Beginning at the Bottom

It started with a dream. Then the dream came to life. Little was I to know how this unfolding would continue to change me. Stuck in a world of illusion, I had hit my bottom, then the grace of God embraced me and now the truth sets me free.


The House in My Dream

The house in my dream was not my dream home at all
Just somewhere I stayed once in a while
The door I had walked through many times before
Revolved as many arrived and departed
I didn’t stay there alone but
No one acknowledged me
Always muffled voices of visitors new and old
Weary one day, I found myself there
In this house like a disproportionate castle
Too few rooms for too many people
Searching like me for somewhere to rest…to be alone
Still thinking the room I had was waiting…time had eluded me
Maybe my room had been given to another
Diligently seeking my quarter
Yet not remembering where
I began searching for another…somewhere…anywhere
Quickly passing others unaware
Dim lighting, passage to passage, turning many corners
Finally, I saw ahead
Shades of yellow, orange and gold
Soft pillows of silk and transparent white veils
But as I entered I knew
It was occupied by another
I could hear her music
Alive like no other
Familiar tunes from time gone by
She asked who is there?
Somehow I knew her
A long lost friend
And she knew someone was there…intruding
Remaining invisible
I quickly passed her room
Not wanting her to see me…no desire to explain
So I turned and finally found that familiar entrance
To my forgotten room
That upward cave previously ventured
Leading to where I stayed many times before
Exhausted yet relieved
I scurried through that entrance
Different than I remembered
This time going to where
I thought I wanted to be
Wasn’t so easy
Like rock climbing with no gear
Weakened by time, wear and tear
Many times had journeyed there before
What I tried to grasp began to crumble
What I thought was rock was only plaster rubble
Cracked and rotten
I knew right then when I was half way there
As I looked below
How far I would fall…I felt my fear
If I tried to go there again
It would be the end…in my heart I knew
That wasn’t my room anymore.

Kara’s Dream 4/7/02 3AM

I was lost. Addicted to pain killers for nearly 7 years, my life was a mess. A typical day consisted of 10-12 Vicodin ES, 6-8 Soma, and various tranquilizers starting from waking until sleep. I could pass out for a few hours at a time until my next craving but, I truly had no rest in my life. A typical week consisted of counting out pills, setting doctors appointments, filling prescriptions and visiting urgent care clinics or hospital emergency rooms. It was such a relief whenever I saw a new drug store being built. It was like a new dealer, I just need to get the secret password…a new “script”. When I first became introduced to painkillers, I thought everyone should be able to take at least a couple a day and we’d all get along better.

I started experimenting with drugs around the age of 12. Once I hit junior high, I met some “friends” and we started partying. I remember the first time I smoked a joint, some girlfriends and I were at the beach in northern California and we met this “hippie” type guy who sold us 3 joints for 5 dollars.

From the moment I took those first few puffs, I was free. We danced in the waves and sang opera. We laughed so hard. I was sure that was my answer. From that time on, marijuana became my friend. I started hanging out with a few girls and we started to “party” every chance we got. My friend Kyla’s mom was so nice, she even would buy us beer, we could even drink it at her house and she never mentioned it to my mother. We met these older guy’s and soon they were nice enough to buy the beer, get us high and we never had to pay for it. Soon, we didn’t have to “party” at Kyla’s house, we had a new place and there was always a party going on.

This partying lasted nearly 20 years. It became a way of life, something to look forward to. I was miserable. By the time I was 15, I became sexually active and boys became my next drug. I just wanted to be loved. A few times I thought I had found it when I would get that sense of belonging when I would have sex with them and then settle for a few minutes of cuddling afterward. I hated myself and was on an endless search for someone who could love and protect me.

There were a few “good guys” but I would find a way to get rid of them quickly if they treated me too well or were overly respectful. I needed to find my “soul mate”. Those nice guys just didn’t give me “that feeling”. When I was between boys or getting ready to find a replacement, the obsession would take over again until I compulsively jumped from one frying pan into another. The anxiety I felt without that “excited” feeling, was unbearable. I literally felt like I wanted to jump out of my own skin.

