By Shelby R.
I was born in Virginia in 1991. My sister was born shortly afterwards. My parents separated when I was three years old and later divorced.
I remember being a fairly normal kid. I didn’t see either of my parents as much as I would’ve liked, but I had a very close relationship with my sister and grandmother.
In 1999, my father remarried. He and my stepmother had a son. In 2001, my mom remarried a man who had two kids from a previous marriage.
It was definitely hard to adapt to all of these changes. I remember feeling left out at times. When I look back, I see that time as the beginning of my escape into my head. I taught myself to space out as an alternative to dealing with what was going on.
I excelled in school from an early age. Learning came easy to me. I had one really good friend in 4th grade; she was my best friend up until I left Virginia about 13 months ago.
Life was never bad but I felt out of place. I started trying to connect with different cliques. I tried being “preppy” in middle school but I hated the shopping, and the “preppy” kids didn’t like Julie, my best friend, very much so I gave up on that.
The summer before high school I started hanging out with a guy. He was a little older than me and he was a “punk.” I was attracted to his dark and somewhat controversial lifestyle. My mom had always been very active in church and in a sense I was just waiting for an opportunity to rebel. In the ten months I dated I lost my relationship with my mom, my sister, and my own self-respect because my boyfriend was verbally and physically abusive. My grades dropped, I became secretive, manipulative, argumentative, and antagonistic when the subject of religion would come up. I hated life and often thought it was meaningless. My boyfriend also introduced me to drugs and alcohol.
I made some new friends and we were essentially each other’s demise. My sophomore year was a blur of drug and alcohol abuse, skipping school, sneaking around and promiscuous interactions with nefarious characters. About a month before summer break my parents intervened and sent me to a short-term in-patient program followed by a three- month wilderness experience. Boarding school didn’t really work out after wilderness so I was sent to live with my dad.
Within a few months I was back to smoking pot and drinking though I wasn’t using hard drugs yet. I was lying and manipulating again. I hated everything and felt meaningless. I started seeing a psychiatrist and tried antidepressants along with self medication. I was back to hard drugs with a wider variety and higher doses than before. By the end of 11th grade I was back in a program. That summer I started hanging out with old friends. Though I wanted to stay sober, I was using again in a few weeks. My mom tried to help me get sober and was drug-testing me regularly, but you can’t help a liar. One morning I stumbled home after sneaking out again. She looked into my dilated pupils and told me to pack my things; I was off to rehab once more. I came home with a plan to do ninety meetings in ninety days and set myself up with sober people and an out-patient facility in my area. I was going to meetings, but getting rides from my using buddies. Once again, I was using.
My life continued on like that for the rest of the summer and into the school year. I would use and get sober then use once more. Finally, two weeks before graduating program number seven, my parents told me I would not be going home. In October 2008, I arrived at The Family Foundation School.
I did really well at first and was a junior sponsor when I was here five months. Because I hadn’t really done any work on myself, however, I began to give in to negativity and was soon involved in various negative contracts. At the end of June I was caught helping my sponsee run away, along with making alcohol and having negative contracts with guys. In a forty-minute table topic I went from junior sponsor and “senior member” to double shadow, work sanction, dress down, blackout with everyone in the school, family blackout, blackout with the kitchen, and quite a few personal blackouts.
I was determined to leave on my upcoming birthday and once again I had a bad attitude and my grades were slipping. To my own surprise, my sanctions helped me. Work sanction taught me to take pride in my work and that meaning can be derived from the little things. I learned to talk about what I was feeling when I was feeling it, and the physical work helped to get me out of my head. From family blackout I learned that I can’t have my drugs and my family too; I have to choose.
It is now three months later, I have stayed past my birthday and I have good relationships with my parents and my friends here. I have some trust and some responsibilities in the family and this time I actually did the work to earn it. Being here is still hard at times but I have learned skills that keep me here, one day at a time. I still deal with feelings of hopelessness and meaninglessness, but I know I’m not alone and I find a lot of meaning and fulfillment in the friendships I have made.
Some advice I would like to offer is take advantage of your time here. Whether you are here for drugs or attitude, or because your parents made a gigantic mistake, there are so many things you can learn here. Meet people, get involved, have fun and don’t waste time. Now that I’ve discovered these things, life is good and I rarely think about leaving.
From Grillin’ to Chillin’
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