What Have I Done? Guilty, Sentenced, and Ashamed.

I never saw it coming. Then again, when do we ever? That fateful moment that will permanently alter the course of our lives. That moment that is surrounded by the consequences of those fateful decisions you made to get you in the situation to begin with. Yet, there were lies I believed, things I didn't understand; I was so naive. It's actually so sad how naive I was, having had lived mostly a sheltered life outside of the home I mostly grew up in, despite the sexual abuse that went on there. Many people have offered up the suggestion that the reason my childhood was so sheltered and I wasn't allowed to spend the night at friend's houses, go to any type of camp, have birthday parties (expect 3 that I can remember; one, no one showed up; two, it was in my mom's bar, so definitely no one showed up; and three, my one and only slumber party I ever had in my childhood when I turned 10), or even go in the neighbors or friends houses, is because my grandmother wasn't necessarily trying to shelter me or protect me from the outside world, she was trying to keep what was happening on the inside world our family secret. That was the huge pink elephant in the room, only I've decided our elephant is purple with white polka dots. If you want to watch a video blog I did about that, you can see that at My Story, Part 1: Childhood sexual abuse, struggling, self-injury, and suicide. Hope.  This is about something else entirely. It does tie into and explain in more detail what is up with my video blog, My Paper Story, Part 2: Drug Addiction. Recovery., if you'd like to watch it first.

My life plus drug addiction was chaos directly ordered right from hell at the very beginning. Granted, as you see in the progression of my video blog, I didn't do drugs until I was 30 years old. Who does that, anyway?

I do.

I had been a single mom of 4 children for four years at that point.  It was hard and I was bipolar, but I didn't know the bipolar yet.  I thought I was just stressed out and overwhelmed. I was; both. But that's never an excuse to abuse substances to cope with it. Mine was a different kind of overwhelming and stress altogether. It was the kind that made me pick up heavy vacuum cleaners and throw them across the room. My oldest son, who was 11 at the time, said he had no idea I was that strong. I don't think I really was. I think it was early manifestation symptoms of undiagnosed mental health disorders, that would remain undiagnosed until I was 38. 

The year was 2004. It was later in the year. My sons were 4 and 11, and my daughters were 6 and 8. I honestly can't even remember how it began. A few phone calls, the invention of the internet and AOL quickly becoming the greatest "social network" at the time. Chat rooms were suddenly available and you could talk to your friends through instant messaging, which was pretty freaking awesome. We suddenly had access to things we never would have had access to before. Then, there was texting, of course. Easy contact with everyone.

That's me, second from the right. I was 30, but I certainly didn't look it. Most people thought I was in my 20s. This is when, during the times I didn't have my kids and they were with their dad, I began hanging out first with my aunt, who happens to be almost the same age as me, and a lot of friends that were into a lifestyle that I wasn't necessarily into; but that quickly changed.  I started smoking marijuana, not just with other people, but buying it for myself and taking it home. I would lay in a hot bubble bath and smoke while reading a book, then subsequently hop on AOL for games and chatting, and laugh my ass off at just about anything. I'd finally found what I thought was my harmless comic relief coping mechanism for the moods and changes going on in my mind that I had no control over, nor did I understand at all. All I knew was that I had been raising 4 children by myself for over four years at that point, and I felt like I just might go crazy.  Even though I was, and always will be, completely in love with my children, and a very good mommy, having close relationships with all of them, I was losing control; and I couldn't for the life of me figure out why. Then, here this was. This plant that made me feel normal for lack of a better word. It didn't stop there, though. Within a month, I was handed my first line of cocaine by a friend. He was someone I thought I could trust at the time, and being the naive, trusting person I was, I figured since he'd done the drug and I hadn't, he knew what he was doing when he gave it to me. While my aunt was in her bathroom, because her apartment is usually where we all hung out, this mutual friend handed me a plate and a straw. I was scared to death. I said I'd never do drugs, let alone something more than marijuana. I don't know why I did it. Curiosity? Thinking that if marijuana made me feel better, cocaine would hide my pain even more? I had no way of knowing that the line I was given was not, in fact, a line; it was more like a rail.

