A Little Introduction Pt. 1

So my recovery speech at Beth Israel Medical Center is coming up September the 17th here in Manhattan. I’m really nervous to speak in front of 300+ people, but I know if I don’t get do something about my fear of public speaking, I’ll never get over it. Besides, I want to share MY story with the world. I’ve gotten myself out of a shitty time in my life, and I want to give other the experience, strength and hope that was so freely given to me in my time of need.

Since this is my first post, I will give you a little bit of information on me. I’m 26 years young and currently living in the Bronx, NY. I grew up in a small town called Bayonne, NJ for most of my life… until I met the man of my dreams… or so I thought! I had an OK childhood. There was a lot of fighting going on in the house and my mother was so depressed and miserable that she wanted everyone around her to be as miserable as she was. At times, I would have to beg her to make me food! I would have made it myself, but I was only 4 years old. My father was out working 3 jobs at one point just to provide for his family. My mother just stood home, on the couch, playing video games and watching TV with her dog. She didn’t work, she just collected child support from her ex-husband for my brother Philip and sister Danielle. My mother was aaaaaaaaaaalways fighting with my Daddy. I hated it. It made me depressed at such a young age. I was always so sad because I wanted them together and happy, but happy was a feeling my mother didn’t know. One day I woke up from a nap to my mother screaming and my father with a knife to his stomach and my father was up against the wall and I didn’t know what to do or how to react.. I didn’t want to call 911 because than my mother would get taken away, but I really thought she was going to kill him. I screamed and cried and pushed my Mom away from my Dad.

So yeah… things were rough for me as a kid, I guess. No child should ever go through what I went through. All my life, I’ve been looking for love in all the wrong places. I hung out with the wrong crowd because I thought they were really my friends and there for me, which ended up to not be true at all. I started using at age 11. It started with marijuana and angel dust. My cousin asked me to hang out with him so I went over to his house and we ended up smoking pot and doing drugs. I wanted to fit in so bad, so I did it. I started smoking marijuana on the regular… and drinking alcohol too. It became and everyday thing soon enough. The people I used with ended up gang raping me in Jersey City. Ugh it was terrible. I had to go to the hospital and they did a rape test on me.. as if I wasn’t violated enough, I had doctors sticking things in me to get DNA. They also put me on HIV medications just in case I did get infected it would slow the virus down. Thank Christ I didn’t catch anything!! This was around the time I met my soon to be sons father, Jacob. He was 19 and from Newark. I met him on MiGente.com in 2001, but we didn’t start actually seeing each other until 2002. I fell head over heels for that man! I could swear it was love at first sight. Little did I know it was going to be a nightmare. In the beginning everyone told me not to go for him… he wasn’t good for me. I’m stubborn and had to learn on my own. I was SO blinded by love, that when he held his .38 snub nose revolver in his hand and said he was going to kill his son Nathaniel’s mother, I was right along with him, ready to back him up. I never thought that he would ever be violent towards me. He wasn’t in the beginning at least. We had our first son May 29th 2004. We named him Jeremiah. It was love at first sight when I first held him in my arms. It’s strange, but I was 16 when I had him, and I knew exactly what to do. Those motherly instincts kicked right in!! So did the violence. I asked Jacob to change Jeremiah.. he was so angry that I kept asking him he grabbed me by the throat and lifted me up in the air. I ran off. I didn’t call the police. I was too scared. I didn’t even leave him. He cried and cried and said how sorry he was and that it would never happen again. Well it did. Quite a few times to be exact. My drinking got heavier and heavier, and fights got worse and worse. I ended up in the hospital a couple times. I couldn’t leave. I had no job, no education… and a baby. I needed a place to stay and I needed help with my son. My mother wasn’t there to help and neither was my father because he was incarcerated. I felt alone. It was okay though…. the alcohol was there for me. I thought it was helping but it was slowly killing me…

I’ll finish this later. I didn’t realize this was going to be this long. I want to be honest with my readers. You’re not alone… if someone who is going through something similar, I want you to know there IS a way out. People aren’t always out to get you. There are people who care. I care. I wish I had the money to start some type of organization to help women in need in similar situations.