at the grocery store, grab a coffee and people watch at your local coffee shop and laugh so hard that you pee your pants.
While observing the kids I had worked with and reexamining my own experience I have come to the conclusion that drug treatment centers, while useful for adults, can be lethal for adolescents. Most kids go into treatment with a GED in marijuana and leave with a Masters in Methamphetamine. Treatment is a billion dollar industry, and although they are supposed to assess individuals to see if treatment is appropriate, more times than not, they will jump at the chance to "help" your kid. But what does in-patient treatment really do? It gives kids a chance to get clean maybe, and then they meet and hear all of the glamorized war stories of their peers and decide that they need to go try that. The kid goes home to the same environment with the same friends and their parents wonder why they get high immediately. Treatment centers also make money off of referrals. For example, if Johnny 15 year old goes to a 30 day treatment center, the family is convinced he needs more support so they either refer them to a sober living house at $5,000 per month or they extend the stay at the primary facility for $1000 per day. This seems extremely unethical to me and it is one of the main reason I got out. I decided that what these kids need is someone to help guide them into adulthood. Someone they could trust that has been through what they had gone through and gotten through it to live a semi-normal, happy, successul life. I still do some counseling stuff with them, try to find the root of the problem, work with the family on dynamic issues, and other cliche counselor strategies but my goal for all people I get the privledge of speaking with is to then help them find their passion and hold onto it. Young People don't perceive having a lot to lose. If I work on helping them put positive things in that persons life, if I help them find their passion, then I may have a shot in making a difference . Treatment centers focus on the symptom of drug use and they treat that primarilly. It is comparable to ripping a huge scab off, letting them bleed and sending them home before they have time to heal. How does that help in the long run?
Most kids I work with are terrified to grow up. Hell, I am grown up and stuff still terrifies me. Abandonment, self loathing, vices, fear of success, fear of failure, you name it, and I have feared it. I find that when I am being the best parent I can be, if I am helping others, and taking care of myself and my family, the fear dissipates. The problem with these fears is that they turn into self fullfilling prophecies. Over the last few years of ups and downs for me, I have lost many friends. Most of them left because it is very hard to be my friend during my times of crisis and I push the self-destruct button. The friends that have stuck by me are true angels masquerading as humans. When I am in those crisis' I want to leave myself but no matter how I try to get away and escape, I am always there. The friends I thought would be there forever are gone and some of the friends I never thought I would still have are here. Funny how that works. I am grateful to have lost them becasue if you are not going to stick through someone through the bad times, you don't deserve to be a part of the good times.
Back to mindfullness as I understand it. We live in a time where our focus is all external. For the few people that do try and make their focus internal, kudos, it does not come naturally for me. Being mindfull of what I think about, about what I am feeding my body, mind and spirit has really helped me try and find me again. If I focus on the negativity that pours out of the World I realize it is like a virus and a large quantity of the population is infected by it. Maybe everyone to some degree or another. What I have come to conclude is that the powers that be don't want us to be mindfull. They do not want us to be well. What else would feed the billion dollar industry of anti-depressants? I think that the World is heading in a direction that is really terrifying and that humanity feels it. If we are all running on energy from the same source wouldn't logic follow that we could feel it if we were destroying ourselves on a global scale? I hope that we can pull together and make a change for the better but we are fighting evil in the form of greed and the lust for power. It boggles my mind that socialism is shunned by the top 2% who holds the wealth but they relied on the government to bail them out when they were about to fail. Is that not socialism? How many billions is enough? How rich does one person need to be before they feel a moral obligation to give back? I don't claim to be affiliated with either political party because I feel they are all corrupted by the evil. I affiliate with right and wrong. A concept that seems to have made an exit from Washington and a concept that I hope makes a much awaited return to the powers that be. What right is right. I hope we all wake up no matter what we believe.
About a month ago, my husband and I were called into the principals office. My son's second grade teacher was there and informed us that our son possibly suffers from ADD. She went on to tell us that she has seen medicinal interventions work miracles and that we need to take him to see his pediatrician. Mike and I both cried. They also informed us that they think he is depressed. This broke our hearts. Soon after the sad, hopeless feeling left my body, anger took over. It consumed every fiber of my being. How dare she suggest I put my son on speed so that he would conform to her class. I am not going to dope him up to make anyone's job easier, including mine. Don't get me wrong, if it works for your kid that's fine but I am not ready to do that and I will probably never be. What message does that send? Addiction is already in his genes and if I put him on that wouldn't that say "drugs help you, but these are different drugs, these are the good drugs." ADD drugs are a form of methamphetamine. I hope more than anything that we can utilize other interventions to help him in his struggles. He has A's and B's. Seriously, if he is that bad, why is he still passing?I understand in extreme cases that medicinal interventions are necessary and I am not passing judgement on anyone who is a true believer. I am sure they work. But I truly believe that we over diagnose some of these childhood behavioral issues in order to try and label our children, medicate them, and hope that they get fixed. My son has a beautiful mind. He is loving, he is an amazing artist, he is empathic, funny, creative, caring, giving and has good manners. For the most part, he is amazing and I am aware of my bias. Now, I am still in the middle of this obstacle but recently, he was changed to another class. The first day of that class he came home a totally different kid. He was happy. Now for the depression, wouldn't you be depressed too if all the feedback you received from your teacher was negative? Mindfullness. For me, I need to be mindfull of what comes out of my mouth. Will it hurt someone? Will someone perceive this as a negative message? If I am truly being mindfull, and it is a new thing for me, I tend to hurt people less. Parents model behavior for their kids. If you model hate, your kids will hate. My kids hate to clean. Wonder why? I hate to clean.
Mindfullness has been left behind in our society. We are too busy being distracted by our gadgets, and other shiny things we focus on rather that looking at the real problems. At least, I do.
Someday, our dream is to build a nice home on our property in the mountains that is completely self suffiecent. When this day comes, the concept of mindfullness for me, will be realized completely and until then, I just have to remember to work as hard as I can to focus on what matters to me and keep the rest of the garbage out. If I focus on not being able to be mindful until we get out house, I am being the opposite of mindfull.
Now that all of you know most of my story, I am not sure if I will continue writing. I am not of the opinion that what I have to say is important enough to subject you to it. I believe everyone has something wonderful to give to this World. Words are one of humanity's most powerful tools. There is so much that I omitted however that I may remember things that come up. Life throws situations our way everyday and it helps me to write about them to get it out of my head. It helps me sleep better at night. I am just an ordinary woman, living an ordinary life with a less than ordinary backstory. I am grateful for the good, bad and the ugly. I apologize to anyone who was hurt by what I have written and I have done my best to make amends to you all. This was not supposed to be about anyone but me and my life. It is difficult to give a backstory without mentioning other key players. I intentionally left several incidents out becasue I thought they would hurt people and I realize now that I should have been more mindfull of what I did write. Several people have asked me why I feel it is necessary to share this story on the internet and the only answer I can come up with is "I wanted to see if I was alone in the way that I feel and maybe by some chance, I will help people feel as if they are not alone." In this World, I can find hate around every corner, on most channels, in all media outlets and walking down the street, if I choose to look for it. On the other side of the coin, if I choose to live in a place of gratitude, live in the moment and remember that I am not where I should be and I am not where I could be but, for whatever reason, and a lot of hard work, I will never be where I once was, I can find love. Some people think that the idea of peace and harmony is hippy crap that can not possibly happen and if I over analyze it, it may not happen. It is a tall order. It is my choice to try and work at living as an example to my children. Show them that love, tolerance and acceptance of all others will help ensure that the microchasm we call our life can embody all of these things and will transend the crap. This blog was a good start. Thank you to all that took the time to read it and to those that have messaged me about it. There is nothing like getting a message from a complete stranger saying that you have helped them. It is this reason that I will find time to write whenever I can. Hope to write more later this week and I hope that all of my readers take the time to smell the flowers at the grocery store, grab a coffee and people watch at your local coffee shop and laugh so hard that you pee your pants.
Friday, February 25, 2011
Dis....ease.
Back in 2008, I contracted the blood infection that nearly did me in and it was smack in the middle of a downward spiral that was hard to watch and even harder to be live in. I started to think about what I wanted my kids to learn from me before I go to that ginormous unknown we all wonder about. It was, to say the least, a very existential experience. During this period I had a very interesting dream. I believe dreams connect us to our source, similar to the way we charge our phones. Within dreams we realize our fears, dreams, homes, haunts and in those rare moments we are able to see and even speak to people we may have lost, that are famous, or that we have never met. Dreams are one of the true last frontiers. This dream consisted of me riding in a truck that was hurling forward toward a concrete wall. I was behind the wheel. An angel came into the dream explaining to me that I could go. I wondered where and he pointed up. I began to follow him on what felt like a cloudy staircase and when I looked back, I saw my kids, when I looked forward to him he was holding a beautiful rose. He simply stated that I was not done yet and that they needed me. I woke up crying. The thing that is so frustrating during periods of my life where I struggle is that I know that I am struggling. It is as if I am lost in the deepest, darkest forest and I am frantically trying to get out and find my way. Aren't we all?
I decided that my kids needed to understand 8 main principles: honesty, charity, integrity, mindfulness, love, karma, gratitude and empathy. Raising children is no doubt the hardest thing I have ever done but I would like to think for all of my flaws, we have done a pretty good job. Now, my house is messy, they hate cleaning, they would rather eat glass than clean but for the most part, they are all of the above. It brings me true joy to see them internalize these qualities and then, more imprtantly, put them into action. The only reason I find these qualities important is becasue somewhere along the way (thanks to Mom and Dad and rehab) I learned that living with these principles makes me feel good about myself. This is an extremely hard concept for me to get and I battle self hate frequently. Erick Ericson spoke about having to hit certain milestones in the developmental years in order to be view yourself as a whole person. Somewhere along the way, I missed some of these milestones. The problem with missing them is that you end up with the opposite. For example, if you don't gain trust in the period of time you are supposed to bond with your Mother you get mistrust and so on. I don't think this happened to me becasue my Mother and I are very close but I have to believe that the adoption could have played a role in the whole abandonment issue thing. But seriously, who cares? I can choose to dwell on the fact that I wasn't breast fed and blame it for all of my issues but I prefer to believe that I am the direct result of my actions. If I don't take responsibility for the bad choices in my life, how can I own the good ones? This is one of the problems I have with Alcoholics Anonymous and Religion. I believe there is a source that most choose to call God. I believe Jesus was real. however, I do not believe Jesus would be pleased with some of the things that have been done in his name.
