After I left Parkland, I was in a hospital in Denton. I cannot really remember what it was called. I don't think I was there very long, though. I was one of the first young patients, my psychiatrist was starting a new adolescent program. The first couple weeks I was actually on the geriatric ward of the hospital. I do remember that the wing that the adolescent unit was on was undergoing some construction. I had to go to another wing to shower and it was creepy to me. I had just read IT by Steven King and I was really scared to be over in the empty hospital wing.
When I got out of the hospital I started hanging out with some of the people that had gone to Straight and dropped out as well. I remember there was some kind of law suit going on that we were participating in. They took pictures of my arms; I don't think anything ever came of that law suit. As I said, I was hanging out with ex-straight kids and things went okay for a bit, but eventually fell apart as they always did. We started drinking and doing drugs again. We were living in Irving still and I ran away. At that point my mom couldn't make me come back b/c I was 17. I stole a bunch of stuff from the house and sold it. I had dropped out of school after finishing 9th grade at about 16 (I think?). We were spending a lot of time in Deep Ellum hanging with a bunch of punks. I ended up hanging out with a guy named Phillip who led me down a very very dark path. He was into a lot of really strange things. I let him pierce my nipple with a safety pin (what was I thinking?) I cleaned it for weeks by pouring liquor on it (brilliant, huh?) Needless to say it got infected and did not go well for me. One night riding back to the house we were going to stay at with strangers who were drunk, we got into a very serious car wreck. I have a scar on my temple still from it. We were crammed into a tiny hatch back car 9 of us. One girl cut an artery being propelled from the hatch window and coming back in (blood was spraying out of her arm), another girl never walked again, the driver and passenger got out and ran away leaving us there. I cut my head and everyone else was okay. Shortly after Phillip and I hitch hiked to New Orleans. I learned a lot of extremely disturbing behavior from Phillip. We made it to the French quarter and set out to meeting people. I drank a lot and did a lot of drugs there. It is somewhat foggy. I was there a few months and ended up engaged to a guy named Smurf. Then I went to Covenant House (a run away shelter). They helped me get back to Dallas. I wasn't back long before I decided I wanted to go back. I saved money and took a bus back. I stayed for a while and have no idea how I got back to Dallas the second time.
Around this time, my mom ended up finding a therapist who specialized in Multiple Personality Disorder. This is where things started to come together for us. They admitted me, my mother and my brother into the Bedford Meadows hospital on three separate MPD units. It is at this hospital that someone figured out that the key to the whole family was my mother. If they could get her okay, eventually we would be okay too. My brother was transferred to a hospital in Lubbock and I was discharged and went to Tennessee to stay with my childhood best friend. My mother still worked for AT&T so she had good insurance and was on long term disability so she sent money to me to live on while I stayed there. She met Jesus at that hospital and did a lot of work on her issues. I, on the other hand, had still quite a ways to go before things would change. Tennessee was pretty strange for me. I was a death rocker (what people call Goth now) and Tennessee is very, very country. I drank with all the hicks, but eventually left. Mom paid for a bus ticket back to Dallas and helped me find a room to rent. She was still in the hospital. I went to AA meetings and tried to stay sober and function. After a few months she finally got out of the hospital and we moved to Richardson. My brother got out of Lubbock too.
Oh, I forgot something important in Irving (after Straight, but before Bedford Meadows). Somehow my brother got acquainted with racist skinheads. We hung out with them for a little while. They ended up finding out that I had had physical relations with an African American person (or dozens actually), and that did not go well for me. They were going to beat me to death, not sure how I got out of that one.
In Richardson, I attended a lot of AA meetings and stayed clean for a while (maybe 6 months). Eventually I met a guy named Matthew through AA. We started having a relationship. He was a recovering heroin addict who introduced me to the speed ball (cocaine and heroin). This was my first experience with intravenous drug use, but I was always down for a new experience. I slowly got into the circle if shooters that he was acquainted with. I shot up a lot of drugs with a lot of people all using the same needles (see, I am truly blessed b/c I should have HIV, TB and hepatitis). I got tested once a year for about 7 years after I got saved before I felt safe that I was clean. Fortunately for me, I met up with some pretty hard core punks at this point also and they were very anti-needle so I migrated toward them and spent less time with the junkies. It was here I met my first husband, Squid.
Squid and I were married about 2 weeks after we met b/c we thought it would me fun. The Justice of the peace we went to was less than thrilled with us. We had a bunch of punks with us and we were all obnoxious. We all lived in a squat (an empty building). It was some abandoned apartments off of Spring Valley (they aren't there any more,:it is a self storage place now). We broke up within about a month. I actually never divorced him; I was working on the paperwork when I had been walking with Jesus about a year, but he was stabbed to death by his girlfriend in California; mutual friends told me about it. It is through this group of friends that I became a gutter punk. More on gutter punk and what follows later.
Ok yeah...that post was supposed to be here. Sorry!
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