I got out of the Army even more broken than before. I had a life full of trauma and a newly acquired pill addiction. My other addiction was men. It always had been. Always trying to fill that emptiness in me with someone or something else… but always ending up even more broken and empty than before.
After a series of bad relationships, I ultimately got involved with a man with addictions of his own. He introduced me to drugs I’d never done before and kept me strung out so that I was too foggy to realize he was abusing my son. One morning the police came to our door to arrest me for a warrant that had been issued for a robbery I committed while high. That night, after I was taken to jail, the man I had allowed into my home put my son in a coma. My ex-in-laws came to the house to make sure I was ok and found my son blue and unconscious. He was life flighted to Portland, 4 hours away, where he spent the next 3 weeks in ICU. Upon hearing of his condition and being told that I could not see him, I sunk to a low point in my addiction and stayed there for the next 2 years.
I packed up my belongings and threw them into a storage unit and took off to live homeless with a different ex-boyfriend. We got drunk while camped out one night and got into a fight. I was arrested and when I got out, he was gone. I was released from jail with a group of people, one of whom was a guy I thought was attractive. I’m sure you’re seeing a trend by now. I went with him to the coast, where I started using meth heavily. I stripped to maintain my habit, but when the money from that fell short I turned to prostitution. I didn’t care about myself anymore. I didn’t care about that hole inside of me or feeling loved. I didn’t want to feel anything at all. I wanted to die, but I was afraid.
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