Beginning Of The End...

As the winter months approach, it seems I have become burdened, more and more, by despair. I don't know if maybe it is simply my deep loathing of the frigid season or if it is the rapid changes and death surrounding me. It is quite possible that the weather has no bearing on my moods of late and trying to pinpoint an actual reason behind it all is redundant at most. Thinking further on it, I have felt my state of mind slowly declining in recent months---even more so in the past few weeks. I wish there were words to accurately describe the innate darkness, looming in the farthest reaches of my mind; alas, justice cannot be done to such astronomical cloudiness.



For all intents and purposes, I guess I could lend some explanation in regards to the gibberish spewing forth from my thoughts. Firstly, I should say that I became privy to the steady degeneration of my psyche as early as mid-summer. In fact, it may have even begun earlier than that, but with the mass amounts of changes taking place in my life at the time, I wasn't aware of anything pertaining to my own well-being. Actually, I can pinpoint my downfall to an exact date, now that I think about it. January 1st, 2009. The beginning of a new year and the end of my life as I knew it.



It all began, as most tragic youth tales do, with an excessive drug habit and copious amounts of alcohol. My memory on the matter remains, to this day, blurred by the booze that flowed more freely through my veins than blood that night. I remember the beginning of the night quite clearly. Friends and friends of friends all sitting together in the small house's living room, chatting happily about nothing and everything---rehashing the past year's events. I sat quietly on my designated couch cushion, nursing my 6th cocktail of the night, listening to the chatter around me. Not being a fan of large crowds or loud noises, I was more withdrawn than usual that night. Left to my own devices, I consumed more alcohol than should have been allowed, in order to deal with my uncomfortable surroundings. The only time I was acknowledged was in the event of various liquor shots being passed around---none of which I refused, though, thinking back on it, I probably should have.



As the night progressed, the living room began to clear as people either wandered around the house and/or yard or danced drunkenly to the bass-polluted music. I remained on my cushion. My boyfriend at the time visited me periodically, to check that I was still conscious, and several of the younger drunk girls tried coercing me into dancing (which I politely declined at every opportunity). I was content in sitting by myself, drink in hand. As it neared midnight, people began to congregate in the small room once more. By this point, I was already so intoxicated that the mass amounts of people crowding my personal space seemed impertinent. It no longer bothered me that strangers were continually touching random parts of my body. That is, until just after midnight, when one of the drunker girls decided to lock me in what she assumed to be a passionate, sexually charged kiss. In reality, it was more of a sloppy exchange of booze-soaked saliva and desperate grabbing.



That was when the night began to blur. Angry yells came raining down in masses, as people watched me push the girl off of me. Granted, I may have been rougher than intended, but because of my near comatose state, I was completely unaware of the strength I was using. The loudest of all these yells belonged to two people: my boyfriend and the young girl's love interest. I tried desperately through slurred words to explain the situation as clearly and as calmly as possible, but amidst all of the ruckus caused by the young girl's show of ill-placed affection, no sense was being made of anything, and the situation simply escalated. By this point, I figured that shutting my mouth would be in the best interest of everyone involved, so I grabbed the two nearest drinks to me, and downed them both in record time. It became evident, within mere minutes, that one of the cocktails I had so eagerly ingested was more than just whiskey. The room began to spin in a way not at all related to my blood-alcohol levels. Apparently, the toxic combination of pills that had been put into the drink were not meant for me. In fact, that amount of narcotics mixed with Jack Daniels should never have been meant for any human being with hopes of being alive 12 hours after ingesting them.



To be entirely honest, I am not sure how I managed to live through the night, let alone get myself into the world of trouble that I managed in my completely obliterated state. After the following events of that night, I almost wish the drugs had gotten the best of me. It was at this juncture of the evening that I blacked out. I remained conscious, but I can't remember a damn thing. All that I can recall is that the yelling continued and that I ended up outside in the cold, coat-less and with only one shoe just barely on my foot. How I even managed to get my foot that far into the shoe is beyond me, but it seems I was able to do a lot of things that should have been impossible. What took place then, as previously mentioned, completely escapes my memory. I am only able to piece it all together with the bits of the story relayed to me by the people that were present, and even then, I don't know how reliable their accounts are.



This is what I was able to come up with: After storming out of the house (most likely because of all the screaming taking place), my boyfriend attempted to follow me as I made a sad effort at walking---stumbling, rather--- home. Lord knows, I never would have made it back alive, but in my condition, I must have been convinced that it was a good idea and that it was going to happen, one way or another. My boyfriend grabbed my arm, and began to pull me back toward the house party. Some say that when this happened, I lost my mind, and I am tempted to believe it. Apparently, after he took hold of my wrist, I turned on him and became extremely violent. Being both higher and drunker than I'd ever been in my life, I must have gotten it in my head that I was being attacked because I fought back with the fury of someone trying to survive. There are a few moments that were clear during the fight. I remember the blood, the terrified look on his face, and the fist coming toward mine. My body went into over-drive, and I continued to lay siege on the man in front of me. Then darkness...everything went black. My body must have finally succumbed to the war the toxins were waging on my system.



