How I Got Here

This is really hard to talk about because I don't want to be that person.

So, when mom came to live with me, she saw how bad my addiction to oxy's was.  I was shooting them.  My addicted mind thought I was doing fine.  How dare she confront me and tell me I was going to die.  I am doing fine.  Leave me alone.  I didn't ask you to preach to me about addiction.  What is your problem?  It is none of your business?  Look I am working, taking RN classes.  I am fine, your the one who has the problem. 

Mom threatened to tell everyone about my oxy addiction and that I was shooting.  I got scared and I tried to wean myself off of the oxy's.  The withdrawal from oxy's is like withdrawals from heroin-something you want to avoid at all costs, so I turned again to alcohol and on the way to the liquor store the taxi driver offered me crack and I became immediately addicted and crack became my life.  Again, I drank to the point of being unresponsive and mom had to call the paramedics and she had me Baker Acted and I was in the psych facility for a couple of weeks.  She made me promise I would go to treatment and I said I would but all I wanted to do was get back to crack.

Remember Richard Pryor and his crack addiction?  The feeling of crack is like being cradled in the arms of God physically, mentally and emotionally.  For someone, who never felt peace in their life and rarely happiness or joy, it was like I had died and gone to heaven and I wanted more and more and more.

I stopped getting to work on time.  I stopped doing my studies.  Mom searched for the answer to that and found my crack pipe and paraphernalia.  She, of course, freaked out.  No amount of threats, cajoling, shaming, guilt-tripping had any affect on me.  Crack was my new best friend.  I started hanging out with bad people who were dealers.  At the time, I had my daughter every other week and I put her in harm's way.  Mom was having none of it.

Mom had moved out by then.  To make a long story short, she took one of my crack pipes and called the police and I got arrested for drug paraphernalia but that was enough to lose my job and all hope of ever becoming a nurse.  I lost my daughter again.  My whole life fell apart-again.  I take full responsibility for that.  No one's fault but my own.  At the time, though, I blamed my mom for everything.  It was all her fault.  If she hadn't called the police, if she had gotten me into treatment-if, if, if.

So, I went on my last suicide mission.  I did not care about anything anymore.  I could not see any hope for anything good to ever happen in my life again. 

I started doing every drug-heroin, meth and crack.  I stayed in a motel room.

So, in order to support my addictions and my motel room I sold my car on Craigslist but kept the car and the 2,500.  I then sold my car back to the dealer, then went later that night and stole it back.  For those offenses, I got 5 years.

So, I owed this drug dealer a lot of money and he came knocking at my door and when he left I ran to a near-by gas station and went inside the convenience store.  I put on my sunglasses and bought a slurpy and hung out in there for awhile.  Then I saw him and I ended up jumping in the back seat of this black lady's car and yelled at her to drive and drop me off a couple of blocks down because my "boyfriend" was after me.  I was always in the back seat on the passenger side of her car which she attested to.  I told her I was not going to hurt her as she attested to at trial.  I never asked for her keys or money.  I was very agitated and I wanted her to drive.  I had my slurpy and I was in flip-flops.  I had my crack pipe pusher in my back pocket which was hard to sit on so I took it out and hid it in my hand.  The lady asked what I had in my hand and I was embarrassed and said nothing then showed her my crack pipe pusher.  When she realized I had no weapon, she grabbed me by my hair and started hitting me and I finally got away and out the door and she ran after me.  I am sure that jumping in her car scared the hell out of her and I feel very bad about that.  My intent was not to hurt her.  I am not that bad of a person.  I just wanted to get away from the situation with the dealer.

She was yelling for the police and I knew I was in deep trouble.  I went to my motel room, got my box cutters (used for drugs) went into the bathroom and cut both arms from wrist to elbow.  I was done.  It was over.  When the police came, they tried to open the bathroom door but I was on the floor keeping it pushed shut with my feet.  They finally got in and called an ambulance.  They asked me if I had been in her car and I said yes.  From, the hospital I went to jail.

HER STORY

Her story was the same as mine except that she said that I cut her-she had a "cut" on her face and that I said, "drive or I will cut your fucking throat".  I am telling you I never cut her as I had no weapon and I would never say that.  The "cut" was actually a scratch that never bled, never had to see a doctor.  The one thing my public defender did show in court was that the pusher had no sharp edges nor any of her DNA. She agreed that I never moved from the passenger side of the back seat.  Her husband was a sheriff.  She was a nurse.  She was found guilty of child abuse a few years before.  She had relatives who were incarcerated.  She changed her story 3 times from the police report, to the deposition to the trial which my lawyer never brought up.  That is all I am going to say about that.  So, I got attempted carjacking with a deadly weapon, armed burglary and attempted kidnapping.  They dropped the assault charge because there was no evidence.  They said my crack pipe pusher was a deadly weapon.  I got 20 years.  The trial is a whole other story better told by my mom.