August 23, 2019: Death & Rebirth

Please be advised before reading: Content in this article depicts scenarios pertaining to death and substance abuse and is not suitable for young children or those easily triggered. 

June 2019 and it had been a few weeks since I exited a six-year relationship. To say I was distraught would be an understatement, but I was doing my best to keep the mask on. I was moving through life in a deep slumbered state. I would wake up, tend to my three children, go to work, come home, make dinner, have a few drinks, go to bed, then wake up and repeat. It was far from the life I envisioned for myself, but there I was. 

I was working a dead-end job, and my relationship turned toxic and failed, I contemplated suicide daily but knew I had to hang on for my kids. I felt as though I was without a bigger purpose to my existence. I was an empty shell of a human, with an addictive personality disorder and emotional deregulation since childhood. A recipe for disaster within itself. 

The only purpose I ever felt during this time was Monday through Friday when my role was Mom, I held it together the best I could. I worked weekends at the time, and no one prepared me for the emptiness that came every Friday when my children went with their fathers. I did everything in my power to run from the pain that lingered inside of me. So, I drank it away, progressively turning into a full-blown alcoholic as the weeks went on. A few drinks easily turned into a few bottles at my lowest point. 

July came around. I'm in active addiction, again, as this has been a recurring theme since early adolescence. I was already so far gone, engaging in promiscuous behaviors, my performance at work dwindled, and I just didn't care anymore. I was hanging on by a thread. I had done a fantastic job of pushing everyone away and I was alone to drink as freely as I wished from sun up on Friday to sundown on Sunday. 

July 4th, I was alone, drunk, and in a state of self-wallow. Something guided me to check the spam folder in my Facebook messages. There were a few messages from people I didn't know until I came across one from an old fling from high school.

 He had been messaging me over the course of a few weeks and I was to no avail since I wasn't getting the messages. Little did I know, a simple "Hey, how are you?" response would end up opening Pandora’s Box. We ended up chatting on the phone and made plans to see each other again for the first time in over ten years. 

A week went by and it was time to hang out. I was already half a bottle in, fresh out of the shower. I messaged him that the door was unlocked and to come upstairs. There was always something about him, even in high school, that made me feel safe, so I wasn't worried about him letting himself in. I was chasing the thrill at this point, and crossing paths with him was a thrill in itself. I felt alive again. 

He walked up my stairs and I turned the corner to be greeted with his handsome face. My hair sopping wet, with no makeup, and tipsy, I chuckled at him, threw my hands up, and said "Well, this is what you get from me tonight". I finished brushing my hair and we made our way back downstairs, where I offered him a beer and we sat and talked for hours, catching up on the last ten years.  

Eventually, we ran out of things to talk about. I stood up, grabbed his hand, and we made our way back upstairs to my bedroom where we ended up hooking up. He left shortly after as it was the middle of the night at this point, and I was left to explore what the hell had just happened. 

 All of the feelings I had for him from our teenage years rushed back over me and, in a time, where I was feeling so low, he gave me this indescribable high that I couldn't help but to chase. And I did just that over the next few months. Seeking validation through every encounter with him, I was blinded by lust. 

I would see him at least once, sometimes twice a week. There were times that we would play video games, watch movies and cuddle, and just be in each other's company. In my drunken state, I never once realized I was being used. Sex has always equaled love to me, I didn't know any better and allowed it to continue even after his admission of not having feelings for me.

August 23rd, 2019 - we made plans to hang out. I had been out at the bar that night with a few co-workers for a birthday celebration and he was to come over after I got home. 6 PM, I texted him. No response. 7 PM... 8 PM... 9 PM... Still no response. He had ghosted me. I felt so angry, used, rejected, and knew I was about to go home to an empty house as it was Friday. Even if it was just sex, his company alone made me feel wanted, a burden I realized later that I put onto his shoulders. 

I get home and go straight for my bottle of Jim Beam Peach and continue drinking as I was already tipsy from going out and wanted to keep the party going. The night started to get blurry at this point. I was in a low, desperate state of existence, and any company, even if it was bad company would suffice. 

I connected back with another individual from my teenage years. Except he wasn't someone who ever made me feel safe. We would go on Ecstasy (E) benders for days on end together and the basis of our "friendship" revolved around drugs and sex. 

We chatted on messenger for a bit, where he told me he had stars. Back in 2010, stars were the best form of E you could find, usually made with MDMA and the trip from it was out of this world. There are no words to even explain it, other than ethereal. 

I called him an Uber, and he arrived at my house about an hour later. I'm already gone at this point from the copious amounts of alcohol in my system. There was no time wasted before he pulled out a bag filled with E and handed me one. Instead of swallowing it, as one does, I chewed it. 30 minutes passed and I didn't feel it, so I chewed another, then another, then a half of one. 3 and a half E pills later, I started rolling hard. But I knew deep down something wasn't right. 