"Reigion is the opiate of the Masses" is a quote written by Karl Marx who everyone must admit, provoked thought. I don't care what your political beliefs are, the man had some relevant points. I do not think religion )like most things) is all good or all bad. My kids are in a religious school. I believe in most of the principles taight in all religions. Unless you are an extremist or you are misinterpreting the message, I think it is pretty simple. Be kind, do things with love, live well, and so forth...see above 8 principles. However, I have witnessed first hand the hypocricy that lies within organized religion or rather people who claim to be religious. People who claim to be Christian that I have see turn around and lie, judge others, gossip, cheat and steal. When I walk into my kids school I feel like I have 3 boobs, a horn and 7 eyes. It is amazing, but I kindof like it. The few Mothers that I do chat with are great people. I guess it is like everything else, there are great people and people who truly suck everywhere you go. Some claim it is because humanity has free will and that is why God forgives. My question is this: If I try my hardest to be a good person, and I try to live by the principles I wrote about earlier, why would I be locked out of Heaven? Why would my best friend, who has a great loving, healthy, relationship with a member of the same sex be cast to the pits of hell? If "God" and Jesus are that judgemental, I am not sure I want to get in. I would rather be with the people who are true to their values and their heart if they are in hell, then it can't be all that bad. In my opinion, if Jesus saw the Kansas Church that protests during military funerals, if he knew that doctors were being murdered in his name that perform abortions, he would weep. Abortion is a touchy subject but no metter which side you are on, murder is not the answer. Please correct me if I am wrong becasue I am not vetted in religion but my understanding is that Jesus was about love, acceptance and telerance? Where did that go South? My God is no better nor worse than anyone else's rather mine is my perception of yours and vice versa. If this concept was embraced, it is in my opinion that there would be much more peace in the World. Unfortunately, power is addictive and if you can get billions of people to follow you and your beliefs, no matter the message, it can be distorted and abused to meet greedy ends.
The period in History that we are living in is one that is filled with awesome unknowns. Ever since I was a child I always felt there would be some sort of revolution that was going to take place in my life time. I believe this is starting now. Fear is no longer a tactic that can be used. We are realizing that while we have been distracted we were being financially raped. I am excited/apprehensive to see what lies ahead but my hope is that humanity rises to the challenges ahead and we awake after the darkness to a revolutionary new age of Enlightenment.
I know this blog is supposed to be about my experiences but today I felt it necessary to give insight into my mind. It is truly an interesting and at the same time, frightening place. Fear is the motivator that got me to start writing in the first place and since I have begun this, my life has improved. The war I wage with myself will possibly never be won but just for today, I know I have fought a great fight and won the battle. My hope is for those who suffer, which I know all of us do to some extent, is that you can do the same. My misery is no worse than anyone else. No matter the story behind it, the emotion is the same. Have a great weekend all! My goal is to make someone's day better and to make 5 strangers laugh. What is yours?
I decided that my kids needed to understand 8 main principles: honesty, charity, integrity, mindfulness, love, karma, gratitude and empathy. Raising children is no doubt the hardest thing I have ever done but I would like to think for all of my flaws, we have done a pretty good job. Now, my house is messy, they hate cleaning, they would rather eat glass than clean but for the most part, they are all of the above. It brings me true joy to see them internalize these qualities and then, more imprtantly, put them into action. The only reason I find these qualities important is becasue somewhere along the way (thanks to Mom and Dad and rehab) I learned that living with these principles makes me feel good about myself. This is an extremely hard concept for me to get and I battle self hate frequently. Erick Ericson spoke about having to hit certain milestones in the developmental years in order to be view yourself as a whole person. Somewhere along the way, I missed some of these milestones. The problem with missing them is that you end up with the opposite. For example, if you don't gain trust in the period of time you are supposed to bond with your Mother you get mistrust and so on. I don't think this happened to me becasue my Mother and I are very close but I have to believe that the adoption could have played a role in the whole abandonment issue thing. But seriously, who cares? I can choose to dwell on the fact that I wasn't breast fed and blame it for all of my issues but I prefer to believe that I am the direct result of my actions. If I don't take responsibility for the bad choices in my life, how can I own the good ones? This is one of the problems I have with Alcoholics Anonymous and Religion. I believe there is a source that most choose to call God. I believe Jesus was real. however, I do not believe Jesus would be pleased with some of the things that have been done in his name.
"Reigion is the opiate of the Masses" is a quote written by Karl Marx who everyone must admit, provoked thought. I don't care what your political beliefs are, the man had some relevant points. I do not think religion )like most things) is all good or all bad. My kids are in a religious school. I believe in most of the principles taight in all religions. Unless you are an extremist or you are misinterpreting the message, I think it is pretty simple. Be kind, do things with love, live well, and so forth...see above 8 principles. However, I have witnessed first hand the hypocricy that lies within organized religion or rather people who claim to be religious. People who claim to be Christian that I have see turn around and lie, judge others, gossip, cheat and steal. When I walk into my kids school I feel like I have 3 boobs, a horn and 7 eyes. It is amazing, but I kindof like it. The few Mothers that I do chat with are great people. I guess it is like everything else, there are great people and people who truly suck everywhere you go. Some claim it is because humanity has free will and that is why God forgives. My question is this: If I try my hardest to be a good person, and I try to live by the principles I wrote about earlier, why would I be locked out of Heaven? Why would my best friend, who has a great loving, healthy, relationship with a member of the same sex be cast to the pits of hell? If "God" and Jesus are that judgemental, I am not sure I want to get in. I would rather be with the people who are true to their values and their heart if they are in hell, then it can't be all that bad. In my opinion, if Jesus saw the Kansas Church that protests during military funerals, if he knew that doctors were being murdered in his name that perform abortions, he would weep. Abortion is a touchy subject but no metter which side you are on, murder is not the answer. Please correct me if I am wrong becasue I am not vetted in religion but my understanding is that Jesus was about love, acceptance and telerance? Where did that go South? My God is no better nor worse than anyone else's rather mine is my perception of yours and vice versa. If this concept was embraced, it is in my opinion that there would be much more peace in the World. Unfortunately, power is addictive and if you can get billions of people to follow you and your beliefs, no matter the message, it can be distorted and abused to meet greedy ends.
The period in History that we are living in is one that is filled with awesome unknowns. Ever since I was a child I always felt there would be some sort of revolution that was going to take place in my life time. I believe this is starting now. Fear is no longer a tactic that can be used. We are realizing that while we have been distracted we were being financially raped. I am excited/apprehensive to see what lies ahead but my hope is that humanity rises to the challenges ahead and we awake after the darkness to a revolutionary new age of Enlightenment.
I know this blog is supposed to be about my experiences but today I felt it necessary to give insight into my mind. It is truly an interesting and at the same time, frightening place. Fear is the motivator that got me to start writing in the first place and since I have begun this, my life has improved. The war I wage with myself will possibly never be won but just for today, I know I have fought a great fight and won the battle. My hope is for those who suffer, which I know all of us do to some extent, is that you can do the same. My misery is no worse than anyone else. No matter the story behind it, the emotion is the same. Have a great weekend all! My goal is to make someone's day better and to make 5 strangers laugh. What is yours?
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
Why did I decide to write this?
Why did I decide to write a blog? Did I want to bash people? Am I resentful? Did I want to hurt people? The answer to all of these questions is absolutely, NO. I wrote it with the hopes that my mistakes and lessons learned could possibly help other people in situtaions similar to my own. People throughout the years have always said I should write a book. Since I have no idea how to, it was suggested by several people to write a blog. It truly was as simple as that. I am not afraid to write about my life. My life is an open book. Why? Because everything that has happened to me, all of the memories that I have, all the experiences that I have been a part of have made me the person I am today. I have spent a great deal of my days hating myself, expecting people to leave me and thinking that the negative things I have heard from whoever, whenever is my reality and I am done with that. Take it or leave it, I will be me and I am learning that I am able to be loved by others and I am able to love myself. If you chooses to leave it, I will be sad but I will recover and carry on.
For all the people it has angered, more than 5 times as many have written and told me it has helped them in some way. In this life, I have learned, I can't please everyone all of the time and I am done trying to. Pleasing others does nothing but make me feel like crap. I am starting to really understand the saying "Who cares what people think.?"
The other day was parent teacher conferences. A 40 something bald fat white man felt it necessary to wear a "53,000,000 babies dead since 1973" t-shirt. People never cease to amaze me. Whatever side of the argument you are on, why would one choose to display it on a t-shirt at an elementary school parent teacher conference? Thank goodness that my 7 year old didn't read it. I would rather spare him from nonsence like this as long as possible than have to explain why people do things like this.
Throughout this blog I have only written about my past.
Recently, I have emphasized to my children that there is plenty of hate in the World and as a family, we need to make our house a place of love and we need to spread love instead of hate. This is something I have had the pleasure of watching them put into action. It truly is amazing to see them internalize things like this and it makes me proud to be their Mother.
This year has met me with several challenges that have almost broken me. It has also been a time of enlightenment. I realized that when I focus on what is wrong with my life and what I am missing, it is nearly impossible for me to find happiness. When I am unaccepting of others it is because I am running from something I dislike about myself. The biggest battle I have to fight next to addiction is my fear of abandonment. I almost expect people to leave me. No one knows this better than my dear husband. What the source of this fear is can be left up for speculation. Is it nature, nurture or some other variable I have not yet considered? Who cares? All I know is that is there and unless I admit it, I will continue to self-sabotage and make this worst fear of mine come true. People say that when you go to jail, you find out who your friend are. That is kindof true but when you really find out who your friends are is when you have a nervous breakdown. This happened to me when I turned 30. For some reason, I felt that I should have a successful career. My priorities have since changed. I managed to become the director of a drug abuse program,I worked with a number of kids and owned and operated a halfway house. Due to some serious ethical issues surrounding the people I worked with, I had to quit. Around the same time, I contracted a strep infection in my blood that nearly did me in. The recipe was right for a downward spiral that had me nearly lose my family and everything I had worked hard for.
