I'd like to say I was a perfect parent and that I've never "lost" one of my children, but I'd be lying. As a matter of fact, I think that the majority of parents have a rude awakening at one point or another, where their child has momentarily disappeared in a grocery store or playground, or other public setting, all because they turned their back for a split second. (It does not have anything to do with us "not paying attention" to our kids, like I used to like to say before this happened to me. I know this now.)
My daughter, Andrea, who is now 18 years old, is a special needs child. She is visually handicapped; legally blind. She was born with Aniridia, which literally translates to "lack of iris", meaning she has no iris in either of her eyes; only large pupils that are unable to constrict to diminish the amount of light that enters her eyes. There are multiple other abnormalities to her eyes that make her legally blind, including cataracts, under-developed retinas, and macular degeneration. What you and I can see clearly from about 30 feet away, has to be 3 feet in front of her in order for her to see it clearly.
When she was about 2 years old, in 1998, we went to the park, spread our sandwiches out on the picnic tables, and myself, Andrea and my son, Kaileb, all started to gather to eat. A squirrel decided to jump on our table and try to take off with my sandwich. Like, my entire sub. As I busied myself shooing the squirrel away, I turned my back momentarily to the kids, and when I turned back around Andrea was no where to be seen. I quickly scanned both play areas with no sight of her, then my eyes caught the dense area of trees to my far right and the semi-busy street to my far left. It was then that I began to panic. My 2-year-old daughter, who had just begun to wear glasses for most of the day and couldn't see more than 3 feet in front of her face, was gone and I couldn't see her. I began yelling her name and was very close to tears. A woman asked me quickly if I was okay and who I was looking for, and I'll never forget what I said: "My daughter, she can't see, she's wearing thick glasses and a bright purple outfit, you can't miss her!" The woman tried to calm me down as she pointed. I saw my daughter running in the opposite direction toward the parking lot, her not knowing where she was and not being able to tell which direction the sound of my voice calling her name was coming from. I yelled for a lady with her child down toward that way to grab her, and she kindly did.
That was by far one of the scariest days of my entire life and, thankfully, it has never happened again. It is a very, very humbling experience as a parent.
3. Going to jail. Yes. Me. It can happen to anyone, trust me. See, I was the good girl. I didn't do "the wrong things." I didn't get in trouble. I rarely messed up. When that's what is expected of you as a child, and you had the type of childhood I did, you are set up to eventually fall off a very, very high pedestal. That fall is extremely long and it seems to take forever to hit rock bottom. You eventually hit it -no one can fall forever- but the landing is very painful and comes with many consequences.
I'm a recovering drug addict. I was straight up hardcore addicted to cocaine from 2004-2008. On April 11, 2008, I had my very last "coke party." I'd never done drugs before 2004. (I had pretended to smoke weed twice, and in retrospect, how dumb is that? I guess it was smarter than actually smoking it!) I was 30 years old. My father was -correction, is- a drug addict. I've never met him, but I know of him. He's currently in prison. Again. My mother was a drug addict. I'm very proud of my mother. She has turned her life around, and although I may have had to wait until well into my adulthood to have a mother, the wait was worth it. Growing up, though, I wanted to be nothing like my mother. EVER. I feel like I was predestined to fail and never had a chance. Which is not necessarily true, but I do believe that our body chemistry, hereditary genes, traits, and characteristics, actions of our parents, and environmental factors play a huge role in what forms our futures, especially if we have no learning tools to make it otherwise. I had no tools. I was completely sheltered by my grandmother and totally naive. Naive is an understatement. So, when given the opportunity at the ripe old age of 30, having been a single mom of 4 kids for 4 years at that point and exhausted from life, I took it. I took the drugs. And the drugs took me.
What lead to my arrest? Short version: Husband #2 enters the picture. He should have never, ever, ever been husband #2. Drugs make you stupid. Just say no. He was already an addict, which I didn't know when I met him. Things escalated quickly, and within less than a year he broke me. Not just financially, but I was morally bankrupt. The financial bankruptcy, however, is what ultimately landed me in jail. That, and the being naive thing sincerely came roaring up to bite me in the ass. I wasn't even naive, I was plain stupid. When someone brings you jewelry that isn't theirs, or ANYTHING OF VALUE that isn't theirs, don't pawn it. Seriously, just don't. I don't care that they don't have an ID, I don't care that they say it was from their grandma, I don't care that they tell you that you just don't want to know, and when you finally realize what a complete moron you have been and figure out that the stuff is stolen, I don't care that you are still addicted to drugs, have nothing left to your name, and need a fix or a cheeseburger. Don't effing do it. Your stupidity is going to come back to haunt you for endless years. After you've figured it out and he's assured you that he is going to take the fall for the whole thing, AFTER you've pawned all this stuff using YOUR ID; just don't do it in the first place. IT DOESN'T WORK THAT WAY. You do the crime, you do the time.
