Part 2:

I was 20 years old, reeling from the trauma of the weeks before. I lost my grip on 'reasonable' usage of the meth, I know that at first it was because I wanted to forget. I have a hard time recalling the exact moment I went of the deep end into a pit of darkness, I do however remember we have to go backwards to move forwards.

The year was 2000 I was 16. My life was fairly normal. Divorced parents, but good parents. I worked at the local pizza place answering phones and sometimes making pizzas. It was at this point I believe I met one of my best friends, he was like a brother to me. Little did I know the giant role he would play in my life, for so many years. His best friend is who this next bit is about however, a guy I had known most of my life. He thought he was all that and more, gods gift to women. I laughed his raunchy jokes and sudden grabs at my ass off when I was younger. Looking back I realize just how gross it was for a 30 year old man to act like that with a 16 year old girl.

However it was him who stayed night after night and day after day while I waited for the safe feeling to come back. It was him that made me eat and sleep, even when I fought it. It was him who watched my daughter while I worked. It was him that caught my shattered self in his web.

It wasn't a long romance, but it was a roller coaster. We started sleeping together one night while he was staying to make feel safer. He started to abuse me, waste money, mentally torment my daughter. We bounced around a bit... 5 homes in 8 months, one of which was my grandparents.

I found out I was pregnant not to long after the abuse started to get to its peak, already 5 months along and terrified. His bursts of irrational anger were brought suddenly and with no warning. I had quit the drug for the time... but he just did both our shares. While I worked carrying his child he got high and played video games. It wasn't long before we got evicted because my monthly pay wasn't enough to keep up. We lived with friends off and on, in the car sometimes. Even in a hotel for 2 months. We moved in with his best friend, the big brother guy and his wife about then. We stayed there for a month or so, until they too had to move on for family issues.

I have to pause here because I have forgotten an important detail in our story. The big brother guys wife had over the years become like my sister, my best friend, my ride or die. We were two peas in a pod. I loved her more then anything.

Back to our story now, when they moved we moved in with my grandparents, closer to my obgyn and closer to the hospital. Now is where things hit rock bottom. He was insane I slowly realized as I became sober. It was not just the drug... As I prepared for our sons arrival he got more and more irrational, accusing me of the most ridiculous thing... I was cheating on him, I couldn't do anything right. Backhands to my face as to not injure the baby came multiple times a day. Mostly for nothing, sometimes it was something as simple as a towel I folded wrong.

The day he tried to talk big and tough to my mom and grandmother was the day I realized just how much trouble I was in. He would show his inner monster to anyone. Our son was born 11 days before I tuned 21... one month later he decided we were moving to Kansas to become drug dealers...

What actually happened... he and a friend smoked it all, I may have helped at little when I had alot to do. We ended up in a seedy motel on the side of the highway. No way home, no way to move forward. It was while we slept nervously in a room that looked in need of repairs and full of pests, using a bus to go shopping that he landed the job that gave me room to get away, if only for a little while.

He left me and my 2 children in that scary motel, to go hang grocery signs in another state. $25 to my name, hungry and stressed I bought food and used the remaining $3 for a scratch ticket. Back in our room as the kids slept I scratched it and won.

$5000 sat in my fingers... I flew into action figuring out how to cash it a large ticket and get back to Colorado. The next afternoon the kids and I boarded a bus bound for Denver. We arrived and got a cab to our hotel... It had been alot nicer in the pictures. I didn't care though. 2 or 3 nights went by in peace. It was the 4th night a pounding on the door to our room woke me up, looking at the clock I saw it 2 am. Opening the door dumbly without looking first I stumbled backwards as he came shoving his way through. "YOU TOOK MY KIDS" His words cut like knifes as he grabbed my throat and threw me onto the empty bed. "Do it again and I will hunt you down and kill you." he said his grip getting tighter and tighter until I thought for sure he would leave a bruise this time.

That night I snorted an 8 ball of meth in the hotel bathroom, I wanted to feel numb. Two weeks later he had only grown in anger and violence, even screaming at my daughter, 3 at the time for having an accident. "Next time I will smack you with this fly swatter" he growled at her. My brain clicked and my heart broke that day.

I made the hardest choice I had ever made that night. The next morning I called my mom before getting ready for work. " He is going to kill one of us, I need you to no questions asked come get the kids, keep the kids until I can get my life right. Keep them safe" I blurted it out as she picked up, not even giving her time to say hello. She agreed, with tears in my eyes as I type this I confess, It was never right. By the time I had a life they would have been safe in it was too late, they had friends, clubs, school. Who was I to demand they give it all up for me.

At some point he figured out my mom was keeping the kids... I was at work, a waitress a huge play and eat arcade and bar. He came onto the dining floor steaming and looking for a fight. He used his classic move and using my throat held me to a wall... His mistake here would cost him dearly...

I never had a chance to call for help before the biggest bar tender there had him in a headlock on the floor, police filling the dining room. In his pockets they found enough drugs to take him away without the charges they added for my well being.

Again my nightmare seems to be ending, alas that night I found booze, not that I had never drank it just had never been a drinker before. That night though the shots kept calling my name... I had lost everything that day.. my kids, my sons father... my home after the hotel manager found the damage he had done. I drank away my pain.

For the months that followed I barely survived life... In a tiny apartment, high or drunk on whatever I could find. Lonely and broken. I lost two jobs before hitting rock bottom. Ending up again in the home my grandparents had lived in for 13 years. To add insult to injury I was placed not down in the privacy of the basement but in the room I had occupied as a child.