Doctors had prscribed me anti anxiety drugs and anti depressants. Both of these drugs made me insane. I saw friends drop like flies. I have never wanted to die in my life until I woke up and realized what had become of me. I had gone to Puerto Rico with a girl I had recently met when I had a moment of clarity. I knew that If I did not change, I would lose the things in my life that mattered the most, I would lose the love I had come to take for granted. At that moment, I decided to take myself off of all of the meds I was on (don't ever do this) lock myself in my hotel room until I could catch a flight home, cut ties with the people that were helping me destroy myself and start to rebuild. One would think I would have learned this lesson but sometimes, I have to relearn and relearn and relearn. I came home, and did what I had to do to become the person I needed to be for my family.
Throughout my time as a counselor, I noticed a pattern emerging from several of the adolescents I had the pleasure of working with. Addiction is a family disease. Everyone has a role to play in it. Most parents of the kids I knew were focused on careers, money, and materialistic that in the end, doesn't ever matter. This is not true for all families, sometimes there were other variables, this is just a pattern I saw. I have come to recognize that for me and for my children, it is extremely important to make them my career. Sure, I will ever be the high powered business woman I pictured myself being but rarely if ever do things go the way I imagined they should go. I may not be able to afford to go to Italy, help build an orphanage for abandoned children in Africa, or have a villa in Argentina but I have the most important thing of all, a family of my own that loves me unconditionally. I hve a husband that truly meant it when he said "till death do us part." And although I sometimes expect him to leave, I am learning that he isn't going anywhere.
Everyone has their issues. Mine are just more obvious than others. My hope is by admitting them, sharing my hopes, my fears, my dreams and my nightmares, someone somewhere might relate and realize not only are they not alone but someone out there understands, fights the same battles with herself and continues to remain teachable in order to better my life and the lives of those I meet or of those who read these words.
Write at you later.
Shelley
For all the people it has angered, more than 5 times as many have written and told me it has helped them in some way. In this life, I have learned, I can't please everyone all of the time and I am done trying to. Pleasing others does nothing but make me feel like crap. I am starting to really understand the saying "Who cares what people think.?"
The other day was parent teacher conferences. A 40 something bald fat white man felt it necessary to wear a "53,000,000 babies dead since 1973" t-shirt. People never cease to amaze me. Whatever side of the argument you are on, why would one choose to display it on a t-shirt at an elementary school parent teacher conference? Thank goodness that my 7 year old didn't read it. I would rather spare him from nonsence like this as long as possible than have to explain why people do things like this.
Throughout this blog I have only written about my past.
Recently, I have emphasized to my children that there is plenty of hate in the World and as a family, we need to make our house a place of love and we need to spread love instead of hate. This is something I have had the pleasure of watching them put into action. It truly is amazing to see them internalize things like this and it makes me proud to be their Mother.
This year has met me with several challenges that have almost broken me. It has also been a time of enlightenment. I realized that when I focus on what is wrong with my life and what I am missing, it is nearly impossible for me to find happiness. When I am unaccepting of others it is because I am running from something I dislike about myself. The biggest battle I have to fight next to addiction is my fear of abandonment. I almost expect people to leave me. No one knows this better than my dear husband. What the source of this fear is can be left up for speculation. Is it nature, nurture or some other variable I have not yet considered? Who cares? All I know is that is there and unless I admit it, I will continue to self-sabotage and make this worst fear of mine come true. People say that when you go to jail, you find out who your friend are. That is kindof true but when you really find out who your friends are is when you have a nervous breakdown. This happened to me when I turned 30. For some reason, I felt that I should have a successful career. My priorities have since changed. I managed to become the director of a drug abuse program,I worked with a number of kids and owned and operated a halfway house. Due to some serious ethical issues surrounding the people I worked with, I had to quit. Around the same time, I contracted a strep infection in my blood that nearly did me in. The recipe was right for a downward spiral that had me nearly lose my family and everything I had worked hard for.
Doctors had prscribed me anti anxiety drugs and anti depressants. Both of these drugs made me insane. I saw friends drop like flies. I have never wanted to die in my life until I woke up and realized what had become of me. I had gone to Puerto Rico with a girl I had recently met when I had a moment of clarity. I knew that If I did not change, I would lose the things in my life that mattered the most, I would lose the love I had come to take for granted. At that moment, I decided to take myself off of all of the meds I was on (don't ever do this) lock myself in my hotel room until I could catch a flight home, cut ties with the people that were helping me destroy myself and start to rebuild. One would think I would have learned this lesson but sometimes, I have to relearn and relearn and relearn. I came home, and did what I had to do to become the person I needed to be for my family.
Throughout my time as a counselor, I noticed a pattern emerging from several of the adolescents I had the pleasure of working with. Addiction is a family disease. Everyone has a role to play in it. Most parents of the kids I knew were focused on careers, money, and materialistic that in the end, doesn't ever matter. This is not true for all families, sometimes there were other variables, this is just a pattern I saw. I have come to recognize that for me and for my children, it is extremely important to make them my career. Sure, I will ever be the high powered business woman I pictured myself being but rarely if ever do things go the way I imagined they should go. I may not be able to afford to go to Italy, help build an orphanage for abandoned children in Africa, or have a villa in Argentina but I have the most important thing of all, a family of my own that loves me unconditionally. I hve a husband that truly meant it when he said "till death do us part." And although I sometimes expect him to leave, I am learning that he isn't going anywhere.
Everyone has their issues. Mine are just more obvious than others. My hope is by admitting them, sharing my hopes, my fears, my dreams and my nightmares, someone somewhere might relate and realize not only are they not alone but someone out there understands, fights the same battles with herself and continues to remain teachable in order to better my life and the lives of those I meet or of those who read these words.
Write at you later.
Shelley
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
Fate
I think I left off and I was in jail. Jail is one of the strangest social situations I have had the privledge of being a part of. I was 18, it was Christmas time, and there I was, in jail. In addiction treatment you always hear about a "bottom." Was this going to be mine? Fate has a way of putting in front of us that which we want to leave behind the most. For me, that is addiction. Jail was awful but it is where I grew up. I read 1000's of books. I learned how to use my mind's eye. I was sentenced to a boot camp program where I did very well. It was ran by former ARMY dog's and it was modeled after their bootcamp. When I was released, I was really buff, full of confidence and ready to face the World. I decided I needed to work at Denny's at night because that is when I got into trouble. I went to a rehab after jail that was a joke and basically set up for people to fail. Our justice system is set up to keep people in it, not get them out. Since the privatization of the prison system, the more people we incarcerate means more money for the investors of the prisons and non lethal weapons. Needless to say, I relapsed on crystal meth. Started using needles and basically was suicidal. On March 3rd 1998, I overdosed and was left in a seedy hotel to die. For whatever reason, I woke up and Madonna was on T.V. It was her song Frozen which spoke to me on a very spiritual level. I knew from that day o, I would nnever touch Crystal Methamphetamine again, and I haven't. I ended up being sent to live with my older brother and his wife in Phoenix so that I could go to an outpatient program that was near where he lived. I moved in April and enrolled myself at Pathway drug abuse program. This girl I knew from a previous treatment center spoke hughly of a sister program in Colorado so I thought it might be a good fit and I was right. Many people hate this program, call it a cult and makingn it their life mission to shut it down. I agree that it could be considered a cult, especially if you make it to staff but I learned some very valuable lessons there.
In the fall of 1998, I enrolled myself in Mesa Commuity College. There are very few moments when I have felt true pride for myself but when I walked through the cafeteria at school, I realized I was finally doing something for myself that no one thought I could ever do, it was one of the best moments of my life. Morality was not a strong suit of mine prior to entering treatment. I thought men were supposed to treat me like crap, dishonesty was a way of life and selfishness was a necessity for survival. I had to undo all of the things I had come to depend on and to this day nearly 12 years later, I cannot lie. I have been accused of lying in this blog but these are my memories written the way I remember them or I remember them being told to me.
When I finished with the outpatient program I remember telling a friend of mine that the program was grooming me to be a future counselor. The program utilized charasmatic people who had the worst problems to "reach out" to the new people. If you were "cool" enough, you were put on steering committee. This happened to me. I loved finally feeling like a "cool" kid. I had finally found a group of people that thought like I did and I loved it. We had so much fun. I lived with girls who are still in my life to this day and the friendships I made there will last a lifetime. The premise of this program is to replace getting high with "fun" activities. We did a good job of this. We would stay up all night and do very dangerous "fun" things for the next two years. All the while, I was working away at school on my associates degree and life was good. I was then asked to go to counselor training. I thought it was the coolest thing that they had asked me to be a part of the staff.
The problem with Pathway is that it is ran by Bigots. There was no tolerance of gay people, or any other ethnicity other than white middle class. There was the occasional Black person and gay guy but they were made fun of by the staff and I always thought that was wrong. When I confronted the director about these inconsistancies, he said "he had a democratic heart with conservative principles." Whatever the f@$k that means. I made it through training and was transfered to Colorado. I only lasted 6 months on staff. I didn't agree with the way things were. We worked 60 hour weeks for $1000 per month and shared an apartment with 4 other girls. Every week, we would have ot go to the Director's house for what was called "Purpose." This was a meeting where oe person is usually singled out for whatever flaw and berated for hours. It was dumb and it was traumatic. Your so called friends all jumped on the wagon to treat you like crap.That is when I said "enough was enough" and I left. I was in Loveland at this point and I had to live in a halfway house because I had no money to get a place. I found a job at a local pub as a bartender but managed to stay sober for another year.
I was determined to show the program that I could be successful without them in a town where I knew no one. In reality, I was proving it to myself. I enrolled at the local communnity college and at oe point I lived, worked, and went to school on the same street.
The Depot Eatery and Pub proved to play a significant role in my life and the people I met there are some of the best people I have evver kown. My maid of honor was the manager and she is onne of my best friends to this day. One day she asked me "Why don't you drink." I told her that I had problems with addiction but at that poinnt, I thought I had outgrown the problem and I was ready to try again. The first time I drank, I felt like I had thrown 3 years away and I cried and cried for hours. At 23 years old, all I wanted was to fit in and be normal. At that point in my life, everyone partied. It soon became very clear that I am unable to drink like other people. I drink to get drunk. I see no point to doing it any other way. I managed to keep my life together for the most part and in June of 2002, I put my cap and gown on and walked across the stage to receive my Associates in Liberal Arts. It was a very proud moment. I never got to walk in high school and I finally felt like maybe I could accomplish something in my life. I enrolled in the University of Northern Colorado for the next fall. Although I was drinking, life was still good. In May of that year, I met a girl I worked with that lived in the mountains. I thought she was really cool. One weekend my best buddy and I took a trip up to her place in the mountains, got lost, popped a tire, and finally found what is now partly my property. When I got out of the car to say hi to my friend, I noticed a tall, handsome man walking down the road towards us. I thought he was interesting but very quiet. I remember my friend asking me what I thought of him and I said" he is interesting."
