I have been told that strength comes from within and power comes from our creator. What I have found to be true is that real strength and power come from surviving trials and tribulations. I am a woman of strong character and faith today. I was abused and then abandoned by my mother. I have never met my father. I grew up in a series of foster homes that were meant to protect. I was full of animalistic rage, pain, and confusion. I began cutting and burning myself at a young age. The feelings of powerlessness were overwhelming. My first experience with alcohol left me numb and I chased that feeling for more than 20 years.
Laying on my back in an alley had me crying out to God for help.
“Oh God, please help me or let me die!”
There is an odor of diesel fuel and body fluids. I look at the pillow of hair on his chest as I feel the weight of shame on top of me. Desperation pulses like a sexual energy in the air. I am surrounded by the smell of dust and wet cardboard and sounds of feral children. I am filled with shame and degradation.
I need one more fix. I chase the high, the feeling of immortality. It is a mixed feeling of power and
inferiority. I stare at the thick fence between the church and the alley, covered in grime and moss. That fence symbolizes the barrier between myself and the God of my childhood. I cry out for God to save me, from addiction, from myself.
I am a junkie and I can’t stop using drugs even though they stopped getting me high long ago. I felt his hand across my face with a sharp crack. “Tell me you like it, you white bitch! Take this dick!” I pray he finishes quickly, not because of the pain, but because of the sickness. I have to get right and soon. I am dopesick. I need a hit or the cramps will come, the nausea will be unending.
HE is nameless, faceless, just one more man to represent a means to an end; prostituting for more dope. I lay pale, bleeding and resigned. I am on the asphalt behind Mr. Jessup’s Butcher Shop on a sunny, July afternoon. I felt the desperation of an addict using against her will.
I survived on foxhole prayers and gas station rendezvous. I am emaciated and my lips are blistered from smoking crack. My hair is stuck up like little, yellow maggots. A halo of gnats dance around my head.
Was this the life I was destined for? Did I ever stand a chance? I am the victim of rage, neglected, bruised and broken. There is the sour smell of fear induced sweat and urine permeating the air. There's a tightness in my chest. I am the survivor of abuse.
My mother’s boyfriend began raping me at the age of seven. His touch hurt. My small body stretching, probing fingers, rough hands, grabbing…piercing pain, red hot. The lesson taught from a very young age was that this was my worth. This was a lie I let define me. Where was God then? I am the result of promiscuity, the result of a lesson my mother also learned well. She believed her worth lay in the apex of her thighs and taught me the same.
I am a volunteer of self-loathing, self-pity and self-obsession. I found blessed numbness in the bottom of a bottle, and found emotional regulation in a pill. I am a drug addict dominated by self-centered fear.
There is so much more to me than my addiction. My bottom has a trap door. I am filled with disillusion and near death. I am a criminal without a record, a champion of the untouchables. I am a woman, but far from a lady. I am a Buddhist with a belief in God; a practicing Buddhist, not the bookstore variety.
As I lay on the ground with his body fluids running down my thighs, I knew I had to find help. There had to be a way out. I prayed every night that God would not allow be to see daylight. I cursed God every morning for the failed prayer. I was slowly killing myself and had alienated everyone I knew. I didn’t want to get high anymore, but I didn’t know how to stop. I wanted to want to live.
I married and thought that marriage would save me. It would fill the void inside of me. I wanted something positive to define me. I thought that being a wife and mother would do just that. I would have a family of my own. I would belong to someone and someone would love me and I would never feel alone again. Who he was never mattered. He was a means to an end. I fell in the love with the idea of who I thought he could be, not who he actually was. What I got from that marriage was two beautiful daughters I turned my back on for drugs and eventually, an introduction to a 12-Step program.
Narcotics Anonymous gave me back my dignity and integrity. I became a parent, a better friend, a student and a valuable employee. I have a long way to go, but I have come so far. Today I am able to be of service to others and today I am a survivor, not a victim. God had never forsaken me. He was there the whole time, keeping me safe and carrying me through the horrors of active addiction. That day in the alley, God was holding my hand and weeping for my pain. I rebel against organized religion, but I have a powerful belief in my God. I will continue to work with other addicts and let them know that we do not have to be a product of our past. At some point, we have to stop being the victim and take responsibility for our own lives.
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