My Story of Survival
By Tara Lynn Wood
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BEFORE CRYSTAL METH
Transitions
I seemed to have a self-destructive pattern ever since I was a teenager. My mom died of cancer when I was five and Grandma came to live with us for a few years. After she moved to Colorado, Dad said Grandma was the only one that I'd listen to regarding my health. She came to visit when I was fifteen and Dad asked Grandma to take me to the doctor because I didn't want to eat.
I had lost fifty pounds going from 130 to eighty pounds.
The doctor took an EKG and diagnosed me with Anorexia. They sent me straight from his office by ambulance up the coast five hours to the hospital that specialized in eating disorders. They said I was too weak to digest food and that I shouldn’t even use what little life energy I had to walk. I was put on an intravenous. The doctor told my Grandma that my heart could stop at any time. I drew a picture of my empty heart. It felt like I had a hole in it. (In the poem section check out my poetry entitled “A Hole in My Heart “and the see the picture telling about my feelings).
Boys didn’t have anything to do with me during my school years. I didn’t have a boyfriend in high school because I thought I was too horrific to even look at even though I had stabilized my weight. Strangers looked away when I smiled at them. Grandma said it was because they had been staring at my red hair and unique looks.
I drew this picture of me with the blue heart because I was sad I didn’t have a boyfriend when everyone else seemed to be a couple.
This was my drawing on a happy day before my drug use started. I felt lively and full of fun on the day I drew this before crystal meth.
My sister, Heather, was the outgoing one and my little brother, Mathew spent most of his waking hours dedicated to provoking me. I just cried instead of standing up for myself like Heather has always been able to do. I love Matthew and I hope he knows it now that we have grown up.
I was basically shy and sat at the back of the room alphabetically since my last name is Wood. My family encouraged me to go to college, but I had too much trouble with the basics. I was glad to kiss my education good-bye and started to work fulltime for a department store after graduating from High School.
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DRUG DAYS
I was a joke, their joke
When I started using drugs at eighteen, it was the most exciting thing I had ever experienced. I had all the energy in the world and was happy all the time. I would go to the beach and run around like a kid without a care in the world. At night I would sit up and draw what I thought to be the most awesome pictures. I just felt great! This lasted only about a month. I drew pictures of things I saw in nature like butterflies, trees, flowers, dragonflies and the ocean I love on the beach near my Dad’s home in Arroyo Grande, California.
I felt full of strength, power and energy when I painted this picture.
I drew this picture before things got so bad.
After that month of utopia, my new druggie acquaintances started stealing my things and ripped off my whole salary. I would never have dreamed that there was so much violence and chaos in the drug world. One of the druggie guys I had started hanging out with said he felt bad because they stole my rent money and I got kicked out of my apartment.
My druggie ‘friends’ always had some story (lie) why they did not have my money, or the drugs they took my money to buy. They always had ridiculous excuses about what happened to whatever was stolen from me. I was a joke, their joke. I started writing poetry to say what no one was listening to hear.
People would only hang out with me if I would get them high. They always wanted to use my car or needed a ride somewhere; yet never offered anything for my time or my gas. By that time, I thought I needed the drugs every day, to stop the hurt of loneliness and abuse. I started cutting myself to shift the pain. I didn’t even feel the physical pain because the mental and emotional pain was so intense.
Even though I did not like the druggie people, I had to pretend to because I needed to get drugs. Every day I put up with all of the madness just so I could get high and feel good again like I had felt in the beginning. Things just got worse and worse; there were hardly any good times, just chaos and confusion. My head was full of frightening images. Reality was like a picture on the wall, but I was stuck on the outside. I wrote a poem and drew more artwork to express what I couldn't say and was too numbed by the crystal meth to even feel. (Check out the poem “In Illusion” and picture of this in my poem section.)