I was snorting it just as my aunt came out of the bathroom and stopped dead in her tracks. All I remember hearing was, "Oh my god." and my immediate thought was, "I just killed myself." An argument ensued between the two of them. He thought I'd done coke before; she couldn't believe I'd just done that; I'd obviously been given too much; eventually her saying well you might as well do it now; etc. My first thought, quite honestly, was "I suddenly really need to poop." I didn't know yet that was one of the first reactions you get when you do coke, especially the first time. Oh, and your appetite completely vanishes. And you don't sleep, because you CAN'T. It's impossible. At least for most people. The picture above kind of makes me laugh because I didn't realize I was in it when it was being taken. I'm kind of glad I was though (far right, hand over my mouth) because it shows how skinny I became in such a short period of time, how hollow my eyes were getting with dilated pupils, and the redness and darkness had already started around the sockets. I want to say this picture was around December 2004. I was wiping beer off my upper lip, FYI. How the hell I remember that, I have no idea, but I do. I also had begun to drink very heavily while doing cocaine, because I found it physically impossible to do an upper without having some sort of a downer. I found out later I was actually speed-balling and could have easily killed myself multiple times by doing cocaine through the night and drink massive amounts of beer at the same time. You never know when to stop either of them. I also began to abuse Xanax as a downer about a year later. Major speed-balling.

That first night, after that rail of cocaine I should have never taken, I spent 4 hours sitting on that torn up couch you see in the above picture, leaned over with my forehead resting on the edge of a large cooking pot, throwing up. FOUR HOURS. What scared me the most wasn't that I was throwing up, it was the fact that I was unable to lift my head. I would tell my brain to do it, but my head would not lift. I had a curved bruise on my forehead for the good part of a week, and another friend at the time had to empty the pot 4 times for me before the night was done and I could finally get home and lay down. You'd think that would have been the end of that, wouldn't you? I'm about as bull-headed and stubborn as they come, and once I had cocaine, cocaine had me. Regardless of the probable overdose, the sickness, the stupidity, it had sunk it's talons in so deeply in one night, that I wanted more. What started out as a $20 habit, grew into a $250 every 2-3 days habit over the course of the next 2 years. It didn't help that I married another cocaine addict in March of 2005, which is really when this story heats up.

I knew walking down the aisle I was not supposed to be marrying this person. I had a few people voice their opinions to me. I did not listen, of course. I was in complete denial about my life. I didn't have a problem, I was not marrying him because it had anything to do with drugs, and I could control my life. I was just fine! I was so fine that one night I tried to snort coke through a cigarette and then proceeded to light a straw on fire when I put it in my mouth thinking it was the cigarette. I was so fine that when my husband knocked an entire plate of coke off the bed, I crawled around on my hands and knees and got all I could from the floor with my fingertips, carefully gathered remnants off the bedspread, even put one piece in my mouth thinking it was a small piece of uncrushed cocaine, when actuality it was a piece of cat litter, while multitasking by cursing him out and drinking a beer. I had turned into the one person I never, ever wanted to become.  Long nights turned into weeks. Weeks turned into months. Months, amazingly turned into years. The most painful year was 2005 for me. I lost my job and home, and I signed primary residence of my children over to their father, because I knew that I was incapable of taking care of them the way they deserved to be taken care of at that moment. It ripped me apart. I hated it. I loved them so much, that I actually did what was best for them, which to some people turned out to be an opinionated selfish thing, with their assumptions that I did it so I could be free to party more. No. Not at all. I was beginning to see I needed help, and fast. I didn't want my kids going through anything else. They didn't deserve to suffer any more consequences for my life choices.