I awoke several hours later, but I was not where I remembered last being. Though very cold, I was no longer outside. Instead, I was laying on the stone floor of a jail cell, covered in blood. I was terrified. Not for being in a police station, but because I thought I may have killed someone. That is the only thing that could explain that amount of blood. As it happens, it was a mixture of mine and my boyfriend's. Apparently, the fighting had not stopped when I blacked out. He and I had continued to beat on each other for nearly 20 minutes after I left reality. By this point, some of what had happened was slowly coming back to me, and I began to cry. I was so worried that he was hurt. Then I heard his voice coming from the cell next to mine. Relief shot through my body, giving me the strength to stand up.



Once the police officers realized that I was awake, they came to my door and unlocked it. They lead me to a desk not far from my temporary bed. They asked me to sign a handful of documents and released me. I was escorted home in a cruiser that had blood all over the backseat. I wonder, to this day, if maybe that was the same car that had brought me to the station earlier that morning. When I got back to my house, my body finally came out of shock, and in place of the worry and confusion came searing pain in ever fiber of my being. My face was the worst off. It looked as though a train had hit me. My nose was broken, as was my eye socket, and my bottom lip was split deeply down the middle. The first thing I did was run to the room where my boyfriend was sleeping to make sure he was alright. He told me that they had released him about five minutes before me. After being reassured that he was okay, I fell into a two-day long coma-like sleep. I probably should have been hospitalized, but when given the option, I was too concerned with getting to my bed.



When I awoke on January 3rd, I reached into my jacket pocket for a cigarette, and in place, pulled out copies of the documents I had signed with the police. When I read them, it suddenly dawned on me that I had been criminally charged. This, above all, caused me the most grief. I had spent my whole life avoiding a criminal record, and in one night, all of my efforts went down the toilet. Along with the paper that basically ruined my life as I knew it, was another one, stating that I wasn't to be within 100 feet of my boyfriend. This was ridiculous! Had I known this to be the case, I never would have signed on the dotted line. As it happened, we were living together, so being any distance part was virtually impossible.



A month passed after the incident on New Year's Day, and we had both almost forgotten the situation. That is until a knock on the door brought it all back. I answered the door, wearing a pair of blue plaid boxer shorts and a white tank top. As soon as I opened the door, I was bombarded by three police officers. I was handcuffed and brought upstairs where they roughly shoved me into a pair of jeans and threw a jacket over my shoulders. I was escorted to the courthouse, shortly thereafter. I sat in the basement cell for several hours, awaiting my fate, which came as no surprise---jail time. I was charged with three counts of breach of bail---a bail I had no idea I had agreed to.



Later that day, I was brought to the correctional facility that would become my home for the next fourteen days. I'd write about my experiences while incarcerated, but I would much rather skip over that part, as it was probably one of the worst two weeks of my life. I didn't know what was going to happen to me. I was so new at the whole criminal thing. I wasn't hurt in jail; in fact, I was taken under everybody's wings. I was the youngest girl there---the second youngest being 27. After my release, a fortnight later, I returned to my boyfriend's house (probably the dumbest thing I could have done). Upon my return, I fell heavily into a dangerous speed addiction. I had been using off and on for about a year, but after being locked up, I wanted to do all I could to forget the previous two months.



I was averaging 30 pills a day, and I was hardly sleeping or eating. I slowly felt my sanity slipping away. Two weeks after my release, I was arrested again. This time for attacking someone with a gun. Though I and the few people I was with knew it was completely in self-defense, the police saw it differently, and after arresting me with 36 assault-rifles pointing directly at my vital organs, I was thrown in jail, once again. This time, I was in for twenty-one days. My relationship with my boyfriend came to an end, and my drug use picked up ten-fold. Upon being let go for the second time, I went to live with a friend I had met while serving time. As it happened, her and I became great friends, but were both on separate paths of self-destruction, so were not the best people to have living together. She started out as an alcoholic, but with me around, picked up my pill addiction.



We both became violent and completely unable to reside together. I left after about two weeks of living with her, and after spending one night with another friend of mine, I decided to call my mom and go home. I knew that if I continued down the path I was on, I would have ended up dead before long. She and her boyfriend came and picked me up that night and brought me back to their house. I began working on my addiction problems, but they still had a very strong hold on me. Things broke down very quickly at home, as my mom's boyfriend and I were never able to see eye to eye. I left not long after arriving.



I spent three months couch-hopping before returning to live with them. The whole time I was sober, I was battling the deep regret and misery that came with losing my relationship with my boyfriend. For six months I cried my heart out for hours on end, wanting nothing more than to be with him. I was miserable and barely functional. I was in such a deep state of depression that I never thought I would escape from it. As time passed, I slowly recovered from the loss of love and from the events that took place for the greater part of 2009, but I am still haunted on a daily basis by all that happened. I lose sleep over it constantly, and it greatly affects my emotional state.



I do my best to hold it in, for the sake of those around me, and it is becoming slightly easier to deal with, but I figure that the memory of what happened almost a year ago is what has me so frazzled of late. I guess it is, in some small way, the cold weather that is causing me to feel so morose. The chill in the wind is much reminiscent of the one that coursed through my veins as I laid on the cold marble floor of the jail cell. I know that I will never allow myself to make a mistake as drastic as the one on New Year's, but it is still etched in my mind, and I still can't believe that my life has taken the turns that it has. Ah well, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger, right? I've managed to lead a fairly normal life since, but I am still dealing with the charges and cannot wait for it all to be over. I want my life back!