I became filled with rage and told him to get the fuck out. My heart was racing, my teeth grinding... I had to be to work in five hours at this point and while it was no one's fault but my own, I felt so much disappointment as I had been sober from drugs for many years at this point.  

 All I can do is pace back and forth throughout my house. I contemplated calling 9-1-1 because my heart was beating out of my chest. I called a friend who works in emergency services for advice and he told me to try to calm down and relax. To wait for it to wear off. So that's what I did. I sat on my couch, the sun now rising, and it was officially the next day. I obviously wasn't going to work so I made sure to text my boss to let him know. Grabbed the bottle of Jim Beam and kept on drinking, like an idiot, before calling my mom and sister telling them what happened and that something is seriously wrong. 

 I hung up the phone with my sister, as she was going to call her friend who is a nurse to come to my house to stay with me until she and my mom could get to me as her friend was the closest and had medical expertise. I set my phone down, took one last swig right from the bottle, lay down, and looked up at a picture of my other sister who passed in 2013. My breathing starts to shallow, and everything goes black. 

The next thing I know, I wake up to my sister's friend sitting on the couch next to me checking my pulse. I was unsure how much time had passed, I had zero recollection of what happened after everything went black. I wasn't in the clear yet though. My sister and Mom got to my house, where I was now alert but filled with anger and rage, and all we could do was sit there waiting for this to pass and for my heart rate to slow down. It never did on its own. 

The evening rolled around, and it's now been almost 24 hours and I wasn't sobering up, and my heart rate wasn't slowing down. I looked at my sister and said, "You have to call 911, I feel like I'm going to die." 

So, she called, the police arrived first, then the paramedics. They loaded me into the ambulance and called the hospital on the way as my heart rate was reading at 174 beats per minute when they hooked me up to the monitors. The on-call trauma doctor suggested the paramedic give me medication to stop my heart to restart and reset it. I will never forget the sheer terror on the paramedics' faces when she was talking with me. The amount of worry that encompassed her filled me with regret and sorrow. 

Luckily, she did not have to stop my heart as the trip to the hospital was only about seven minutes. They rushed me in as a trauma patient and the next thing I know I'm surrounded by 10+ nurses and doctors. They hooked me up to machines and started running tests to figure out how to get my heart rate down and if any damage had been done. 

My heart was okay, I had gotten to the hospital before any damage was done. After they ran a bunch of tests, I found out the E that I chewed, was heavily laced with meth. The paramedic never left my side until she knew I was okay. I truly believe her to be an angel on earth that was sent to me that day. 

The doctor was able to give me a medicine, I can't remember what it was, but my heart rate slowly started to come down and I was monitored for the next day, leaving the hospital on Sunday, feeling like shit, not once realizing these series of events would lead to the most eye-open, pivotal moment of my life. 

I underwent a major spiritual awakening a few weeks after this event. For a few years, I blocked out what happened when everything went dark that night, which isn't surprising as with any trauma, our brains tend to block it out to protect us. 

I still struggled with addiction for many years after this happened, while navigating a spiritual awakening, and even had another severe event where I was hospitalized again in December of 2019. I took a bunch of OxyContin that I had left over from my emergency C-section in May 2018 drank two big bottles of Barefoot wine and went unconscious. 

You see when everything went dark on the morning of August 24th, 2019, I didn't know at the time that the Universe had other plans. Think of it as an intervention if you will. An intervention from Spirit to quite literally wake me up. As I progressed on my spiritual and healing path, they continued to give me clues as to what happened in that darkness. 

I felt nothing, I saw nothing, I heard nothing. Spirit put me in a holding area if you will, where I was given the opportunity to come back or move on from this life. I made the choice to stay, and they took the part of my soul that was riddled with illness to move on and replaced it with one that had the strength to help me get through my pain and trauma. One that held space for me to heal. It was a true moment of death and rebirth. 

As I sit here writing this, my body covered in chills, there are no words that can fully express what it is like to be given a second chance and be able to tell the tale of it from a place of sobriety and peace.  

I am able to take full accountability for the role I played in everything written about and more. Anyone who was described in this writing holds no fault in the severity of my addiction and I know now it was all divinely guided to lead me to where I am today. 

Happy, healthy, and in a position to help others find their way. 

This life-altering experience guided me back home to myself. It taught me that although the world may be unkind, certain lessons and people are placed in our way to teach us that we are powerful enough to overcome anything if we choose to follow our Soul. We are never alone, no matter how lonely we may feel, and angels are very much real. Waiting to be called on to help us walk a path anew.