You would never guess it by this photograph, but I hadn't slept in at least 48 hours. The night before my wedding was spent speed-balling, almost to the point of not being able to breathe through my nose. Through some miracle, I was able to function normally and make it through my own wedding. The bottle of champagne in the limo helped a LOT. I actually had a wonderful wedding photographer, because the photoshopping done on this picture is actually quite remarkable, given that I had a very large scab on my bottom lip (you can still tell it's swollen, though) that was ferociously covered with make-up, but still visible to the naked eye if next to my face. My arms were also covered in scratches, but you can't see those, either. The fact that my wedding dress fit when I originally bought it, and you can tell here that I was getting down to skin and bones, really saddens me. It was a super gorgeous dress. I would have made a super gorgeous bride - under the right circumstances; with the right person.

I would spend my nights begging my husband to help me stop, but instead he would feed it to me when I'd get sick. Sick is usually the term us drug addicts use when we are going through a state of withdrawal, because you are sick. You are sick as hell and feel like you want to die. In his twisted way, MAYBE he thought he was helping me, but remember, he was an addict too, so any excuse to get more was good enough for him. I still continued to beg, he still continued to bring it. My money had run out. My income was the only source for a long time. I had graduated from college and my job was a good one. He was supposed to be going to some medical assistant school, but dropped out. He went through job after job. It never worked. So the money started coming in a different way.

It was October of 2005 when my children began living at their dad's more permanently. By November, my husband and I were living with my aunt (yes, the same one), and by December he was a full-time thief and burglar.  The insanity of drug addiction is something I could never describe to anyone who has never been an addict. An addict would already understand. Drugs own you until you finally decide to exert power over them with help of others and your higher power. I had shoved my higher power under a rug, yet I could still hear Him calling out my name. I ignored the calling, the whispers, the screams. I had no clue what my husband was doing - at first. He was robbing houses, bringing the merchandise back, and I was pawning it because he lacked a Florida ID.

Before I go any further, go ahead and say it. You are a complete idiot.

I know. Thank you.

Completely naive is what I was. Clueless. Brain dead. Zombified. Whatever you want to call it, that's what I was. I actually believed that he got the stuff from his parents the first couple of times it happened, but one day he said, "don't ask" when he brought back a whole bunch of jewelry; I didn't. I realized it on my own, so I didn't have to ask. He had stolen it. He came clean with me, told me not to worry, that he had been careful, used gloves, explained how he was doing it using MY MINIVAN, and that if he ever were to get caught, I wouldn't get in trouble for pawning anything, because he was the thief and would take the rap for the whole thing and say he tricked me into it all.  Guess what? I was so not street smart at the time, I actually believed him in my drug-induced addicted mind, and, you guessed it.. continued to pawn items. I could sit here and list the different types of things he stole and I pawned, but it would really serve no purpose other than to bring me to honest, true tears of remorse and regret, and bring out old feelings of anger that I'd rather just leave alone right now.  It's horrible to think about. I never once went with him to steal any of those items, yet I feel inside, to this very day, that I was with him every single time, because I was the one that sold them under false identification. False pretenses. For all I know, one of those rings could have been the only thing left someone had of their great-grandmother's. If people don't think I have thought about stuff like that and have gone through the guilt process, they are dead wrong. I could say "I'm sorry" until I am turquoise in the face, and it would never cover the amount of pain I indirectly caused people. I am deeply, deeply remorseful for what I did and I am very well aware, now, that it was wrong.