The next week, the same guy was standing outside of the kitchen of my work. He told me he was waiting for me. He asked me if I wanted to go to a Norah Jones concert with him. "Who is Norah Jones?" I asked. He then burned me a CD of hers and brought it back to my work the next day to make sure I liked her music. From that moment on, I knew, I had met the man I would grow old with.
Within a week, Mike had moved in with me. He was living in a cabin and hour away from me and since we didn't want to be apart he just stayed with me. I went on a trip to see my Mother in Santa Fe with a friend of mine and I remember wanting to get him a very special present. I found a coffee mug that was gorgeous, carefully wrapped it up and put it in my bag and couldn't wait to get home to give it to the man who stole my heart. When I got home, Mike was walking up to the apartment holding a coffee maker and in my hand was i=his new coffee mug. It couldn't have been more cheesy or more perfect.
In the fall of 1998, I enrolled myself in Mesa Commuity College. There are very few moments when I have felt true pride for myself but when I walked through the cafeteria at school, I realized I was finally doing something for myself that no one thought I could ever do, it was one of the best moments of my life. Morality was not a strong suit of mine prior to entering treatment. I thought men were supposed to treat me like crap, dishonesty was a way of life and selfishness was a necessity for survival. I had to undo all of the things I had come to depend on and to this day nearly 12 years later, I cannot lie. I have been accused of lying in this blog but these are my memories written the way I remember them or I remember them being told to me.
When I finished with the outpatient program I remember telling a friend of mine that the program was grooming me to be a future counselor. The program utilized charasmatic people who had the worst problems to "reach out" to the new people. If you were "cool" enough, you were put on steering committee. This happened to me. I loved finally feeling like a "cool" kid. I had finally found a group of people that thought like I did and I loved it. We had so much fun. I lived with girls who are still in my life to this day and the friendships I made there will last a lifetime. The premise of this program is to replace getting high with "fun" activities. We did a good job of this. We would stay up all night and do very dangerous "fun" things for the next two years. All the while, I was working away at school on my associates degree and life was good. I was then asked to go to counselor training. I thought it was the coolest thing that they had asked me to be a part of the staff.
The problem with Pathway is that it is ran by Bigots. There was no tolerance of gay people, or any other ethnicity other than white middle class. There was the occasional Black person and gay guy but they were made fun of by the staff and I always thought that was wrong. When I confronted the director about these inconsistancies, he said "he had a democratic heart with conservative principles." Whatever the f@$k that means. I made it through training and was transfered to Colorado. I only lasted 6 months on staff. I didn't agree with the way things were. We worked 60 hour weeks for $1000 per month and shared an apartment with 4 other girls. Every week, we would have ot go to the Director's house for what was called "Purpose." This was a meeting where oe person is usually singled out for whatever flaw and berated for hours. It was dumb and it was traumatic. Your so called friends all jumped on the wagon to treat you like crap.That is when I said "enough was enough" and I left. I was in Loveland at this point and I had to live in a halfway house because I had no money to get a place. I found a job at a local pub as a bartender but managed to stay sober for another year.
I was determined to show the program that I could be successful without them in a town where I knew no one. In reality, I was proving it to myself. I enrolled at the local communnity college and at oe point I lived, worked, and went to school on the same street.
The Depot Eatery and Pub proved to play a significant role in my life and the people I met there are some of the best people I have evver kown. My maid of honor was the manager and she is onne of my best friends to this day. One day she asked me "Why don't you drink." I told her that I had problems with addiction but at that poinnt, I thought I had outgrown the problem and I was ready to try again. The first time I drank, I felt like I had thrown 3 years away and I cried and cried for hours. At 23 years old, all I wanted was to fit in and be normal. At that point in my life, everyone partied. It soon became very clear that I am unable to drink like other people. I drink to get drunk. I see no point to doing it any other way. I managed to keep my life together for the most part and in June of 2002, I put my cap and gown on and walked across the stage to receive my Associates in Liberal Arts. It was a very proud moment. I never got to walk in high school and I finally felt like maybe I could accomplish something in my life. I enrolled in the University of Northern Colorado for the next fall. Although I was drinking, life was still good. In May of that year, I met a girl I worked with that lived in the mountains. I thought she was really cool. One weekend my best buddy and I took a trip up to her place in the mountains, got lost, popped a tire, and finally found what is now partly my property. When I got out of the car to say hi to my friend, I noticed a tall, handsome man walking down the road towards us. I thought he was interesting but very quiet. I remember my friend asking me what I thought of him and I said" he is interesting."
The next week, the same guy was standing outside of the kitchen of my work. He told me he was waiting for me. He asked me if I wanted to go to a Norah Jones concert with him. "Who is Norah Jones?" I asked. He then burned me a CD of hers and brought it back to my work the next day to make sure I liked her music. From that moment on, I knew, I had met the man I would grow old with.
Within a week, Mike had moved in with me. He was living in a cabin and hour away from me and since we didn't want to be apart he just stayed with me. I went on a trip to see my Mother in Santa Fe with a friend of mine and I remember wanting to get him a very special present. I found a coffee mug that was gorgeous, carefully wrapped it up and put it in my bag and couldn't wait to get home to give it to the man who stole my heart. When I got home, Mike was walking up to the apartment holding a coffee maker and in my hand was i=his new coffee mug. It couldn't have been more cheesy or more perfect.
Tuesday, February 1, 2011
Victims
I hate the word victim. I hate people who play the victim. It was no way my itent to write this blog and imply that I have been or ever will be a victim. The only common denominator in every single one of my issues is me. That is how it has always been. In no way do I blame either my birthparents or my adoptive parents for anything that has gone wrong in my life. The real reason I am writing this is because I wanted to share my story in hopes that somewhere someone might read it and say, "Wow, I am not alone anymore."
All of my parents are wonderful people. They all have their flaws but who doesn't? I love them all dearly and in no way shape or form do I hold resentment towards any of them. In my sick humor way, all that has happened, besides all that I have done to my parents, I see as pretty damn funny.
So, I am not sure where I left off but I don't really feel like writing about my past as muich as I want to write about what happens to grown up Shelley so I will catch us up quickly.
After treatment #1 I went to jail. After treatment #2 I moved in with a roommate from the treatment center. It was probably one of the worst decisions of my life. I went to jail in Oklahoma City for trying to rob a store with a pocket knife. High on whatever I could get my hands on, (I remember the drug dealer taking a check for valiuma nd meth) had led me to make the second worst decision of my life. It was December 15 and I would spend the next year within the confines of the Oklahoma Department of Corrections. I was eventually sentenced to boot camp. I excelled there and realized if I could get through that, I could get through anything. Jail and prison are one of the most interesting landscapes to watch people and is probably what rove me to get my degree in Sociology. I never kept touch much with the people I met briefly accept for mhy old using pal's Mother. She saved my life and I loved her very much. I was a surrogate child of hers for more than a decade.
Jail sucks. That is pretty much it accept the race thing that just confused me. It seems like you have to be racist in jail. Im not racist. Actually, that is not true. I m prejudice agaist ignorance and it comes in all skintones. There was one white trash woman in prison that smuggled in ober an 8 ball of meth. She didn't leave her cell without a collard gren mask she felt was necessary for her to wear for some reason. I had to spend time in the medical/psychiactric pod for a few months. That was a much needed place for a nervous breakdown and I did it up. Never has my mind been stuck with itself for so long that I could feel it coming to the break of reality. Some of the letters I wrote must have been interesting. I was the youngest by far and there were a lot of scary women in there. They all had nickames like Chocolate, Sissy, Nay-nay, and other creative nomenclatures for eachother. Mine was ROshell. "Come here ROshell." People don't care about you and I can see how Women doing a lot of time have to form surrogate families to survive unlike our male counterparts that seem to handle things differently in prison.
I was done with boot camp and after I got out I remember all I wanted to do was rub my feet in the grass, smell fresh air and eat a steak. I was then supposed to go to a state treatment facility where I proceeded to relapse after 1 year of sobriety. Becasue no one can prove to me that everything in life doesn't happen for a reason, I didn't die and I ended up wanting sobriety at last and on March 3rd 1998 after trying to take myself out with a "hot shot" of meth, I had the cliche "spiritual awakening." Mine involved the release of Madonna's new CD "Ray of Light." The song Frozen spoke to me through the TV and I realized I needed to at least try and give life a shot. Probation could have put me back in prison but I lucked out and ended up living on my brothers couch in a treatment program located in Tempi, AZ. My old roommate from OKC went to this programs sister program and her Mother suggested I go to the same one because it had really helped her daughter. That leaves me at age 19 and the strt of my time spent on what some people refer to as a cult but...it was some of teh best times in my life up to that point.
All of my parents are wonderful people. They all have their flaws but who doesn't? I love them all dearly and in no way shape or form do I hold resentment towards any of them. In my sick humor way, all that has happened, besides all that I have done to my parents, I see as pretty damn funny.
So, I am not sure where I left off but I don't really feel like writing about my past as muich as I want to write about what happens to grown up Shelley so I will catch us up quickly.
After treatment #1 I went to jail. After treatment #2 I moved in with a roommate from the treatment center. It was probably one of the worst decisions of my life. I went to jail in Oklahoma City for trying to rob a store with a pocket knife. High on whatever I could get my hands on, (I remember the drug dealer taking a check for valiuma nd meth) had led me to make the second worst decision of my life. It was December 15 and I would spend the next year within the confines of the Oklahoma Department of Corrections. I was eventually sentenced to boot camp. I excelled there and realized if I could get through that, I could get through anything. Jail and prison are one of the most interesting landscapes to watch people and is probably what rove me to get my degree in Sociology. I never kept touch much with the people I met briefly accept for mhy old using pal's Mother. She saved my life and I loved her very much. I was a surrogate child of hers for more than a decade.
