It was July 15, 2003. I had been up for about five days now. For the past three months I had been high. A drug they called “Ice” had been beckoning my name since that first hit. My roommate was sleeping. There was a knock at the door. It was someone that came by regularly; he really had no home and we often shunned him away, but this time I let him in. He proceeded to take out some marijuana and roll it into a cigar paper. At first I was hesitant. During my days of doing “ice,” I told everyone I refused to smoke that sort of thing because it made me too nice. This would ruin the facade of being hard-core I had kept up since I moved into that place. Reluctantly, I agreed.
A short time later I felt strange. As if I did not trust this guy. And it was nagging at me to get him out of there. I called a dealer and confidant we had been in touch with. I called him “Tiny Tym.” He talked me into driving over there. He sensed my panic and felt that maybe I needed to re-up on the ice and I would be fine. We smoked and smoked and smoked it until the early morning hours. Around 4:15 a.m. we went out to the steps and looked at the moon. He was someone I looked to like a brother. He expressed to me how he felt like he was old. And he was a bad person. I reassured him that he had a big heart and that he was not bad, but he kept insisting on this.
Around 7:00 a.m., he and a friend asked me if I wanted to take a drive with them to Rockwall. The friend’s girlfriend lived there. Normally, I stayed indoors as much as possible when I was high, but this time I agreed. I even consented to driving them in my car. Within minutes of leaving, I realized I was not in the shape to drive so I pulled over and let “Tiny” drive. The entire way I felt very strange. I had this sense of “reading between the lines” of everything they were saying. In some strange way, I was enlightened on the events that were going to take place over the next few hours. A tape was played . . . there was a song “Third Wish,” which I had heard many times before. It was a song about someone losing their life in the drug world, and coming back for revenge. And for their third wish they wanted all of the pain to stop. As soon as it ended, I screamed for them to pull the car over. The worst feeling I ever had in my life came over me at that moment. It was only then that I realized there was a shotgun in my trunk. I just knew this friend of his was going to kill me.
I looked up and we were stopped on the side of the interstate and the sign which was about fifteen feet ahead read “Fate City Limits-Population 373.” It was at that moment that I began pleading for my life. I begged for them not to hurt me. Someone I had trusted for three months who was supplying me with free drugs, suddenly was my worst nightmare in a sense. But strangely he was giving me a message. He was telling me in some sort of distorted way (at least from my perception’s point of view) that I had made this choice in my life and now I was going to have to suffer the consequences. I plead with God at that moment. I remember saying over and over again, “Lord forgive me!” This was not something I expected to say.
One month earlier I had converted to Wicca. The entire ritual ceremony of being consecrated, five fold kisses, athames, and oils candles and such. Somehow I had walked away from God after being raised in the church . . . My own father was a pastor until I reached the age of 13 or 14. This idea of being a solitary “witch” seemed to allow me to accept all of the wrong I was doing and continue on the path of destruction feeling that if I harmed no one else, I was O.K. In earlier times, I would have cringed at the thought of being around anything of the such. But in this world of drugs and madness, it was O.K.
Tiny was actually the person who gave me a gift of the Bible about two weeks after my “ceremony.” I felt in my mind during all this madness, that he was somehow trying to help me by showing me if I did wrong I would have to pay. Somehow strength rose from within me and I allowed them to drive a little further. Until the friend in the back . . . whose nickname was “Wood,” said – “There’s no cops in Rockwall . . . you can yell forever and they’d never hear you.” I pretended to be OK and said I was ready to drive again. Tiny let me back in the driver’s seat and as soon as I took over I pulled off at a small fruit stand that was abandoned on the side of this narrow two-lane road. I turned the car around and said, “We’re going back.” I kept thinking . . . this will not be my Fate. And there I was, literally . . . in Fate, TX. They got very angry and made me stop the car. I braced myself for what was about to happen. They demanded that I open the trunk and the guy in the back kept calling me all kinds of obscenities. I closed my eyes and prepared myself for my final breaths. I remembered Christ’s final words on the cross and I repeated them out loud. When I opened my eyes I had a peace over me and I looked at Tiny . . . I begged him to come back with me and not stay with that guy but he said I have to stay . . . but you go and get help. With one foot on the gas and one on the brake, I looked into the rear-view mirror and there they were walking in the opposite direction, a rifle on their backs.
I cried to God for the entire drive back to Arlington . . . trying to figure out where I was going to go. I made the wrong choice again. I went right back to the apartment where my roommate was and was preparing to forget about what had happened. I thought maybe if I got high enough . . . I would forget. That wasn’t God’s intention for me though. The entire day I was paranoid. I kept thinking in my own distorted way that these people were going to kill me. I cried and cried, tried to sleep and woke up more paranoid than before. The night went on and suddenly I became this nice person to everyone around me trying to tell them that they were killing themselves spiritually. I had been so mean to everyone before and they literally thought I had gone crazy. In my mind, though . . . I was perfectly sane. I saw raw truth and it scared me to death. Even though no one else understood . . . I KNEW this was real. My roommate and I got into it and at 11:45 I left everything, got in my car and drove . . . with the intention of driving back home to Arkansas – safely to my father’s and I figured I’d get back and pretend it never happened. That wasn’t in the plan either.