On the morning of January 23, 2006, my husband came home from robbing a house (I didn't even know he had left, which was often the case), and I got dressed and prepared myself to make our trip to one of many scattered pawn shops across the tri-county area. In retrospect, I can see how incredibly stupid I was in many, many ways. Little did I know they were already looking for me, and the last 3 times I had pawned items, they already knew who I was and were just collecting more evidence. Those pawnshop brokers are sneaky little bastards in more ways than one. (Sorry, I had to make a comical jab.) Even though I was the one with the driver's license, I was exhausted, so I hopped into the passenger side of minivan and he took the driver's seat. The next 5 minutes or so happened so quickly, nothing registered in my head at first. Nothing. I felt like an empty balloon with eyeballs just staring off into space, somewhat floating above my body as if this was just not happening. I was confused, everything was quiet in my head, even though I knew there was intense screaming around me. It was like in the movies, where they quiet the soundtrack and you see the person looking around at all the details without hearing a single thing, in slow motion. That was me. We had pulled out of the parking space, and when we got to the entrance of the apartment complex, one police car hit my minivan from behind, one hit it from the front, one hit it from the driver's side, and in less than 5 seconds there were 3 fully-loaded trigger-ready guns pointed directly at my face. This was all taken in, in that slow motion silence I was talking about. When it finally registered in my head what was happening, the first thing I remember hearing was the police officer with the gun to my right screaming, "Get out of the van now and put your hands up! Now!" It didn't make any sense. None of it. I was still processing.

I got out of the car at about the same exact time my husband did. He was automatically thrown face first into the pavement and cuffed. They were much more gentle with me. I don't know if it's because I'm a female or because I looked so bewildered and frightened that they took pity on me, but I calmly turned around so they could cuff me, and they gently sat me down on the curb. They questioned him first, for what seemed like an eternity. Then my questioning ensued. Do you want to give us a statement? Sure! Why not? After all, it's all going to be pinned on him, right? No, I don't know why you are arresting me! I think you do. Well, you are entitled to your opinion.

Please educate yourselves. You do the crime, you do the time. Don't believe anyone else, especially if they are an addict too, when they say you won't get in trouble for something because they will "take the rap." Also, look up the term "lawyer up" and do it immediately. My stupidity was escalating at a frightening rate just within that first hour, but I had no idea what I was doing. Once collapsing hard into reality and spilling my guts (no-no! big NO-NO!) I explained to them that I didn't know at first. He asked me, "but you should have known, right?" I later found out this was a sleazy trick question and can be used against you in a court of law, but it was done, said, and recorded. Nothing I could do about it. Needless to say, by the end of the day, my lawyer was super pissed with me.

The following evening, even though I didn't know it until 2 weeks later when I was released from jail, a story ran on the local news with my mugshot plastered all over television.

Husband And Wife Team Arrested For Winter Park Burglary <<<<<<<<<
No Facebook reposts or Tweets on that, thank God. The 2 shares that are shown are from my grandmother, who decided to take it upon herself to share it with the whole family via emails. THAT was fun. Also, this report shows the idiocracy of careless journalism at its finest. 1) It was not Winter Park, it was Winter Springs. There is at least a 20 mile difference between the two cities. 2) As I stated, I was never with him when anything was stolen. But thanks, baby daddy, for dragging my four children into the room when it came on the news and saying, "I just wanted you to see where your mom is."

The difference almost a year of hardcore drugs can make versus the picture above. Granted, the wedding photo was the beginning of my downfall and I'd already started to deteriorate, the puffy face and distant eyes in this picture tell my whole story. I was a disaster. I was completely void of feeling by the time I got to the jail - until I got into general population, and then all hell broke loose inside and I cried for 3 days straight, literally, without being able to stop.  All I could remember was talking to the police, like I shouldn't have, the police woman who drove me being very nice, even offering me one of her cigarettes and lighting it for me, because I smoked during that time; and I remember Z88.3, the local Christian radio station, playing in the police car and I was sitting in the backseat awkwardly with my hands cuffed behind me, singing songs to Jesus out loud with what felt like meaningless, emotionless tears streaming down my face. I knew I was going to jail, but I knew that I also had a possible advantage on my side that my husband didn't have - a grandfather that loved me and had the money to help me. The issue with that was he had already helped my mom, my sister, and my aunt so much, and I was the only one left who HADN'T gotten into trouble, that I wasn't sure he would.  I was the first in the family to graduate from high school, let alone college. I had led a picture perfect life (from the outside), with the first husband, four children, house; despite the divorce, I was still graduating from college, making something out of myself.

