Narrative: Final Paper

It all started one day when my dad decided to relapse. I couldn’t take him shooting up in front of my sisters and me. He used for twelve years of my life. Then when I had my sixteenth birthday everything fell apart. My grandma Marilee Hall died. That’s when my journey all began and I became an alcoholic. My dad started using everyday. I didn’t know my dad as Todd Hall. I knew him as a drug addict doing anything to get his next fix. He gave up his own family for a forty or an eight ball. Just to be high for a couple hours then he would come down from his high. He would say sorry then do it all again. Then one day gravity hit him and something tragic happened I walked in the bathroom and my dad was laying on the flour with a needle in his arm over dosing. I knew I had ten minutes to call the ambulance or he would be dead. I was in complete shock. I waited in the hospital for four days hoping he’d be okay. Drugs have ruined my life and my dads. You never know when it’s going to be too late. You can take a drug for two years then stop and try to take it again and overdose. You’re just taking a chance with losing your life when you do drugs.

I finally started falling into drugs and my old habits. After my dad started using again. I just fell apart my whole body shut down. I started self harming myself. And that’s when my dad and me started to have problems. My dad said “he wish I would of did it right the first time”. That’s when I went out and started using alcohol until one night I got a alcohol ticket. My family said I needed help so they had the cops take me to D.T on one charge. After that the judge sent me to O.A for observation. I was so lost and confused all I wanted to do was to go home with my family. It was so hard seeing my family once a weekend and not being able to leave with them.

After I went to O.A I went home it was one of the happiest days of my life. Just to finally be home again and have a home to actually go to. Then the state came in and took me out of my house. I went to rehab and that helped me get off coke and I haven’t done it ever since. Eight months being of coke will make you crazy. I still crave it to this day. But I still have a alcohol problem and that is still something im working on everyday. I’m trying to take it second by second instead of day by day. They let me out of rehab. But they said my home was too dysfunctional. They wouldn’t let me go home. I felt I did all this progressing for nothing. I was feeling really disappointed that I went through so much so I could see my family everyday. But then I couldn’t see them because they wanted me to go to a different program. I got really depressed and got back into alcohol because when I went home it was still the same and I changed and it was too overwhelming for me .Because when I was gone my parents didn’t get help. They finally decided to do something different.

They sent me into foster care on my six year old sisters birthday. I had so much hate toward the state for taking me out of my home for so long. Then taking me out again. Her and me are so close and because of foster care we were falling apart. I feel my whole family is falling apart and that it’s not making things better its just making things worse. My dad started using again once I got in foster care. I started all my old behaviors up again. I feel I’m ready to just go home. I would do anything for my family now. I would never put my friends before my family again.

After everything I have went through it made me become a better person by being more aware of my choices and how it would effect everyone around me. Because before I didn’t care about what happened or what the outcome would be. I couldn’t go an hour without taking a shot and now It’s just so overrated to me. I learned what is important to me now that wasn’t important to me a month or a year ago When you have lost everything that is important to you. That wasent a year ago then you’ll start changing. You’ll start to think if one drink is worth it for a four hour buzz. I learned that people you think are your friends there not they’ll turn around and stab you in the back just to get high. I’ve learned who my true friends are now. After everything that I’m going through now and what I went through with my dad has made me a stronger person. I know how to deal with problems that I’m faced with everyday instead of using.


Ashley