January 23, 2006, I'm pulling out of an apartment complex in my aforementioned minivan, before it was totaled in an accident, and cop cars come from everywhere. One hits me from behind, one hits me from in front; they blocked me in. I look all around and there are 3 guns pointed directly at my face. What in the hell have I done? It will forever go down in history as one of the scariest days of my life. It will also go down in history as one of the biggest reality checks of my life and opened my eyes to a world that, before, was completely unknown to me. The world where the only reason you didn't go to prison is because your grandfather sacrificed a lot of what he had to get you a damn good lawyer, while your piece-of-crap husband #2 got a well-deserved good-for-nothing public defender and is still sitting in prison to this day. (There are other things I have learned he did that cause me to be this angry that I do not care to mention. Thank you.) The world where I realized just how powerful addiction is and how heavy the blinders are that fall over your eyes when you are in the middle of it. I never will never say again, "Oh, people could stop drinking or using drugs if they really wanted to. You just stop." I wish.
Yes, I take full responsibility for my ignorance and what I did, and I served my brief time in jail, and when I got out spent 2 years on probation out of a 3-year probation sentence. By the way, working for free at Goodwill is NOT fun. Neither is realizing you still have a drug problem when you get out of jail. It took me 2 more years to get off the cocaine bandwagon completely, but it was never as bad as it had been previously. Honestly, as scary as it was, going to jail saved my life.
4. Getting beat up. That does not adequately cover it AT ALL. More like getting almost what was left of my life beat out of me. After getting arrested, and subsequently being released, where was I to go besides the same apartment I had left, which happened to be occupied by drug addicts; hence, my difficulty in achieving sobriety sooner than I did. In May of 2006, I was exhausted. People were getting crazier, fights were becoming more frequent as the drug flow became more consistent. I wanted to stop, but it was everywhere. I began spending more and more time in my room, away from everyone else. Because of this, people began hating me. I was no longer cool. I thought I was better than everyone else. I wanted attention by being a depressed loner in her black hole every day. Somehow, everything bad or wrong that happened was also my fault. Ultimately, it came down to me, the main resident of the house, whom I shall call A, and her boyfriend, whom I shall call W. A really developed a hatred toward me, especially the nicer and stronger I got. Nothing I did was ever right. W was my sister's former boyfriend and father of my niece, so it was an awkward situation to say the least. The proverbial shit eventually hit the fan, and quite honestly, it's still a blur and I don't understand any of it.
It all came down to a picture I had of my niece. A wanted it, and it was the only one I had, so I wouldn't give it to her. Starting at that moment, I was literally held hostage for 4 days and nights, and beaten every day. I could not leave my room to even go to the bathroom without being physically attacked, having something thrown at me, being pinned against the wall, or thrown onto the floor. This was not just between me and A. I'm a fighter, and I fought back with every ounce of my being, every single time, before I finally had to retreat back into my room and shut the door, because it was the only thing that was going to 100% ensure my survival. I still left my marks, I made my bruises and cuts. However, it is hard to fight back when W is preventing you from doing it by pinning your arms or holding you down, while A does whatever she wants. I had a wooden shoe thrown into my forehead. I had 3 different knives thrown at me, leaving a slash across my nose and one across my cheek. I was kicked while laying on the ground, punched while held against a door. The final blow came when W threw me down onto a large, hard wooden coffee table, slamming the back of my head into it so hard that it fractured my skull. Four days. I was without food and water, because I could never make it all the way to the kitchen. I sat in my room and cried, afraid to even try and make it to the front door. My belongings meant so little to me at that point, I just wanted out, even though what was in that apartment was all I had left to my name.
That final blow, that defining moment; I finally had a witness. Finally, someone who could see the magnitude of what was going on, who helped me load my minivan with as much stuff as it would fit, which mostly later ended up on the concrete because A stole my keys, threw everything in my minivan onto the sidewalk and street, found the picture that started the whole thing to begin with, came inside as I was packing up the last of what I wanted to put in the van, and said, "Ha! I got the picture. Have fun picking all your shit up off the sidewalk." Things my kids had made me were broken, pictures were ripped apart. My heart was just done. The person helping me, whom I shall now refer to as C, helped me load the stuff back into the minivan, lock it up, and because my license had been suspended and there was no longer a tag on it from being impounded, leave the minivan there while he took me to the bus station to get on a bus to Bradenton, as my mom and sister had gotten me a Greyhound ticket to get me the hell out of there.
Catch 22. A and W insisted on riding to the bus station. A flooded me with profanity all the way there, still high on drugs and drunk on beer, shoving me into the ticket counter when we got inside, saying "Don't ever come back here. Everybody hates you." She was immediately asked to leave by security, along with W. The scene that ensued was relentless.
I rode to Bradenton sleeping, not realizing I had a concussion and skull fracture. I found all that out when I got there and took a trip to the hospital. I had over 50 contusions, 7 cuts, 2 sprains, and 1 fracture. Even though I barely remember the trip to the hospital at all, I do remember one thing very clearly. The doctor telling me that only 1/10 people in my condition at that time were able to walk out of the hospital alive. I was that one person. Mind you, I was still awaiting a decision after being arrested in January and HAD to return to the county after 3 days, but at least I was out of that apartment.