Jail sucks. That is pretty much it accept the race thing that just confused me. It seems like you have to be racist in jail. Im not racist. Actually, that is not true. I m prejudice agaist ignorance and it comes in all skintones. There was one white trash woman in prison that smuggled in ober an 8 ball of meth. She didn't leave her cell without a collard gren mask she felt was necessary for her to wear for some reason. I had to spend time in the medical/psychiactric pod for a few months. That was a much needed place for a nervous breakdown and I did it up. Never has my mind been stuck with itself for so long that I could feel it coming to the break of reality. Some of the letters I wrote must have been interesting. I was the youngest by far and there were a lot of scary women in there. They all had nickames like Chocolate, Sissy, Nay-nay, and other creative nomenclatures for eachother. Mine was ROshell. "Come here ROshell." People don't care about you and I can see how Women doing a lot of time have to form surrogate families to survive unlike our male counterparts that seem to handle things differently in prison.
I was done with boot camp and after I got out I remember all I wanted to do was rub my feet in the grass, smell fresh air and eat a steak. I was then supposed to go to a state treatment facility where I proceeded to relapse after 1 year of sobriety. Becasue no one can prove to me that everything in life doesn't happen for a reason, I didn't die and I ended up wanting sobriety at last and on March 3rd 1998 after trying to take myself out with a "hot shot" of meth, I had the cliche "spiritual awakening." Mine involved the release of Madonna's new CD "Ray of Light." The song Frozen spoke to me through the TV and I realized I needed to at least try and give life a shot. Probation could have put me back in prison but I lucked out and ended up living on my brothers couch in a treatment program located in Tempi, AZ. My old roommate from OKC went to this programs sister program and her Mother suggested I go to the same one because it had really helped her daughter. That leaves me at age 19 and the strt of my time spent on what some people refer to as a cult but...it was some of teh best times in my life up to that point.
Friday, January 7, 2011
They tried to make me go to rehab and I said No,No,No
At this pount, I was working as a hostess at an upscale restaurant. All of the waiters were males who wore tuxedos and cocaine flowed liberally throughout each shift. At the Christmans party, the owner allowed us to drink and of course, I went overboard. It was Christmans Eve and I was supposed to help my Mother cook for 15 people. I went home, she knew I was drunk, and once again, I broke her heart. One night my friends and I went with one of the waiters to a soccer shop he owned to get loaded. He was very good looking and he liked me. I felt very special that this handsome 24 year old was willing to hang out with a 16 year old. We drank tequilla and did cocaine way past my curfew. I went home missing my pants and my Mother confronted me. What was the troubled, worried heart of a Mother that cared was mistaked for meddlinig, being a nuisance and basically wanting to ruin my life. She cried, again. The next morning her business partner and she came into my room and informed me I would be going to rehab in Minnesota. Of course I said no and left. I ran down the canal to the Rio Grande. She had called the Sheriffs Dept. and I could see that they were on the banks of the River looking for me. the never found me but my brother did. He was so disappointed in me and it really broke my heart. There was a part of me that wanted to be good, I just figured I was hopeless. I managed to run away again and stayed free for 3 weeks before being tricked into going. The ambulance was on the way to my house when a trusted friend showed up to rescue me. I was able to get to her car where she slipped me a hit of LSD before I was hauled away to the psych ward in a local county hospital while I waited for my plane. I had an escape plan at the airport but I couldn't make it because I was surrounded by my brother and Father. We boarded the plane, had a layover in Dallas (where I saw Willie Nelson) and on we went to Minneapolis. Rehab was clearly not for me. All I did was get into trouble every chance I could get. People always aske me what my drug of choice was and I would say "coke and Rophynol", No one could understand why I absolutely loved the date rape drug. At that point, I didn't know the answer. I figure it out someitme later. I loved it because it killed my conscience. I was what I always dreamt of being, a emotionless, completely sociopathic zombie. Now, I am not a sociopath and I am glad for that now. But back then, my life was in shambles. I had failed school, my relationships were gone, everything good I once had was destroyed amd I never thought it would come back. I was not ready to change and I managed to get high while I was there. My Dad got me out of there because he was convinced I was going through a phase. I moved in with him, he gave me a car and I was back in El Paso for summer school 1995. All of my friends were in summer school with me. It was fun at first. We were stopped at the border a couple of times and searched. They always broke our pipes. Back then, the punsihment wasn't as harsh as it is now. Most of the time they never took our pharmaceuticals. I started selling pot and coke. I carried it around with me in a Crown Royal bag. I fels like a badass. Little did people know that I was crying myself to sleep at night when I did sleep, I hated looking at myself in the mirror and I wanted to die. I almost got my wish several times throughout this time. Once school started again, I saw no point in going. In September of 1995 I decided to ditch school and try and find some money. I broke into some houses and got caught. One of the houses happened to be the Chief of Police's house. I stole his loaded guns and got pulled over with them in my car. I was lucky that I didn't try and use them because I would be dead as I write this now, but I was that stupid. My first ecperience in adult jail was when I was 17 years old. El Paso county jail was a very disgusting place. I was in there with a very diseased prostitute that scared the crap out of me. I was in there for 2 weeks and then released on my own recognisace pending my sentencing. Funny enough, the judge who signed as my birthfather was the judge who sentenced me to 10 years deferred probation. I thought I had hit bottom, I thought I was done but as the addage says "Why do you keep hitting your head with a hammer? Because it feels so great when I finally stop." Living with my Dad was easy. He had no idea what I was doing and if he did, he knew he couldn't stop it. There are not enough days left for me to provide the proper amends to my Parents for what I have put them through but I would like to think I try. I was arrested a second time at Taco Cabana. A friend and I were stealing beer and she got caught. I threw a burrito at the woman holding her in an attempt to create a diversion to no avail. Instead, I went to jail again, along with my best friend and when we got out, I did not see, or hear from her in 4 years.
My aunt, who recently passed away, was one of the most wonderful people I will ever know. She loved me like her own daughter. She let me call her everyday while I was in jail. She never gave up on me, she was always there and she was the one person I knew I could talk to about anything. She was able to live long enough to see me as I am now and for that, I am able to have a little more peace.
My probation was now violated. I was on a list to go to a court appointed treatement center so I ran. My mother gave me a box of my belongings and drove me to the Mexican border. It was the saddest moment I had up to that moment. The look in her eye was as if I had already died and she was staring at my body. I cringe thinking about it. I went to live with some friends and I had a job as a telemarketer in El Paso. I soon was no longer welcomed due to my behavior so I was homeless once again. I always conned my way into finding a place to stay and at one point a group of us had an apartment. It was empty, but it was a roof over our heads. One night, I had done too much cocaine and other crap and I had a small realization. I was going to die ad the tiniest part of me didn't want to. I called my Mom crying and she said she would look for a place to go. By some miracle, I was able to go to a place called La Hacienda in Hunt, Texas. I was kindof motivated to get sober at this point but all I really wanted to do was figure out a way to be abole to drink and smoke pot without doing everything else. The first person I met would prove to be a pretty strong influence on me for the next decade.
My aunt, who recently passed away, was one of the most wonderful people I will ever know. She loved me like her own daughter. She let me call her everyday while I was in jail. She never gave up on me, she was always there and she was the one person I knew I could talk to about anything. She was able to live long enough to see me as I am now and for that, I am able to have a little more peace.
My probation was now violated. I was on a list to go to a court appointed treatement center so I ran. My mother gave me a box of my belongings and drove me to the Mexican border. It was the saddest moment I had up to that moment. The look in her eye was as if I had already died and she was staring at my body. I cringe thinking about it. I went to live with some friends and I had a job as a telemarketer in El Paso. I soon was no longer welcomed due to my behavior so I was homeless once again. I always conned my way into finding a place to stay and at one point a group of us had an apartment. It was empty, but it was a roof over our heads. One night, I had done too much cocaine and other crap and I had a small realization. I was going to die ad the tiniest part of me didn't want to. I called my Mom crying and she said she would look for a place to go. By some miracle, I was able to go to a place called La Hacienda in Hunt, Texas. I was kindof motivated to get sober at this point but all I really wanted to do was figure out a way to be abole to drink and smoke pot without doing everything else. The first person I met would prove to be a pretty strong influence on me for the next decade.
Wednesday, January 5, 2011
My angels flew faster than I could score coke in Juarez.
People asked me to write more so here goes post 2 for today.
9th grade exposed me to sex, drugs and rock and roll. I had gained a friend that had a car. She was older than the rest of us and taught us all about sex. Of course we all thought we had to try it. My first time was with a guy who is now a very flamboyant gay man. We had our suspicions about him back then as I am sure he knew but sleeping with me must have driven him over the edge. This means one of two things...I am either really really good, or really really bad at it. My friends were known as sluts. At this point I was only a slut in training. I remember stealing a sign for my friend to hang on her door that said "Go home and practice." She needed it for all of the popular boys who would go to her house to get laid, suck at it, and then go to school the next day only to treat her like crap, deny anything ever happened and call her names. Since Karma is awesome, most of those assholes ended up knocking a girl up, drinking too much, staying in El Paso and doing nothing with their lives. It is truly sad when high school is the high point of peoples lives.
It wasn't until the summer of 9th grade that something change in my social situation. A long time "friend," who is now an overweight alcoholic with a cocaine problem (karma), accused me of stealing $100 from her brothers room during a back to school party. I didn't do it but my best friend believed that I did and stopped being my friend right before school started.
I was now entering Coronado High School alone. I still had my slutty mentor and a new badass Colombian girl with a passion for getting high and reaking havoc. That summer, before my 15th birthday, my old BFF had tried acid. I was so angry with her. I lectured her on the evils of drug use and explained how it destroyed me that she did it the day before my birthday. Soon enough, I wanted to try it. During my 1st period class a really fat young man had made a deal with me. If I were to take 2 hits of acid right at that moment I could have it for free. Me being the moron that I was, decided that would be a good idea. 2nd period was orchestra. All I remember is that there was a test. The notes on the sheet of music started falling to the ground. My teacher is one of the strictest people on the planet and she knew something was up and she sent me to the nurse once I bursted into tears. The nurses office was in completely green room. It was a very odd place to find myself the first time I did acid. I managed to make it through school by convincing the nurse I had taken diet pills, I am not sure how. I did this not only because I was curious but I really wanted to be cool. I just went about it in a really bad way.
Pot was easy to get in high school and another friend dared me to eat as much as I could out of a huge bag she had. We had a school assembly that day and I had a profound thought. "If an alien came down and sall this event, I wonder what they would think of us clapping." After school, I went to my friends house where she proceeded to find me in the fetal positon rocking back and forth licking a Butterfinger wrapper.