When I was 19 I met an older man, Tommy. Tommy sold drugs to the father of Jeff, a boyfriend I had at the time. I always had a live-in boyfriend and Jeff was no exception. Stan was Jeff’s father and quite a character. He was a con-man just like my father and had many similar qualities. He always had a story. There was no way to tell what part of his accounts were true or false but there was a charm about him that made one almost not care either way.

Late at night, Stan would knock on our apartment door and ask to come in. He had bags of cocaine and offered to share with us if we would just let him in. We would stay up all night and sometimes days if there was enough. My eye would drift to the baggy as I kept track of the supply at all times. He was always generous with the lines unlike normal suppliers who would give you just enough and then require a favor or money before they would give you anymore. Jeff’s father was never like that. He just didn’t want to do it alone. I can remember a feeling of panic every time it was almost gone. Then we would have to come down and that was the worst feeling of all. That fear of helplessness and physical craving would keep me moving until I would drop in exhaustion, just like every other manifestation of my disease. I never did like to share. It wasn’t logic, since there was never enough. I was insatiable.

Even though I knew a lot of people and could “fit in” with any click, I always felt different. I was never comfortable in my own skin so I became a chameleon. My personality could change in a split second depending on who I was around as I became very skilled at being what other people projected upon me so that I could get the acceptance for which I was so desperate. I felt most like myself around the “losers”. They were like me. I could count on them to always want to get loaded like I did and we did, almost every day. It was amazing. No matter what group I hung out with, the ones with the dope always wanted to share with me. I was popular in that crowd…the smart one. They would look up to me. I was a leader amongst the lost yet so lost myself. Years later a wise man would ask me the question; where is the one eyed man king? I wouldn’t understand the significance of the answer he gave me until years later when if finally made perfect sense. “Where”, I asked? The tall black man with big eyes and a stutter explained with a tone of irony; a one eyed man is king in the Land of the Blind.

Stan’s drug problem got worse. He switched from cocaine to crystal methamphetamine “meth” because it was cheaper and would last longer. I thank God in heaven, that drug never appealed to me. I hated the taste of chemicals and it burned my sinuses so much; it didn’t seem worth it, if I could still locate cocaine. In December of 1988, Stan told us that Tommy was having a Christmas party and we were all invited. When we arrived at the party, I was so impressed with how nice the home and furniture were. The spread was amazing. I could only hope to live in as nice of a home one day. Even though Tommy was 44, I was attracted to him from the moment we met. He told me how pretty I was and I got that feeling. My heart was pounding and he was the source of the drugs.

Tommy made me feel safe. He seemed to have an endless supply of whatever type of drug you could want. One of the things I learned from him was that there was always a way to change the way you feel. He taught me that I could solve my “coming down” panic feelings with pain killers. Instead of hours of tossing and turning in torture, there was a more streamline and less time consuming way. We would take a cocktail of various tranquilizers, opiates and muscle relaxers after he gave me my last line and then we would smoke pot until they “kicked in”.
That would ease the pain and leave drugs left for the morning to get back up again.

I actually looked forward to the relief of being able to pass out from downers. When I took downers during the day, they had the opposite effect. It was a miracle! I had taken my uncles pain killers once when I was watching their house and I broke my toe. A friend at the time found out that I was taking them and offered me large amounts of money for just a few pills. I didn’t understand what was wrong with her. I just gave her some. She seemed so desperate. I would never get like that.