BOOM. Real life happened, yo. Like a tornado, hurricane, and earthquake combined into one perfect storm.

The call to my grandfather was one of the hardest calls I've ever had to make, besides the one to my children's father. Neither of them took too keen to the fact that I was in jail for, um, countless felonies.

It's all a matter of public record, and for those of you that are the curious type, I will save you the trouble of looking it up:

Arrest Date: 1/23/2006

Account Balance: ($0.00)

Charges:

• GRAND THEFT OVER $300.00
• DEALING STOLEN PROP ORGANIZE THEFT
• FRAUD/FALSE VERIF OF OWNERSHIP PAWN ITEMS OVER $300.
• DEAL IN STOLEN PROPERTY-ORGANIZED THEFT (OBTS#5901058490)
• GRAND TEHFT OVER $300 UNDER $20000 (OBTS#5901058490)
• FALSE OWNERSHIP INFO FOR PAWNED O/$300 (OBTS#5901058490)
• GRAND THEFT $300 UNDER $20000 (OBTS#5901058490)
• DEAL IN STOLEN PROPERTY ORGANIZED THEFT (OBTS#5901058490)
• FRAUD-FALSE OWNERSHIP INFO FOR PAWNED O/$300(OBTS#5901058490
• GRAND THEFT O/$300 (OBTS#5901058490)
• PAWNED ITEMS O/$300 (OBTS#5901058490)
• DEAL IN STOLEN PROPERTY ORGANIZED THEFT(OBTS#5901058490)
• GRAND THEFT O/$300 UNDER $20000(OBTS#5901058490)
• FRAUD-- PAWNED ITEMS O/$300 (OBTS#5901058490)
• FRAUD-PAWNED ITEMS OVER $300 (OBTS#5901058490)

I won't bother listing my husbands charges, as it would take up at least twice as much room.

A total of 15 felony counts were brought against me. My bond was set at $25,000. My court date was in May. I thought for sure I would rot in there, especially after the initial conversation with my grandfather, who called me every name in the Great Book of Heart Slashing Painful Names Under The Sun and lectured me on how I was the good one and how everyone had expected so much more from me. "Out of all the family, Barbara Frances, you? What were you thinking?"  Well, that's an easy question. 

I wasn't.

He did bond me out after 2 weeks and he did spend $80,000 to keep me out of prison. You read that correctly. I'm pretty sure I solely finished bankrupting my grandfather after everyone else took what they could get. I'll never be able to repay him, except to continue to show him that I'm not the person I was then and make something really amazing of my life. It's one of the reasons I blog and I advocate for mental health so much. I want to make a difference in the lives of others, in a way that is relatable to myself. He let me sit in jail for 2 weeks on purpose. It was horrible. As I said, I cried non-stop for 3 days, cried intermittently after that, but I survived. There weren't many people I could make collect calls to. My baby daddy/first husband ended up blocking my calls so I couldn't talk to my children. That killed me a little inside, because I wasn't sure at that point if I was getting out or not.  The only people that visited me were my sister and aunt one time, and my lawyer. I had a fantastic lawyer. He is our Central Florida family lawyer, considering he has literally represented us all now, including (unfortunately) my son a few years ago for something minor. The only reason he took my son's case for such a minimal amount of money is because of the time and money that's been invested into him by my family.  My baby daddy knew he was a good criminal defense attorney and was smart to take my son there, even if he did use a name-drop (me/my grandfather). 

After 2 weeks in jail, my grandfather told my attorney, Zack, to go ahead and let me out; he thought I'd learned my lesson. Zack relayed those exacted words to me and although I was grateful and crying, I couldn't help but mutter, "asshole."  It took a year of continuations and court proceedings to finally get sentenced. My husband was sentenced to 15 years in prison with a mandatory minimum of 85% of that time being served.  His release date will be in August of 2019, at this point, according to recent checking. He has pending charge that I hope keep him in prison that I will not mention here, but he did something, that I only found out about not even 4 years ago, to someone I love, and I never want to see him again. He is no husband of mine.