My girls and I shared a locker and hung our bras up in it. Yes, we were that cool. Mine was green, the Colombian had the black one and the slut had the red one. Homecoming was coming up and a nice young man asked me to go with him. We wore mums on our arms and his was the last mum I would ever get. One weekend I was grounded, I got a call from a friend who had told me, David had died by jumping off a bridge into the Rio Grande and breaking his neck. We weren't going out persay, but we were close and it was very sad when he died. I just remember not wanting to feel anything then more than ever. Instead of going to his funeral, I ditched school and went to the park to get high. I thought thats what he would have wanted. Delusional. I had made friends with a very nice girl who hung out with me and kindof took me under her wing until I slept with her boyfriend. Which I still hate myself for. I am very lucky that she is still in my life and has forgiven me my past.We did acid together a lot, the first time I took mushrooms was with her, all in all we had a blast..for awhile. A friend of mine had asked me If I wanted to "trip." I didnt know what was on the menu that night but it was something called Jimson Weed. Most people only do this drug once. Not me, I did it several times. It was a terrible drug. My Mother had to watch me hallucinate for days and wondered if I was going to ever come back. This particular drug killed a few people we knew. They suffocated from eating dirt thinking it was water. One night, I was going to walk home when I had drank a lot of the Jimson Juice and for some reason, my good friend noticed I was leaving and threw me in a car. If it wasn't for her that night, I don't think I would have made it home. Angels. I have many, Thank God.
I was still in orchestra and that year we were gearing up to compete in England. The thing about drugs that I love the most is that they were able to stop my never ending thought. To call my thoughts racing is not enough. Constantly I have been bombarded by thoughts, mostly negative, and as a selfish teenager that does not have a lot of knowledge, it can be a very scary, lonely place.
The most unfortunate part of my early journey is my failure to maintain any morals and my ability to think only of myself and not care who I hurt in the process. It was as if I hurt badly inside and I was going to hurt as many people that cared about me so they would know how it feels. Since I have been passed this way of thinking for awhile, I cringe to think about all of the negative things I have done and I will spend the rest of my life trying to tip the scale of karma back in my favor.
In my sophomore year of high school, I was also introduced to something called speed, A friend of mine told me it was better for you than coke and that it is o.k. to do it. We went to a gross studio apartment and these two greasy, acne riddled mid 20's men pulled out some tin foil and introduced me to the drug that will steal your soul and leave you wondering if you ever had one to begin with. Crystal Meth, or Crank, as I knew it, made me feel 10 feet tall and bullet proof. I would sneak out at night to do it, I introduced several of my friends to it, and one of them ended up marrying the greasy older guy that introduced it to me. I will forever hate myself for that. BTW, I really don't hate myself, its just my way of saying I know how terrible I was, I can't even believe I was this person and I am very glad I killed that part of me.
By the time summer had come along, my life was in shambles. It doesn't take long with that crap. I no longer felt the need to attend classes, I was failing all of them anyway. My mom felt it was really important to join the orchestra in England. I had plans for England. I was going to party like a rock star. We went to a family reunion and I overheard my Mother explaining to her family how difficult I had become and him responding "Well, what do you expect from those adopted ones." Needless to say that really hurt my feeligs which I showed by getting extremely angry.
Finally the time for England had arrived. I smuggled marijuana there in my cello and my cigarette pack. My thoughts were that customs was unlikely to check us since we were all dorks. Successful in my endeavor we arrived in England. A friend and I managed to get seperated from the group and lost in London. It took $80 to get us back to where we were supposed to be. I got away from the group as often as possible and got high, met up with locals and smoked hash, tried ecstasy, made out with a young man from the Harvard choir at a wine tasting festival and spent way too much on a 6 pack of budweiser; which I did not realize was considered an import. I loved England, it was the first place I could real feel the History. One night, a few friends decided to get drunk with me, I was the one that went to get the whiskey. Teachers Whiskey to be precise. I don't know why I ended up in the hotel room of the Orchestra directors son but there I was. We drank almost the whole bottle to ourselves. When I got back to the hotel, the instructor was waiting for me. She said "stay away from my son," She just kept repeating that. At this point, I was probably suffering from alcohol poisoning and I tried to slosh myself up the stairs. On the way down the stairs at the same time was the assistant principal. A middle aged bitter woman that seemed to take pleasure in the suffering of troubled teens. (Or so I thought then) She knew I was drunk. I was then taken back to my room, where I started to vomit profusely all over myself and crying "I don't even know who gave birth to me." For some reason,, that fact was bothering me more than usual that night. The next day I had to got to Anne Hathaways house. Note to readers: Do not go there with a hangover, people were really short there and you will repeatedly hit your head. I had to spend the rest of the trip with the assistant principal. When I got home, my mother was devestated...again.
I was getting ready to enter my 2nd sophomore year and my final year in primary education. I had met a boy in England named Tony. He was a really nice guy. We walked on the beach together, he treated me really well and I treated him like crap in return. It didn't last. I often wonder how he is.
At this point I was partying all the time. Getting high was no longer the event. It was the thing I did before, during and after the event. I worked at a steakhouse as a hostess and I had money to go to Juarez on the weekend. By this time, I had found a love for cocaine and rophynol (date-rate drug) I would always score from the same guy on Friday nights. One night, a different guy was there. I followed him through the streets of Juarez until we got to a shack covered in white powder. I didn't realize I was in trouble until he threw me on the bed. I remember his hands around my throat and me pleading with him to let me go. He was ripping my shirt and prying my legs open on a dirty bed. I fought. I scratched, I did anything in my power to get the hell out of there. I couldn't understand what was happening to me. He was trying to kiss me as I struggled to get away from him when suddenly, for whatever reason, I broke away from him and hauled ass outside. I had no idea where I was so I started running as fast as I could. I am not sure how, but I found my way back to the club where my friends were and pretended like nothing had happen. It is a good thing my angels fly faster than I did when I wanted to score coke.
My memories of Mexico are reasonably blurry. I remember jumping out of the window of a moving vehicle, yelling about drug prices with a man who had a gun, getting arrested and having the cops steal our cocaine, and several other dangerous episodes from which I have no idea how I survived. That brings me up to the Spring of 1999. Things are about to get interesting.
9th grade exposed me to sex, drugs and rock and roll. I had gained a friend that had a car. She was older than the rest of us and taught us all about sex. Of course we all thought we had to try it. My first time was with a guy who is now a very flamboyant gay man. We had our suspicions about him back then as I am sure he knew but sleeping with me must have driven him over the edge. This means one of two things...I am either really really good, or really really bad at it. My friends were known as sluts. At this point I was only a slut in training. I remember stealing a sign for my friend to hang on her door that said "Go home and practice." She needed it for all of the popular boys who would go to her house to get laid, suck at it, and then go to school the next day only to treat her like crap, deny anything ever happened and call her names. Since Karma is awesome, most of those assholes ended up knocking a girl up, drinking too much, staying in El Paso and doing nothing with their lives. It is truly sad when high school is the high point of peoples lives.
It wasn't until the summer of 9th grade that something change in my social situation. A long time "friend," who is now an overweight alcoholic with a cocaine problem (karma), accused me of stealing $100 from her brothers room during a back to school party. I didn't do it but my best friend believed that I did and stopped being my friend right before school started.
I was now entering Coronado High School alone. I still had my slutty mentor and a new badass Colombian girl with a passion for getting high and reaking havoc. That summer, before my 15th birthday, my old BFF had tried acid. I was so angry with her. I lectured her on the evils of drug use and explained how it destroyed me that she did it the day before my birthday. Soon enough, I wanted to try it. During my 1st period class a really fat young man had made a deal with me. If I were to take 2 hits of acid right at that moment I could have it for free. Me being the moron that I was, decided that would be a good idea. 2nd period was orchestra. All I remember is that there was a test. The notes on the sheet of music started falling to the ground. My teacher is one of the strictest people on the planet and she knew something was up and she sent me to the nurse once I bursted into tears. The nurses office was in completely green room. It was a very odd place to find myself the first time I did acid. I managed to make it through school by convincing the nurse I had taken diet pills, I am not sure how. I did this not only because I was curious but I really wanted to be cool. I just went about it in a really bad way.
Pot was easy to get in high school and another friend dared me to eat as much as I could out of a huge bag she had. We had a school assembly that day and I had a profound thought. "If an alien came down and sall this event, I wonder what they would think of us clapping." After school, I went to my friends house where she proceeded to find me in the fetal positon rocking back and forth licking a Butterfinger wrapper.
My girls and I shared a locker and hung our bras up in it. Yes, we were that cool. Mine was green, the Colombian had the black one and the slut had the red one. Homecoming was coming up and a nice young man asked me to go with him. We wore mums on our arms and his was the last mum I would ever get. One weekend I was grounded, I got a call from a friend who had told me, David had died by jumping off a bridge into the Rio Grande and breaking his neck. We weren't going out persay, but we were close and it was very sad when he died. I just remember not wanting to feel anything then more than ever. Instead of going to his funeral, I ditched school and went to the park to get high. I thought thats what he would have wanted. Delusional. I had made friends with a very nice girl who hung out with me and kindof took me under her wing until I slept with her boyfriend. Which I still hate myself for. I am very lucky that she is still in my life and has forgiven me my past.We did acid together a lot, the first time I took mushrooms was with her, all in all we had a blast..for awhile. A friend of mine had asked me If I wanted to "trip." I didnt know what was on the menu that night but it was something called Jimson Weed. Most people only do this drug once. Not me, I did it several times. It was a terrible drug. My Mother had to watch me hallucinate for days and wondered if I was going to ever come back. This particular drug killed a few people we knew. They suffocated from eating dirt thinking it was water. One night, I was going to walk home when I had drank a lot of the Jimson Juice and for some reason, my good friend noticed I was leaving and threw me in a car. If it wasn't for her that night, I don't think I would have made it home. Angels. I have many, Thank God.
I was still in orchestra and that year we were gearing up to compete in England. The thing about drugs that I love the most is that they were able to stop my never ending thought. To call my thoughts racing is not enough. Constantly I have been bombarded by thoughts, mostly negative, and as a selfish teenager that does not have a lot of knowledge, it can be a very scary, lonely place.