So began the cycle. Up and down, up and down. When I wasn’t up I felt like shit. My body ached without some drug in it. I began working for Tommy on a sales lot. I became the “liner”. One day when I was sitting in an open house, this older man came in and asked me if I had started using cocaine yet. I lied to him and said no. How would he think that, I wondered. “Just wait”, he said. “If you haven’t yet, you will”. It got so bad, I was going in the bathroom in what seemed like every five minutes to do a “bump”. I was so horrified one day, I was eating some Canadian hard mints and bit a hole through me tongue. When I went into the bathroom to try and stop the bleeding, I noticed this white crust around my nostrils. That was what was one of the first images I had in my mind of what I was becoming that would contribute to my admitting I was powerless over my disease. I viewed my self as a “coke whore”. Here I was with this older man, I was allowing to control my life with drugs and I couldn’t stop. I put up with emotional, psychic and physical abuse for many years. I couldn’t leave. He was the one who was teaching me what life was all about. Soon into the relationship, I became pregnant. I was so sick from using and the pregnancy, I thought that I was going to die. I became dehydrated from constant vomiting; using or smoking cigarettes became nearly impossible. I called my aunt Linda and asked for her help. I wanted to have this baby. I had already had an abortion at 16 years old and promised myself I would never do that again. Tommy said no.

Our “busy season” was coming up and I would be useless this way. We sold these mini-homes called park models to “snowbirds” that would come to Arizona in the winter months to escape the cold of freezing climates from the Midwest, northwest and Canada. I couldn’t work, I didn’t want to have sex, use drugs and I was getting sicker by the day. I could barely get out of bed. The crystal meth made Tommy especially mean and cruel. Instead of the up and down of cocaine, he would stay up for days at a time and seemed to get angry at the drop of a hat. It was like he changed into a different person when he used that drug. I asked him if he could take me to the doctor but he told me we could get into trouble if they tested me for drugs. Besides that, it would be a waste of time, since he wasn’t going to allow me to stay pregnant anyway. It wasn’t “good for my health”. There was not time for this. There was no way he was going to let me have this child and his taking me to the doctor or hospital was out of the question. I was pregnant and in withdrawal and it felt like I was dying. I called my moms sister who lived in Arizona over and over again and she never returned my call even though the first time I has spoken to her she told me she would help me.

My mom was gone. She had moved back to California after a short stay in Arizona and had followed her drug addict husband home after they sold me and Jeff the home my grandparents had helped them buy. Jeff and I had moved from the apartment into this house when I couldn’t afford to pay for it anymore because using drugs took up time I usually would have been producing income. My mom was gone. My aunt was betraying me. I was all alone. The solution to the “problem” was very clear; I would do what I promised God I could never allow happening again. I would have another abortion. The “season” was quickly approaching as my physical health continued to decline. As soon as I agreed, Tommy had his parents pick me up from the sales lot one day to go to the pregnancy crisis clinic to “get it taken care of”.

As we arrived, I wondered if it would be different than the last time. I had been through this before, when I was 16. I had run away from home and had been living in an apartment with my cousin in Utah. After being sent away from home at the age of 15 to live with my estranged father, I became extremely defiant. I could figure out any way to get out of rules. When I was 15 I got a boyfriend. He was older than the other boys and he like me. I was special to him. I gave up my virginity in a cheap hotel room on the El Camino Real, a cruising strip in northern California sometime in September of 1985. I like the power I felt when a man wanted me. Dan was my first “love”. He was a singer and smoked cigarettes. He was Scottish and his father had a strong Scottish accent. He would sing me songs and was already out of high school. We dated for about a year before we started having sex. He would come over to our house and play with my little brother. Since I had taken on a mother role with my little brother, by the time I was fifteen, I was already trying to find a father figure for both of us. That is probably why I was always attracted to older men. The problem was that no matter how paternal someone appeared, all of the men I was with were really just immature little boys inside. Just like many of the others to come, Dan was charming and an alcoholic.

All my closest friends had already jumped into the fire. Losing my virginity was almost like an initiation to keep up with the pack. The peer pressure was so great that by the time I finally did have sex, all my friends knew where and when it was going to happen. It was so hard for him to penetrate we had to get into the shower in the motel room. I remember hitting my head on the plastic tub enclosure when it finally happened. This was my first love and the moment I became a “real woman”. Once the first time was over, Dan expected it all of the time. He said he liked how “I was” in bed. He told me I was a natural. That was a real compliment coming from someone so experience in the area of sex. Dan always prided himself on being a lady’s man. Since he was such a lady’s man he could have almost anyone he wanted but he chose me. If he wanted me when he could have anybody he wanted, I must be pretty special. He started picking me up in his van conversion and we would go to his special spots and have sex. I was finally good at something and as long as I had that talent, I thought I had some control. I remember that warm feeling of finally being accepted and validated. I never felt accepted by my mom who was always pretty busy working or finding someone to love her. She was getting hers and I finally found mine.