I really didn't want to be with the guy I ended up living with. He had agreed that if I moved in with him, we would just be friends. This was another lie like many more lies that stole my innocence. He was the person who robbed me more than any of the other druggies. My new roommate said I was just playing with his head, teasing him and holding out on him. He ignored our original agreement that it was all right to be just friends. One night he started yelling at me when I was changing in the bathroom that I was just tempting him and trying to hurt him. I told him that I thought we were friends and I saw him like I did my brother. I also reminded him what we agreed when he let me move in. He broke into the bathroom. I hid in the closet, but he came in and pulled me out. I started to yell and he choked me so I let him intimidate me into being his ‘girlfriend’. Basically, it was just about sex. He didn't love me.
I drew a picture to remind me to love myself.
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ENDING THE PAIN
Scrambled and tormented
After he became my boyfriend, he started being abusive to me. He hit me and shoved me around, and was also verbally abusive. I began to feel like I was worthless. My Dad had tried to talk some sense into me ever since I started refusing to eat. My uncles, aunt and grandparents all offered homes, but I knew I’d have to go straight if I chose to take them up on their offers. I was so misguided thinking that my happiness could be found in crystal meth, drugs of any kind or from another person. My head was scrambled and tormented.
It was my birthday and I had gotten money from my Dad. I wanted to buy drugs, but my boyfriend stole my money and took off without me. I was mad at myself for letting this happen. (letting myself get robbed because I trusted him to carry my funds). Once again, he lied and said they fell out of his pocket. He took off and was gone three days. I knew he was with his cohorts enjoying the drugs they bought with my birthday money.
I had put a new blade in my razor and I was hurting so bad, it was like the pain ran out with the blood when I cut myself. I still have a scar from this time when I was frantically trying to let out the pain. I cut myself deeper than usual. I called him because I thought I might have to go to the hospital. He said I was stupid and I was just trying to ruin his night He said he wasn’t coming to help me. I just grabbed some duck tape and taped the gaping wound so it would stop bleeding. When he finally came back, he refused to even look at my scar. He yelled at me saying, “Why are you showing me that? " I felt desperate when I drew this picture of my heart wounds.
This was another turning point, because I completely replaced the cutting behaviors with art to release the pain instead of cutting myself.
I was with my first druggie boyfriend six months before he broke up with me. He told me he wanted to get sober and he was going to live at his Dad’s. He said he knew I would never get sober so I couldn’t go. He just left me at his Mom’s house. I worked and stayed sober for a couple of weeks. I had a hole in my heart because I took a piece of my heart and gave it to this deceitful person I mistakenly felt had been my boyfriend.
When I thought I was at the bottom, things got worse. A guy I had known with my ex-boyfriend called and asked me to take him to get drugs. I told him I was sober, but I would take him…. Big mistake!!!
He said there was a hit out on me because I knew too much about the drug trade on the coast. He said he would help me get free of it and get them to take the price off my head if I’d take him to these guys house. I was so innocent that I believed him and agreed to go on this fabricated errand. It was foggy and I had to stop the car that scary night. We got a motel nearby because visibility was zero on the highway.
I was violated and pinned down. He tried raping me but for some reason did not. He still told me that I needed his help to get rid of the hit. I agreed with him but, knew I needed to get away so he would not do something worse. I got dressed as quickly as I could and slipped out. As I was running out the door, he grabbed his cell and said "I am calling them to get you; they are waiting at your car in case you try leave." I took my chances, ran out to my car and took off. I thought to myself it would be better to be dead than his sex slave. After the rape attack, I was confused, lost and disoriented. I felt desperate and wiped out.
It was Christmas Eve and I couldn't find my way to my Dad’s for the family gift exchange. My cousin Cory had drawn my name and picked me out a whole bunch of scented candles for my "secret santa" gift. My family had waited for me for hours and finally my Dad put out a missing person bulletin. After rushing out of the motel, I had gone the exact opposite direction on Hwy 1 down the coast. I had been driving for three days trying to find my way home. The whole time I was thinking that there were people chasing me who were trying to kill me. I actually went into Mexico and saw a sign pointing the opposite way to San Diego. I made a “u turn” and headed back north.