Zack got all but 1 of my felony charges dropped, and the rest turned into 2 misdemeanors. I was sentenced to 3 years probation, adjudication withheld, no restitution, and my court costs, fines, and first 18 months of probation were already paid. I served 2 years probation and qualified for early termination.

This, my friends, is not only the difference between wrong versus naive, but also the difference in having a public defender and having a top criminal defense attorney.  Nothing against public defenders, but honestly? Actually, I'm not even going to go there. I'll save that for another blog and one other, much smaller, incident.

I wish I could say I was immediately drug-free when I came out of jail, but considering I had to go right back into the same place I was living before I went to jail, that was virtually impossible for a drug addict. It would be 2 more years before I didn't touch cocaine again, but it was NEVER as bad as it had become. As a matter of fact, as funny as this is going to sound, the very first thing I did when I got out of jail was dye my hair and, after finally getting my van out of the impound, scraped all the stickers off the windows I had that readily identified my vehicle (giant silver musical notes across the back, colorful Grateful Dead bears, flowers, and fairies along the sides; I was one of those kind of minivan moms - the cool kind). I wanted to hide, or at least blend in. I felt like everyone who had been watching the news that night my mugshot aired would surely recognize me and point me out in public. Although I had turned my back for a couple of years, I did attend a church with close to 4,000 members, hundreds of which I literally new on a first name basis because I'd been there so many years, so there was no doubt in my mind that practically everyone knew what I had done. I wanted to change everything about me and my surrounding, my belongings, my vehicle, yet I knew I was still me and it really wouldn't change a thing. I would ultimately have to find a way to make peace with my actions, and make amends to those I had harmed. I'm thankful to say that, indeed, I have. 

This is me now. Healthy. Drug free. Clean. Clear-minded. I struggle with post-traumatic stress disorder because of events that happened during the years from 2004-2008, when I struggled in the pits of cocaine hell, but I'm healing.  Because of my conviction, I cannot go back to school to finish any healthcare-related degree until my felony is 15 years old. I have a degree in medical transcription and medication documentation specialist, which I graduated with in 2004 just before all of this started, with plans to go further and eventually acquire my Bachelor's degree. I can no longer get financial aid, so if I do go back to school, I will have to be able to pay for it. Therefore, my hopes of returning to school and pursuing further dreams looks bleak most times. I'm the type of person who never loses hope, however. 

You might be wondering why I decided to write about this. For one, it's a matter of public record anyway, so anyone who decided for whatever reason to look into my past would find it without even having to do a formal background check. It needed to be told from my personal experience standpoint. Two, I simply needed to tell it. Part of who I am becoming is total transparency. It took me a long time to learn to be honest with myself, and then with other people. I want to be able to do that with anything and everything. I have a voice and my stories need to be told. It took years for me to realize that. Not just for myself, but for others. Whether as a teaching tool or just to let someone know that they are not the only person to make the crazy mistakes they have made in their life.  If you are going to read my ramblings, you are going to be reading a whole lot of everything. The good, the bad, the ugly, the beautiful, and everything in between.

Also, there are lessons to be learned here:

1. Don't do drugs. Ever.
2. Stay single if you aren't 100% sure someone is good for you.
3. Don't do the crime if you don't plan on doing the time.
4. Don't believe stupid lies. 
5. Always lawyer up, never talk to the police without a lawyer present. About anything. Ever.
6. Don't go back into the same environment you came out of if you can help it, if it was unhealthy.
7. Realize that you are important and you will make mistakes. Just make sure they aren't the kind you will have to pay for, for the rest of your life. And if they are, you are still okay. You will just have a journey that is a little bit rougher.
8. There are consequences to every action. Every action has a reaction.
9. Life isn't all roses and lollipops and can be quite unfair sometimes.
10. Addiction is a real thing, a horrible disease, and yes, it can happen to you.
11. No one else can take the rap for your wrongdoings. You are responsible for you.
12. If you aren't street smart, get smart; just without being on the streets.
13. A felony criminal record affects your life in a LOT of ways, way after your time is served.
14. Again, common sense goes a long way; and it's a whole lot easier to hear when you AREN'T DOING DRUGS.