When I disclosed to my mother that Dan and I were having sex and that I wanted to get on birth control she found my long lost father and sent me to go live with him. Leaving Dan and all my other friends was especially painful since I really felt like they were my true family. The click of friends I had found became the group I relied upon for my self worth and sense of belonging since I never got that at “home”. I came to believe that If I could just be pretty enough and good enough at sex, I was sure to find a man that could make my life better and the nightmare of being alone go away. When I found “him” It would just “us against the world”, like Romeo and Juliet or Bonnie and Clyde. The fantasy started early. Once I had found the one, we would start our own family and I would make sure to do things entirely different than they had been done to me. I would never pick a man over my children. I would never leave my children alone and force them to fend for themselves like my mother had done to me and my little brother.

My life became an endless string of relationships that I tried to make work no matter what the consequences. I would hang in there no matter what. I wouldn’t just leave when things got a little tough like I had seen growing up. That is exactly what didn’t happen. When one man wouldn’t give me what I wanted, I would just move on to the next. I usually had a few waiting in the background even when I was being so loyal with the one I was with. I got a weird satisfaction from having a “back up: man ironically similar to the feeling of safety I would get when I had an extra stash of whatever drug I happened to be on.

With Tommy, it was different. He took care of me. He was the strong one. With the others, I told myself that I was in control, the one calling the shots. Tommy was older and wiser. He was going to take me places. He told me, I was “worth saving”.
When Tommy’s parents and I arrived at the abortion clinic, we checked in at the reception area and had a seat. I kept fantasizing about running out through the glass door. I was so sad and embarrassed. I thought that they didn’t know I had done this before and I was too ashamed to tell them. The feeling of loathing I felt for these people was overbearing as I hated them since they were helping to kill their future grandchild. They didn’t want it, they couldn’t stand me and they only were putting up with the situation to help their son. Tommy’s entire family only tolerated me because Tommy wanted to be with me. He was twenty five years older than me and I was younger than most of his other children. I remember the shame and humiliation I felt when we were in public and it was a common occurrence for people to make comments such as;” What a beautiful daughter you have” or “Is this your father?” I began to hate being seen in public for this reason. It was better if we just stayed in and used.

When it was my turn for “the procedure” they called me back. The first thing I was handed was a valium. I was so thankful and relieved. It made me emotionally numb. Up to that point, I wasn’t sure I could go through with it. Even as I sat in the waiting room with Jim and Elna, I had maniac plans to escape before it was my turn. I was plagued with guilt and shame from the first one as each minute passed. I remember thinking that I could never trust myself again. As the valium kicked in, those thoughts and feelings slipped away and were replaced with thoughts that allowed me to justify it. At least if I was not pregnant I could use and smoke again and I wouldn’t have to feel so guilty for exposing the fetus to the drugs. That little blue pill of courage caused me to walk back through those swinging doors and get up on the table. The vacuum was turned on and I was tugged and pulled and told to push and after about 15 minutes and the sound of a bag being removed from the room, it was over. A clinic staff member rubbed my stomach and then I got up and walked back out to the waiting room. Tommy’s parents looked at me with relief an asked me; “Is it done”? I nodded and they took me home.

I don’t remember a lot more about that day. I’m sure I slept. After recuperating from the abortion for a couple of days, I began back to work. There were buyers and we needed to “get their money”. The “season” was upon us. One of the other salesmen who knew what had happened made a comment to me that I never forgot. He told me that “one day I would despise the fact that I had ever met Tommy”. He was right but I didn’t realize it for many more years. I would just stay numb.