I could just see me becoming a captive of some warlord until my worn dead body was finally buried in some deserted place. My family would never know what happened to me, always hoping that I would show up again someday. I guess lots of families are going through this because their loved ones are missing. Either the ‘missing ones’ just haven’t called home or maybe they can’t…
The police on the United States side of the Mexican border stopped me, and when they asked for my ID, they saw the missing person’s report. The police told me to pull my car over and come inside. I thought that this was not real that it was some sort of tv show butt, new I sould acted right just in case I was wrong. The police called my Dad while they were searching my car. My dad asked them to hold me until he could come and get me. They told him they would have to arrest me and give me a drug test. Instead of this, they said they could give me a break by leting me leave since their was nothing in my car. He told them to let me come home because he thought I wouldn’t pass the drug test and he certainly didn’t want me arrested and booked as a drug user.
The cop asked if I had money to get back. I told him, I didn’t know because I kept running my debit card through and it kept clearing, but I didn’t think I had that much money in my account. He gave me $40 out of his pocket, fed me some of the Christmas dinner they had at the station. He drew a map and sent me on my way on Christmas day. I believe there really are angels that help us in hard times. During these hard times and all the people I met and hangout with their was only two that didn't just want to use me or hurt me.
There was hope. I reminded myself to just have faith.
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INNER BATTLES
Watched
The day after Christmas, my ex-boyfriend’s Mom told my dad to come get me at their house. I had gone straight to her house after I received the map from the nice policeman. She said it wasn’t appropriate for me to live there if her son wasn’t with me anymore. My Grandma told me later that she had called Dad and told Dad her son was coming to kill me and I had to leave quickly. For some reason I was devastated that he didn’t want me. I was lost, on my own, hurt, sad and had to start living in my car.
My family tried to help me and my Uncle Ed offered for me to live with him. Uncle Kevin even stayed at the beach overnight with me trying to talk sense in my head. My cousin Cory started to use meth in order to reach me, but that only drove us farther apart. I tried to warn him of the bad things that would come from using meth. I would not hang out with him because I did not want to encourage his drug use. At the time, I did not realize that he had started using to reach me. You never really know the amount of people you hurt when you are hurting yourself. Cory is off drugs now, but he went through some hard times too.
Things got worse. I was paranoid and lived in chaos. The druggies encouraged my fears by telling me there were cameras in the showers at the campground and that my car was bugged through the speaker wires of my radio so I disconnected it. I felt like I was being spied on. (Check out my poem and art depicting this entitled “Watched.”)
Here’s a picture of my inner battle to stop doing crystal meth.
The free clinic gave me a strong antibiotic to clear it up. The physical pain stopped, but not the emotional pain and the emptiness. I still did drugs and wasn’t totally cured of the need to suffer and hurt myself. Months went by and I still had one heart hurt not really understanding why my ex hated me so much. What went so bad, why did he leave me? The heart heart started to heal and was clearing, as you can see in the progression from the first heart picture.
I drew this picture of the healing process of the wound in my heart.
I was beginning to wake up from the fairytale illusion that I would find myself in a relationship and sail off in the sunset, happy ever after. Sure I would get a boyfriend from time to time and stay with him, but when he started to do the same as my first druggie boyfriend, I would leave and live in my car again. I still didn’t have enough self-worth to require that a man treat me with integrity and dignity. I wasn’t even sure what that would be like.
I didn't respect myself so how could I get a man who would?
There was nothing fun about getting high by that time. I just did it to avoid the pain. Every day was filled with struggles to find some way to shower and get drugs. I usually cleaned up at the campgrounds before going to work.
I had another guy live in my car with me. I was still working at the department store, and he was supposed to pick me up from work one day about tw0 months later. He just didn’t show up and I was outside my work place crying for hours.
He finally answered my phone calls and I told him I was telling the police and charging him with theft if he didn’t bring my car back. When he finally came to pick me up, I threw his stuff and him out of my car and my life. Eventually, I lived for a couple of months with another boyfriend who was also on drugs, but he threw me out because he wanted to go back with his old girlfriend. I felt like a factory reject.
I hung out with another druggie who said he’d keep my money safe so noone would steal it while I was living in my car; he stole about $300 from me. Following this, I met another guy who did drugs. I drove my car into a ditch while we were doing drugs together and got poison ivy all over my arms when I crawled out of the stuck car. We had to call a tow truck. I almost got beat up by his girlfriend because she thought we were having sex.