Scary Things.

We all have things we are afraid of or fear. If you say you have absolutely no fears, I'm fairly certain you are a liar or are incapable of human emotion and rationale. Just my opinion. As I sat here with only a big blank in my mind [i.e. NOTHING WAS THERE] tonight, I finally decided that I was going to share 5 frightening things that have happened in my life, and 5 things I fear. They are in no particular order. First of all, this is me:

I should probably develop a healthy, adequate fear of selfies.

Let's begin, shall we?

FIVE frightening things that have happened in my life:

1.  Car accident.  I have been in two major car collisions in my lifetime, neither of which was my fault.  The first one was in 1999 in my '97 forest green Pontiac Grand Am.  I had my three youngest children in the back seat (the fourth was not conceived just yet) and I was turning left from a left-hand turning lane just after my light turned green.  There was a truck in the other left-hand turning lane to the left of me that I could not see around, so little did I know there was someone coming who was not paying attention and about to run their red light.  I pulled out to turn left and got T-boned directly on my driver-side door.  I was hit so hard that my car spun around three times and landed in the median.  I panicked because my children were screaming and I couldn't get my door open.  By the grace of God, an ambulance was passing by just as the accident happened, and the paramedic promptly ran over to my vehicle, assured me my children were fine, just scared with a few bruises, and that I needed to calm down.  Calm down.. lol. He didn't realize I had no concept of the phrase "calm down" but I appreciated his efforts. I called husband #1 at the time to let him know I had just been in an accident and his first question was, "Well, is the car drivable?" Thanks for the concern! Furthermore, when he got to the scene of the accident he said, "I thought you said the car wasn't drivable. How did it get onto the median?" :/  THAT'S WHERE IT LANDED.  I had massive bruises on my chest and stomach from my air bag;  otherwise, not a scratch on me.  The other driver's reason he ran the red light:  He wasn't paying attention because he was trying to fit his cup into his cup holder.  

For the love of God, people. If you can't drive with a cup between your legs, don't drive.

I got a brand new '99 Pontiac Grand Am the following week, which eventually got traded in for something else, because my husband couldn't stop doing that. I swear, it was like having interchangeable cars every year. Anyway..

The second accident was in April of 2007, where a utility van pulling a full trailer behind it rear-ended my '99 Dodge Caravan going about 50 mph.  I was going 0 mph.  That was ZERO. He just didn't see me sitting there at a red light, I suppose; or any of the other 20 or so cars sitting in front of and around me.  It really super sucks when you see someone coming at you full speed in your rear view mirror and can do NOTHING about it. You can't go to the left. You can't go to the right. You sure as heck can't go forward or backward. So, what do I do? The worst thing possible.  I brace myself.  I grabbed onto my steering wheel with both hands, held on for dear life, tensed up my entire body from the top of my head to my clenched toes, squeezed my eyes shut, and waited.

He hit me so hard, the back of my minivan went up in the air, while the front of it dove under the back of the Lexus in front of me. THE LEXUS. I JUST HIT A LEXUS. That's how messed up my head was all of a sudden; all I could think was, "I just hitting a freaking Lexus, I'm screwed." I wasn't, of course. It wasn't my fault, and the owner of the Lexus, who was uninjured, kindly walked back and handed me his card.

I was in shock.

My air bag did not deploy. My seat belt did not lock up.  My entire body was permitted to be thrown forward full force, causing my head to slam into the steering wheel, and promptly throwing 3 vertebral discs out of place in my cervical and lumbar spine. My neck and back will never be the same. Ever.

2.  Little girl lost.  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?