5. Being homeless. I came back to the county with nothing but the clothes I'd worn to Bradenton and a few items my mom and sister had helped me get, with no one to turn to and no where to go. I had no home, I had no job. I had nothing but the $50 that my step-dad kindly gave me, which was basically all he had to give. I still had my keys. Even though I couldn't take it anywhere, I secretly and quietly slept in my minivan for 3 days. However, I had developed very severe post-traumatic stress disorder, and because the minivan was parked directly in front of A's apartment, I just couldn't do it anymore. I spent 3 more days sleeping under trees and in the back of parking lots. My grandfather, who lives in a different state, and also, by the way, happens to be the father of A (you knew another twist was coming, didn't you?), had promised the safety of my belongings (a promise that fundamentally was made of hot air) and that he would replace anything destroyed by A, but that was never to happen. I lost over half of what I owned to destruction by A and W, as well as them pawning much of what was valuable, and allowing girls to go through my clothes and jewelry and take what they wanted. People who had previously called themselves my friends.
Who needs enemies when you have friends?
Learning that I was on the streets, my grandfather made me a one time offer. He was super pissed at me, because as I stated before, I was the good girl. Out of all the people in the entire family, Barbara Frances, this was least expected from you. You know better. You are smarter than this. So on and so forth, blah blah blah. He was right, but I had already failed. I didn't need him to remind me. He told me he was going to pay for 1 month in an extended stay hotel, and that I was on my own after that. And he meant it.
I had a college degree, ladies and gentleman. I was not a stupid person. Just a very naive street-stupid person. Not anymore. I'm pretty freaking intelligent all the way around now. I'm probably one of the most observant persons you will ever come across. Drug addicts and homeless people are not always a product of some uneducated, good-for-nothing background. We are just simple human beings most of the time, who either made some wrong turns, or when we were trying to correct our sails, came into some really horrible situations. We also may suffer from invisible illnesses and/or had traumatic experiences in our childhoods, as well.
I used that college degree to get a job within a week, working as a medical transcriptionist on an older computer that my grandmother was kind enough to send me, working from my little hotel room, barely getting my first paycheck in time to pay for 2 weeks more "rent" for the room that would become my home for the next 6 months. It was a struggle, and some weeks I didn't quite make the cut and had to ask for help. Sometimes I barely ate. Sometimes I didn't eat. I weighed 116 pounds and looked like crap; but I was alive. I would struggle for 4 years to totally become "not homeless." My kids could now come see me again. That was my home for the time being and I never, ever took it for granted.
(As of May of this year, 2014, I have no home again, through no fault of my own. I'm staying with my best friend. That, folks, is a complete blog in and of itself that will have to wait for another day.)
Note: I've had a lot of people ask me if I pressed charges against A or W for anything; physical assault, false imprisonment, destruction of personal property, theft, etc. The answer is no, I did not. The next logical question is always, why not? The only answer I can give you is simply one word: FEAR. I had a lot of it back then, and after going through something very traumatic and life being so uncertain, it's hard to think clearly. Even harder, is trying to explain your decisions to someone who hasn't gone through it.
Ironic that this blog is about fear, isn't it?
FIVE things I am afraid of, though I must add that I am learning to overcome my fears:
1. Spiders. I hate them.
2. Heights. I get very shaky and nervous when high above the ground. I challenged myself in this fear, in 2011, with the most physically challenging thing I have ever done, and finished 4 out of 5 stages of a treetop adventure course, ending up 125 feet above the ground. I was shaking too much to complete level 5, but the first 4 levels were an accomplishment that I couldn't be more proud of.
That's where I called it quits. As soon as I stepped onto one of those logs, it went swinging out so far that my grip on the cable above was almost suddenly non-existent. It was the last place I could climb down at, or I'd be forced to either complete level 5 or be rescued; and I was NOT going to have to be rescued.
It was a very long climb down.
3. Public speaking. I think my Speech class in college was probably one of the most traumatic and fearful classes I've ever had to take. Funny thing, now I can give my entire testimony in front of a large crowd, but I still feel like I'm going to throw up right beforehand.
4. Monsters. Yes, I know I'm a grown-up. I know that "monsters" aren't real. But I still feel a sense of terror when I see people dressed as Leatherface, Freddy Krueger, Jason Voorhees, or Michael Myers. I sometimes cannot even MAKE myself go to Halloween Horror Nights at Universal Studios (even though I worked there for 3 years and HAD to be there) because I know those characters will be there. The mere sound of a chainsaw has the potential of causing me to pee in my pants.
5. Death. Not my own, I know where I'm going when I die, though when I do I'd prefer to do so peacefully in my sleep and not tortured or brutally murdered. Please God? I more fear the death of my loved ones before my own. Especially my children.
So, that is my list. Can you share a list of yours with me? Long or short, it doesn't matter! What are you afraid of?
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