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AN: This chapter contains information based on what I have learnt after having spoken to drug addiction survivors. I did not know strength until I met you all and for that I dedicate this story to you. Yes my boyfriend was pissed that I was taking a risk but I had to do justice to you all. Drug addiction is not a joke. It has affected so many lives, more than you would like to know. This one is for you.
THE FORGIVENESS ONLY SHE CAN GIVE.
Chapter Four: Her Speech.
Tell me your secrets and I will show you your strengths.
Addiction.
A dictionary definition would tell you that an addiction is and I quote, "the state of being enslaved to a habit or practice or to something that is psychologically or physically habit-forming, as narcotics, to such an extent that its cessation causes severe trauma."
What that definition did not say that it is possible to be an addict without even knowing it. Addictions are not limited to drugs or alcohol. Addictions occur in every form. It could be the simplest thing or the most complex but what addicts have in common is that no matter what occurs, their addictions is their means of coping with life; with pain.
My addiction started when I was ten. It wasn't anything serious. I was just addicted to cooking. That was my passion and the one thing I needed to do at the end of the day or I just wouldn't be me. Of course no one thought anything of it. Who would? After all I was just a ten year old girl who liked to cook. Truly my family was happy; ecstatic even.
As time went along, my habits changed; morphed into something more and my addiction changed into something more physically demanding. By the age of twelve, I had studied every form of dance that I could, favoring the more demanding forms. Everyday I worked myself into exhaustion; never allowing myself a moment to breathe. I just kept going and going kinda like the energizer bunny.
By the time I was fifteen, I was on the slow fall to hell. Everything about me screamed addict but no-one noticed because life was good; too good. I had everything I could have every wanted. I had a loving family consisting of the best parents a girl could ask for even if I forced myself into my pseudo-parents lives. I had brothers, five brothers to be exact; brothers who were all older than me and made damn sure I knew it. I went to church. I volunteered at the hospital. I got straight A's. I was flying high but I knew that it would not have taken much for me to crash and burn and crash and burn it did.
I was now starting as a freshman at high school when everything took a turn for the worst. I tell you now that the worst type of pain anyone can go through is to have to look as what you held on for so long crumbled into nothing right before your eyes.
I had entered high school with dreams and a purpose. I knew what I wanted and had allowed my ambitions to set the bar for me. I knew high school was not going to be easy but I knew I would have my brothers; three of whom were still attending high school but when envy and malice rears its head there is nothing that anyone could have done to stop the rippling effect.
It started innocently enough with the name calling. All of you who see me here today think of me as an impeccably dressed woman who is both classy and fashionable but while as a student of Forks High I was far from this. I was nerdy. I was a geek; the girl who buried herself in her fathers' worn out sweatshirts and passed through every possible advanced class with flying colors.
I chose not to answer to the rumors. I turned a blind eye to the taunts and stabs taken at how I dressed. After all I came to school for an education and not to socialize. Soon enough the first year had ended and I had obtained A's in every single class and while I was allowed to enjoy my summer vacation all those who taunted me were stuck in summer school trying to go into their next year of studies.
The next academic year began again and so did my bullies, this time more deadly than before. No longer did they limit themselves to just taunting me but had taken to throwing me down stairs cases, hiding my books and throwing food at me. Their behaviors were juvenile at the least but as much as their harassment continued, I again turned my head and joined my church's youth group so that I would have some form of relief and was able to remind myself that there was still some good in the world.
However things took a turn for the worst when I began my junior year. For the greater part of my academic life, I stayed to myself; not stepping in anyone's way and then used home as an escape from the bullying. All that changed when the bullying reached home. You see foolishly or stupidly, my brothers had fallen in love with the two people who had for the past two years masterminded my torture.
I remember that day with such clarity. I remember my pseudo parents buzzing around fixing everything and anything, debating on what to cook. I remember laughing at my fathers as they battled to cook the steaks we were having that night but above all I remember their sheer joy at the prospect of welcoming two more into the family.
However, the happy moment they envisioned never came to pass because just on the arrival of my pseudo brothers and their girlfriends, my father got a call; a call from the principal informing him about what exactly was occurring at school as it related to the bullying and he was also informed as to who the masterminds were.
The confrontation that followed was equal to the effects of an atomic bomb. Plates and words were thrown. Answers and confessions were demanded. It ended long after with me sobbing in my mother's arms and my fathers contemplating their next move.
Needless to say, the preparations that had to be made never got done and my brothers were furious when they entered the house. By this time, my parents knew who my bullies were and when they stepped through the door, both hanging of my brothers arms, all hell broke loose.
My mother was furious. She wanted the girls out of the house and had forbidden my brothers from seeing the girls. My brothers were stunned. I would have been too if I hadn't been crying so much. The girls started to cry and tried to plea their cases. Actually they did not try to plea anything really. They said they did not do it and tried to spin everything so that it would have looked like I was the one who wanted the attention, who was making the whole thing up.
My brothers believed them and from that day on things got worst. They stopped speaking to me and the rumors got worst. By the end of that month many people in the town thought that I was a druggie who slept with half the football team. I was stopped on corridors asking to give blowjobs and was cornered in classrooms. My breaking point came soon after that.
I was leaving school one day when I was pulled into the gym by seven guys. It started with touching and groping and then one of them had the guts to rip my coat off. I cried. I screamed but they did not stop. One of them was getting ready to rip my shirt of when one of my supposed brothers came into the gym. When he saw what was happening, he called me a whore and walked out. I escaped soon after but I had had enough so I ran.
I went home that night, scribbled a note, grabbed my belongings and left. I knew my parents would have been devastated by my actions but I could not do it any more. I had to leave. For my sanity I had to leave. I did not feel safe anymore. My brothers had turned their backs on me. Who else was there that I could trust?
I sent my first week sleeping at a shelter. The women there were kind and understanding but it was a struggle. Every day of every minute it was a fight for survival. Soon enough I fell into a bad crowd. I remembered the first drug I did.
Marijuana. Weed. Pot. Dagga.
I remember the calm that followed; the feeling that all was right in the world, a feeling of invincibility.
It did not take me very long until I was hooked onto the stronger drugs. Heroine. Meth. Cocaine. You name it. I did it all.
I know you all think I'm just acting like I know all about drugs. I know you think I just read this from some book but let me tell you that there is nothing, absolutely nothing that could compare to the two minutes of invincibility that follows after you take a shot of heroine straight throw the vein.
But that's all it is: two minutes.
Years passed by and by then certain drugs had no effect on me. I started using more and with shorter intervals. I started pushing drugs as a way to pay for my habits. I was one of them. I was hanging with the bosses. I was there when the drugs were dropped of. I was there when the drugs went onto the streets. I saw the money made of the drugs.
But I also saw the desperation people had to get their hands on some heroine; the shaking hands and paranoia that seemed to follow them everywhere. I saw the children that went hungry because mommy needed to get her fix. I saw the wives that were beaten because they used all the families' money on food and clothing so that the husband couldn't get his hit. I have seen the mothers who have cried over their child's body and the fathers who disowned their children. I have seen drug mules and drug whose die on the street and their body stripped of anything valuable. I have seen the teenagers who are killed and thrown in the ground, buried six feet under in unmarked graves.
I see that I have gotten to you. You don't like the reality of it. You don't like the truth now that it is staring at you in the face. On the streets I knew twenty people by name and face. Now, none of them are alive.
So this is me, begging you to not walk the road I have walked. I was lucky. My husband found me and pulled me out but not everyone who overdosed made it out alive.