This was the last straw. I quit my job.
The only money I had was a $300 income tax refund.
I couldn’t stand living in my car anymore so I spent most of it on rent to stay in another druggie’s apartment for a month. There were six people living there and others who hung out regularly. I was just sitting there, broke and not working, or having any money to get drugs.
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CHOICES
I was going straight
I had a choice to face; this was another life turning point. I could either start robbing people to get my drugs like everyone did to me or start stealing things to sell. I didn’t want to do that so I finally asked my Dad for help to get out. I went to my sister's in Mississippi, but that didn’t work out. She was living with her boyfriend’s family and he thought I’d get her into drugs even though I told everyone I was going straight. I had just launched my journey to get off drugs.
I felt sick and was living with people I didn’t know. I was looking for work and was unsure of my place in my sister’s world.
I made this card for my sister for Mother’s Day because I wanted her to know what a good mother she is.
Within two months. I moved to Ohio to live with my Grandma. She had been trying to get me there for a couple of years and had a bedroom waiting with a bunch of paper flowers and one special blue flower. (We both forgot what that meant from a dream I had).
I made this picture for my Grandma to remind her what she was always telling me about loving myself.
I started making composite pictures of images that I had made while on drugs. It seemed to help put it all together in my process of healing.
I got a job at a filling station, and started back to work full time, but I kept having severe pain in my side. Dad called and said the clinic in California found an abnormal pap smear when I had the bladder infection. It had resulted in an STD which had been cleared by the strain of heavy antibiotic they had prescribed, but scar tissue had formed through my Fallopian tubes. The free clinic in Dayton, Ohio diagnosed the problem causing the severe pain was an inflammatory pelvic disease and I’d have to have surgery. The doctor in the recovery room was so cold and callous when he told me I’d never be able to have children because of the damage to my female organs. I was alone when he so casually made this life altering announcement.
I felt devastated!!! I relied on art to release my pain and self-contempt.
I picked another way to abuse myself with a con man who had been in prison for six years. He stalked me, threatened and abused me emotionally. He liked to have several women to make up for lost time. My Grandma tried to get me to report these incidences to the police to make a paper trail of his intimidations and harassments, but I didn’t want to get him in trouble since he was on probation. I can see now that I really left myself in danger, by not having a tracking record filed with the police, but I was afraid of him.
Perhaps I was afraid of being alone. (Not that these men had been any comfort). I don’t know what I was looking for in them. The art was an expression of my inner turmoil. Later it became an expression of my progressive recovery.
This picture represents being torn between two decisions.
After I broke up with him, he moved across the street with his latest girl friend who he had gotten pregnant while we were dating steady. Well, at least I was dating him exclusively. I was a doormat and had a pattern of letting other people use anger and harassment to push me into choices that I didn’t want to make.
The worse outcome of my drug years was that I ended up sterile (even in 2014 I had another sugery done caues I have been in constant pain even after the first sugery that was getting worse and worse this one resulted in removal of one of my fallopian tubs and a diagnosis of endometriosis still in constant pain, sometimes I wonder if my drug use helped contribute to my endometriosis.) I lost myself trying to find love, belonging and acceptance from them. I have always wanted to have children, but that won’t be possible unless I can get the money to adopt a child. It’s really a miracle that I lived through all the close calls from driving under the influence, car accidents and violence in the drug world.
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TURNING MY LIFE AROUND
Awakening
Since I have turned my life around, I look back at those years as tragic learning lessons. I hope sharing my story will help you avoid all the pain I suffered. I continue to use art to express my feelings. Mainly I am focusing on the higher vibrations of nature and the magical worlds of fairies and mermaids.
This was my first attempt of drawing a fairy.
I’ll close my story of survival with a message my Grandma wrote me when my saga of survival began.
Dearest Tara,
Go somewhere with a decision of moving forward, rather than just leaving the place you have been. Let your future guide you from within. Be strong, firm and forthright in choices to support your own ‘greater good.’ May you always allow destiny to lead you into its awakening.