The most unfortunate part of my early journey is my failure to maintain any morals and my ability to think only of myself and not care who I hurt in the process. It was as if I hurt badly inside and I was going to hurt as many people that cared about me so they would know how it feels. Since I have been passed this way of thinking for awhile, I cringe to think about all of the negative things I have done and I will spend the rest of my life trying to tip the scale of karma back in my favor.
In my sophomore year of high school, I was also introduced to something called speed, A friend of mine told me it was better for you than coke and that it is o.k. to do it. We went to a gross studio apartment and these two greasy, acne riddled mid 20's men pulled out some tin foil and introduced me to the drug that will steal your soul and leave you wondering if you ever had one to begin with. Crystal Meth, or Crank, as I knew it, made me feel 10 feet tall and bullet proof. I would sneak out at night to do it, I introduced several of my friends to it, and one of them ended up marrying the greasy older guy that introduced it to me. I will forever hate myself for that. BTW, I really don't hate myself, its just my way of saying I know how terrible I was, I can't even believe I was this person and I am very glad I killed that part of me.
By the time summer had come along, my life was in shambles. It doesn't take long with that crap. I no longer felt the need to attend classes, I was failing all of them anyway. My mom felt it was really important to join the orchestra in England. I had plans for England. I was going to party like a rock star. We went to a family reunion and I overheard my Mother explaining to her family how difficult I had become and him responding "Well, what do you expect from those adopted ones." Needless to say that really hurt my feeligs which I showed by getting extremely angry.
Finally the time for England had arrived. I smuggled marijuana there in my cello and my cigarette pack. My thoughts were that customs was unlikely to check us since we were all dorks. Successful in my endeavor we arrived in England. A friend and I managed to get seperated from the group and lost in London. It took $80 to get us back to where we were supposed to be. I got away from the group as often as possible and got high, met up with locals and smoked hash, tried ecstasy, made out with a young man from the Harvard choir at a wine tasting festival and spent way too much on a 6 pack of budweiser; which I did not realize was considered an import. I loved England, it was the first place I could real feel the History. One night, a few friends decided to get drunk with me, I was the one that went to get the whiskey. Teachers Whiskey to be precise. I don't know why I ended up in the hotel room of the Orchestra directors son but there I was. We drank almost the whole bottle to ourselves. When I got back to the hotel, the instructor was waiting for me. She said "stay away from my son," She just kept repeating that. At this point, I was probably suffering from alcohol poisoning and I tried to slosh myself up the stairs. On the way down the stairs at the same time was the assistant principal. A middle aged bitter woman that seemed to take pleasure in the suffering of troubled teens. (Or so I thought then) She knew I was drunk. I was then taken back to my room, where I started to vomit profusely all over myself and crying "I don't even know who gave birth to me." For some reason,, that fact was bothering me more than usual that night. The next day I had to got to Anne Hathaways house. Note to readers: Do not go there with a hangover, people were really short there and you will repeatedly hit your head. I had to spend the rest of the trip with the assistant principal. When I got home, my mother was devestated...again.
I was getting ready to enter my 2nd sophomore year and my final year in primary education. I had met a boy in England named Tony. He was a really nice guy. We walked on the beach together, he treated me really well and I treated him like crap in return. It didn't last. I often wonder how he is.
At this point I was partying all the time. Getting high was no longer the event. It was the thing I did before, during and after the event. I worked at a steakhouse as a hostess and I had money to go to Juarez on the weekend. By this time, I had found a love for cocaine and rophynol (date-rate drug) I would always score from the same guy on Friday nights. One night, a different guy was there. I followed him through the streets of Juarez until we got to a shack covered in white powder. I didn't realize I was in trouble until he threw me on the bed. I remember his hands around my throat and me pleading with him to let me go. He was ripping my shirt and prying my legs open on a dirty bed. I fought. I scratched, I did anything in my power to get the hell out of there. I couldn't understand what was happening to me. He was trying to kiss me as I struggled to get away from him when suddenly, for whatever reason, I broke away from him and hauled ass outside. I had no idea where I was so I started running as fast as I could. I am not sure how, but I found my way back to the club where my friends were and pretended like nothing had happen. It is a good thing my angels fly faster than I did when I wanted to score coke.
My memories of Mexico are reasonably blurry. I remember jumping out of the window of a moving vehicle, yelling about drug prices with a man who had a gun, getting arrested and having the cops steal our cocaine, and several other dangerous episodes from which I have no idea how I survived. That brings me up to the Spring of 1999. Things are about to get interesting.
Growing up down in the west Texas town of El Paso...
Cotton fields still surround my childhood home. I grew up around all boys. In order to fit in and keep up, I had to act like them. I wanted so badly to be able to do things as well as they all did. A true tomboy, my body is marked from horse-back riding debacles, being ran over by the death trap we called a three-wheeler and various other bad ideas my brothers and I came up with. I did anything they told me to do. We spent the days acting out Red Dawn. We truly thought WWIII was coming soon, a theme that has stuck with me for nearly 3 decades. I loved shooting guns, gutting fish and going camping. All skills that will serve me well if the World does go into a downward spiral.
All in all, childhood was relatively normal. My parents faught a lot, my Dad liked to drink. He would have me get his beers and I remember chugging them before giving them to him at a very young age. When he drank, he sometimes wouldn't come home until late, he and my Mom would fight and my brothers and I would wait at the window for him to come home.
I spent most of my childhood with our housekeeper. Maria was a wonderful woman who taught me how to speak fluent Spanish, cook great Mexican food and was my main caregiver when my Mother was at work. Mom was busy with herr own business and was at work a lot. She deliverd wholesale bedding plants to local nurseries and was very successful until about 2000. She delivered the plants in a renovated white handicapped "short bus." This was also our mode of transportation to and from elementary and junior high school. Another reason why I took the dark road ahead. Never make your kids ride the short bus if they don't have to. I was allgergic to milk as a baby and my Mother tried everything which, lucky me, rotted my baby teeth out requiring me to have silver caps on my front teeth. Kids can be cruel, I was different, this did not help my cause.
I found out I was adopted very young. My brothers never let me forget it. My parents didn't treat me differently but I always had in the back of my head that I was not a blood relative and that I did not belong there.
By the time junior high school hit, the stress level at home had escalated significantly. We all went to counseling. We tried everything to make it work. At this point in time, the focus of bad behavior was my oldest brother. I didn't know what that meant. I remember that Christmas like a few others was started off with a nasty fight between the rents and us being locked in our rooms until it was over.
One night in 7th grade the fight lasted a lot loger tha usual. My brother Darren told me "Mom and Dad are getting a divorce." I couldn't comprehend what that meant. I didn't think parents could do that. I was given a choice. Stay with your dad or go with Mom and she will get you a dog. I chose the latter option. Ginger Snaps was a poodle mix that was dumped by the canal near my new house which was coincedentally located next door to my Fathers house. It made moving simple.
My mom and I moved into an old farm house that she redecorated and renovated to be a very cute little two bedroom house. It was perfect for us. It was around this time that I started acting out in school. It was the beginning of some very dark and deadly days.
I was a member of a Methodist Church. It was at a Church retreat that a game of truth or dare led me to an awful situation. I will not go into details but what happened changed me for the rest of my life. The game was played with me an 11 year old and 2 17 year olds. From that point on, whatever self esteem I did have went out the window right along with my innocence. I saw myself as less than, uglier than and dumber than everyone else in the World. This incident has also played a role in my resistance agains organized religion. I mean, what kind of God was with me that night? Now I know better but at the time, I was pissed.
The first time I got drunk was when I was 13. My brother gave me Southern comfort and Mountain Dew. After tripping over the dog and putting my hand through a picture frame, my Mom was on to me and my brother was in deep crap. I liked being drunk. I always was a dare devil and did whatever someone asked me to. I was extremely curious about dangerous things and this lust for a rush has brought me closer to death than I ever realized. I loved being goofy and feeling good. Soon after that, was my first trip to Juarez, Mexico, my first joint and a series of very poor choices.
My best friend and I only had eachother as friends in juior high school. Those were the most terrible times I can remember only next to prison. I was akward, my head was way too big for my body and I played the cello. We were picked on, abused and laughed at. It was pretty sad times for us. I was in track and ran long distance, it was during the two mile run practice that I smoked my 1st joint. It did nothing to me but I pretended it did. Come to think of it, I don't even think it was marijuana. Soon enough I was able to ge tmy hands on the real thing.
Since my parents lived next door to eachother my BFF and I went to my Moms when she was out of town. We loaded my grandfathers ivory pipe full of seeds and stems and maybe a bit of pot. At first I felt nothing but after awhile, we started laughing. We made the trek through the field back to my Dads where we were able to find some ribs, ice cream, candy and popcorn. It was the best food I had ever eaten in my entire life. From that point on, I had found my passion. I loved getting high and I figured, if pot feels this good, what does the other stuff feel like. I didn't dive into an empty swimming pool. I didn't go kill anyone. Everyone lied to me. The worst thing that can happen to a pothead is nothing. Which, if you think about it, sucks really bad. Some of the people I hung out with fell victim to this and they are all now 30 somethings, living with their parents and still getting high all day with no education, no motivation and nothing to look forward to. That didn't happen to most of the potheads I know, most of us made it out and some still smoke and manage their lives fine. The ones who stayed stuck had other issues to contend with. Soon, it was 9th grade. This is where things started to get very ineresting. Stay tuned.
Like I said previously, this blog is not supposed to be my life story and I am going to leave a lot of stuff out. I just want to provide a thorough enough background for you all who actually read this to get a sense of where I am coming from.
All in all, childhood was relatively normal. My parents faught a lot, my Dad liked to drink. He would have me get his beers and I remember chugging them before giving them to him at a very young age. When he drank, he sometimes wouldn't come home until late, he and my Mom would fight and my brothers and I would wait at the window for him to come home.
I spent most of my childhood with our housekeeper. Maria was a wonderful woman who taught me how to speak fluent Spanish, cook great Mexican food and was my main caregiver when my Mother was at work. Mom was busy with herr own business and was at work a lot. She deliverd wholesale bedding plants to local nurseries and was very successful until about 2000. She delivered the plants in a renovated white handicapped "short bus." This was also our mode of transportation to and from elementary and junior high school. Another reason why I took the dark road ahead. Never make your kids ride the short bus if they don't have to. I was allgergic to milk as a baby and my Mother tried everything which, lucky me, rotted my baby teeth out requiring me to have silver caps on my front teeth. Kids can be cruel, I was different, this did not help my cause.