Somehow I got lost and ended up going in the opposite direction. As I drove I looked at the exit signs . . . 15 . . . 14 . . . 13 . . . 12 . . . and at each one a moment of my life flashed before my eyes . . . the wrongs I had done, the people who had died. I knew at any moment my life was going to end. In a panic I pulled off at exit 3. I pulled into a restaurant and it was closed. Out of nowhere, a cop car appeared. He asked me if I was O.K. and I said, “No, Sir . . . I’m Lost.” And that was exactly what I was. The next thing I knew . . . I was telling him I was sorry for lying but that I had been on a three-month drug binge and I needed help. He asked me to sit in my car and he would call an ambulance. I did as he asked. I remember the car being so hot . . . I couldn’t breathe. I had never been so thirsty in all my life. My clothes which had fit me well three months before now hung off of my body as if they were made for a man three times my size.
The ambulance got there and I remember the two of them well. They were dressed in white and burgundy and gold. The gentleman helped me in and asked if I was OK. And I was actually smiling. I felt safe. The lady held my hand and told me it would be OK. I remember telling her I wanted to be a nurse one day and she said, “You will be.” I kept asking for water, and they told me they had none. They took my vitals . . . I distinctly remember looking up and seeing all zeroes on this machine that was supposed to show a pulse and blood pressure and such. They told me the battery may have been messed up but I never saw any numbers show up on that thing. The lights were bright inside and began to flicker . . . switching from almost complete darkness to a blinding light. I tried hard to remember all the personal information they were asking me . . . name, D.O.B., SS#. The man asked if I needed to go to the hospital or if I needed to get help. I told him I needed help.
He took me to a place called “John Peter Smith Hospital.” When we arrived he took me to the 10th floor and asked me to sit in a chair . . . and no matter what . . . not to leave the waiting room, nor listen to the people that were begging me for money and drugs. I felt I was in God’s Waiting Room. I wondered when the nurse would come out of that door and take me to my judgment. It scared me . . . I knew if I were to see God, I wouldn’t be ready. So I took the elevator down to the first floor. Once there I realized I had made a mistake . . . I tried to go back up the elevator but the highest it would take me was the 3rd floor. I had my choices . . . the basement, which in my mind I believed to be hell itself – the first floor – the second floor – or the third. I knew I had blown my chance and would never see that 10th floor again. I looked around for a door out but they were locked . . . I made my way to the chapel . . . there was a phone there and I called for a pastor but no one ever came. I sat there for an hour or so praying and praying. I left and the only thing I knew to do was pull the fire alarm. As soon as I did, a police officer came. I was crying and confused . . . I told him I just needed help and that I didn’t know what was going on or who I was or why I was here . . . I kept telling him how sorry I was and that I just wanted to make things right. I repeated “I’m sorry” it must have been a million times.
He took me back to the 10th floor, when I got there . . . the waiting room was peaceful. Before there were 30 or so people with distorted faces that reeked of odors. This time there was one couple in there besides myself. And I finally located the water fountain . . . I must have stood there 10 or 15 minutes drinking as much as I could. I made a call to Tiny who said he was coming to get me . . . not to go back with the doctor . . . just to go back downstairs and wait on him. At that precise moment the doctor came to the door. I walked to the trash can and threw my car keys in them and proceeded to walk back with the doctor. We interviewed for 30 minutes or so . . . her asking me many questions. She was about to release me before she asked me one more question . . . She asked me if I ever felt like I was going to hurt myself and I told her yes. At that moment I was admitted voluntarily.
I questioned my fate . . . I wondered what was going to happen next. I kept hearing of a place called Millwood – that all the people that seemed evil ended up going to. And then another place called Potter’s Garden – that all the people who were so nice to me seemed to be taken off to. These were later found out to be psychiatric hospitals. But at the moment to me . . . this was heaven or hell. I spent three days and three nights in a place that could in my mind be the closest I could come to Hell. I felt the heat, sensed the anger of people around me; they sneered at me and I felt they talked about me; I wouldn’t go to sleep for fear that I wouldn’t wake up. Boils had appeared on my arms. I’d cry and cry and cry wondering when God would tell me which one it was going to be . . . Heaven . . . or Hell. Every time Id get upset, I would go to the chair by the fire extinguisher . . . and take paper and pencil and write the 23’d Psalms over and over and over and over. Finally, after all the agony and voices and paranoia . . . they told me I would be able to leave soon. I told them I was alone in Texas . . . had no family there . . . so I was preparing myself to go to a homeless shelter. I was willing to start all over again from the ground up. I didn’t want to burden family or ask anyone for help . . . I knew that this time I had to do it by myself. Out of nowhere my father came. He drove 6 hours to come rescue me out of this Hell I was in . . . the man that I felt I had let down so many times, the man that I thought didn’t love me anymore was there in the midst of all of this to take me back into his home again and help me get back on my feet. When no one else cared but God, he was there.
After experiencing all of this there were moments that I wondered whether I should tell anyone. I knew they would think I was crazy and sometimes I even thought I was crazy myself. Over time God showed me what all of this meant. I literally had to be born again and start again like a baby up. One year later I am happily married to a wonderful man, am financially stable, work as a home health care aide for the elderly, and have received grants to go to school . . . FOR FREE!
What may seem like an illusion to some is a reality to others. You just have to open your eyes and see all the things that God has put before you. Without Him I don’t know where I would be today . . . I may have never left that city of Fate.