I found out I was adopted very young. My brothers never let me forget it. My parents didn't treat me differently but I always had in the back of my head that I was not a blood relative and that I did not belong there.
By the time junior high school hit, the stress level at home had escalated significantly. We all went to counseling. We tried everything to make it work. At this point in time, the focus of bad behavior was my oldest brother. I didn't know what that meant. I remember that Christmas like a few others was started off with a nasty fight between the rents and us being locked in our rooms until it was over.
One night in 7th grade the fight lasted a lot loger tha usual. My brother Darren told me "Mom and Dad are getting a divorce." I couldn't comprehend what that meant. I didn't think parents could do that. I was given a choice. Stay with your dad or go with Mom and she will get you a dog. I chose the latter option. Ginger Snaps was a poodle mix that was dumped by the canal near my new house which was coincedentally located next door to my Fathers house. It made moving simple.
My mom and I moved into an old farm house that she redecorated and renovated to be a very cute little two bedroom house. It was perfect for us. It was around this time that I started acting out in school. It was the beginning of some very dark and deadly days.
I was a member of a Methodist Church. It was at a Church retreat that a game of truth or dare led me to an awful situation. I will not go into details but what happened changed me for the rest of my life. The game was played with me an 11 year old and 2 17 year olds. From that point on, whatever self esteem I did have went out the window right along with my innocence. I saw myself as less than, uglier than and dumber than everyone else in the World. This incident has also played a role in my resistance agains organized religion. I mean, what kind of God was with me that night? Now I know better but at the time, I was pissed.
The first time I got drunk was when I was 13. My brother gave me Southern comfort and Mountain Dew. After tripping over the dog and putting my hand through a picture frame, my Mom was on to me and my brother was in deep crap. I liked being drunk. I always was a dare devil and did whatever someone asked me to. I was extremely curious about dangerous things and this lust for a rush has brought me closer to death than I ever realized. I loved being goofy and feeling good. Soon after that, was my first trip to Juarez, Mexico, my first joint and a series of very poor choices.
My best friend and I only had eachother as friends in juior high school. Those were the most terrible times I can remember only next to prison. I was akward, my head was way too big for my body and I played the cello. We were picked on, abused and laughed at. It was pretty sad times for us. I was in track and ran long distance, it was during the two mile run practice that I smoked my 1st joint. It did nothing to me but I pretended it did. Come to think of it, I don't even think it was marijuana. Soon enough I was able to ge tmy hands on the real thing.
Since my parents lived next door to eachother my BFF and I went to my Moms when she was out of town. We loaded my grandfathers ivory pipe full of seeds and stems and maybe a bit of pot. At first I felt nothing but after awhile, we started laughing. We made the trek through the field back to my Dads where we were able to find some ribs, ice cream, candy and popcorn. It was the best food I had ever eaten in my entire life. From that point on, I had found my passion. I loved getting high and I figured, if pot feels this good, what does the other stuff feel like. I didn't dive into an empty swimming pool. I didn't go kill anyone. Everyone lied to me. The worst thing that can happen to a pothead is nothing. Which, if you think about it, sucks really bad. Some of the people I hung out with fell victim to this and they are all now 30 somethings, living with their parents and still getting high all day with no education, no motivation and nothing to look forward to. That didn't happen to most of the potheads I know, most of us made it out and some still smoke and manage their lives fine. The ones who stayed stuck had other issues to contend with. Soon, it was 9th grade. This is where things started to get very ineresting. Stay tuned.
Like I said previously, this blog is not supposed to be my life story and I am going to leave a lot of stuff out. I just want to provide a thorough enough background for you all who actually read this to get a sense of where I am coming from.
Tuesday, January 4, 2011
And in the beginning, there was a T.V. box.
Mine, like many other life journeys starts out pretty basic. A tale of an ordinary girl living an ordinary life, in an ordinary town under extra-ordinary circumstances. An arguement for nature v nurture. Days filled with laughter, tears joy and drama, hope and a vast amount of pure unadulterated fear. Emptiness, self laothing, unexplinable voids in my soul, remarkable moments of pride, accomplishment, failures and moments of absolute contentment no matter how fleeting they have been and will always be.
I chose to write this blog for many reasons. The main one being that I am adopted and I find that this single event has and probably will always have an affect on how I view life and relationships. A natural born cynic with a twisted sense of humor and a sense of empathy that simultaneously overwhelms and pisses me off.
I was born in 1978 in a typical "clinic" located within the beautiful cityscape of downtown El Paso, Texas. For those of you who can't imagine what that is, try picturing the hospital in Kill Bill, that is what I do. My birthmother was 18 at the time I made my presence known to the World, was struggling with a nasty addiction to heroin, cocaine and alcohol. She did not make my birthfather aware of the pregnancy and up until recently, he never knew he had a daughter. I am not sure if he has demons but after meeting him, I venture to say he like everyone else on this planet is not without his problems. To this day, she is still not sure who he was, rather she provided me with the best educated guess she could muster up. I was delivered by a doctor who was later put in prison for letting a woman bleed to death in a late trimester abortion attempt.
My adoption was handled rather sneakily and not all that legally but it worked out. All my mother Ann wanted was a baby girl. She had two sons already and was too afraid that she would have twin boys instead of a girl and therefore wanted to adopt. The lawyer called her on July 18, 1978 and simply said "I have a little girl here, she looks white and you better come and get her." Off she went with our maid Maria to the dingy downtown clinic to pick me up. I arrived a month early and my Mother was not prepared. She had no car seat so I was taken home in an empty T.V. box to begin my life with my new family.
A few things went wrong during this process in my opinion. My Mother didn't tell my Dad I was coming and he was out of town on business. He came home to find me sleeping in a bassonette on the kitchen floor. My brothers were not prepared for my arrival either and I think it was a lot harder on them than they have ever admitted. The adoption could not be made legal without a Father's signature so a loyal judge did the duty of signing. 17 years later this judge also presided over me when I was facing several counts of burgalry and other ridiculous crimes I committd on the way to finding myself, but I will get to that part.
I am not writing this blog to talk about my life story as much as I am writing it for my own theraputic reasons and to help anyone who has felt the way I do. I have always felt different. I have always felt out of place. I have often thought I was an alien that was placed here to observe and comment on the obvious, unusual, spectacular, astonishing, devestating and often confusing events that happen to me around me within me and through me.
For those of us who are adopted, it is a very weird thing. When the person who is supposed to love, nurture, provide and stand by you throughout your life gives you away it kindof sets you up to have problems with trust and relationships. You go through life wondering why you act the way you act, look the way you look, think the way you think and you will hold on to anything that will make sense to you. For me,the answer was Madonna. I worshipped her when I was growing up and my older brother convinced me through a strict regiment of indoctrintation, that she was my birthmother and had to give me up if she wanted her music career to be successful. For those of you who knew me when I believed this, I apologize and it is one of the most embarassing things I will admit to throughout my blogging journey.
Another issue that goes hand and hand with adoption is that you never know what you are going to get. In my case, the problems were mostly addiciton, insecurity and an over active imagination. My poor Mother had no idea what she had gotten herself into.
I am new to the blogosphere, I have no clue what I am doing and like I said before, I am doing this for me and to those of you who actually read this, Thank You.
I chose to write this blog for many reasons. The main one being that I am adopted and I find that this single event has and probably will always have an affect on how I view life and relationships. A natural born cynic with a twisted sense of humor and a sense of empathy that simultaneously overwhelms and pisses me off.
I was born in 1978 in a typical "clinic" located within the beautiful cityscape of downtown El Paso, Texas. For those of you who can't imagine what that is, try picturing the hospital in Kill Bill, that is what I do. My birthmother was 18 at the time I made my presence known to the World, was struggling with a nasty addiction to heroin, cocaine and alcohol. She did not make my birthfather aware of the pregnancy and up until recently, he never knew he had a daughter. I am not sure if he has demons but after meeting him, I venture to say he like everyone else on this planet is not without his problems. To this day, she is still not sure who he was, rather she provided me with the best educated guess she could muster up. I was delivered by a doctor who was later put in prison for letting a woman bleed to death in a late trimester abortion attempt.
My adoption was handled rather sneakily and not all that legally but it worked out. All my mother Ann wanted was a baby girl. She had two sons already and was too afraid that she would have twin boys instead of a girl and therefore wanted to adopt. The lawyer called her on July 18, 1978 and simply said "I have a little girl here, she looks white and you better come and get her." Off she went with our maid Maria to the dingy downtown clinic to pick me up. I arrived a month early and my Mother was not prepared. She had no car seat so I was taken home in an empty T.V. box to begin my life with my new family.
A few things went wrong during this process in my opinion. My Mother didn't tell my Dad I was coming and he was out of town on business. He came home to find me sleeping in a bassonette on the kitchen floor. My brothers were not prepared for my arrival either and I think it was a lot harder on them than they have ever admitted. The adoption could not be made legal without a Father's signature so a loyal judge did the duty of signing. 17 years later this judge also presided over me when I was facing several counts of burgalry and other ridiculous crimes I committd on the way to finding myself, but I will get to that part.
I am not writing this blog to talk about my life story as much as I am writing it for my own theraputic reasons and to help anyone who has felt the way I do. I have always felt different. I have always felt out of place. I have often thought I was an alien that was placed here to observe and comment on the obvious, unusual, spectacular, astonishing, devestating and often confusing events that happen to me around me within me and through me.
For those of us who are adopted, it is a very weird thing. When the person who is supposed to love, nurture, provide and stand by you throughout your life gives you away it kindof sets you up to have problems with trust and relationships. You go through life wondering why you act the way you act, look the way you look, think the way you think and you will hold on to anything that will make sense to you. For me,the answer was Madonna. I worshipped her when I was growing up and my older brother convinced me through a strict regiment of indoctrintation, that she was my birthmother and had to give me up if she wanted her music career to be successful. For those of you who knew me when I believed this, I apologize and it is one of the most embarassing things I will admit to throughout my blogging journey.
Another issue that goes hand and hand with adoption is that you never know what you are going to get. In my case, the problems were mostly addiciton, insecurity and an over active imagination. My poor Mother had no idea what she had gotten herself into.
I am new to the blogosphere, I have no clue what I am doing and like I said before, I am doing this for me and to those of you who actually read this, Thank You.
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