KIMBERLY
PHOTO BY RANDY BACON
KIMBERLY
“I Have Strength”
It started out in 2004. That’s when I got with my ex husband, not my son’s father, another ex. I made a lot of excuses for him. He had a bad addiction. For 8 years I was totally against what he did. I was always chasing him down to places where I would catch him getting high. Finally I thought, “What’s so good about this? If I try it, maybe he’ll want to be with me.” So I stepped over to his world.
From there, things just got worse. I can remember times when he would get mad at me if I wouldn’t give him money to go buy dope. I can remember him putting my head through a wall and punching me in the head, and me landing on top of my son. So many different stories, and I kept going back.
There were times I would catch myself using, just to numb the pain of what he was doing. When I tell you this, I don’t want you to think I’m justifying anything, because I’m not. I know that I made terrible choices. I obviously have to pay for that for the rest of my life. It’s definitely not anything I’m proud of. I was with my abuser for 15 years. We got married and then divorced, and then back together. I almost remarried him again.
When I got into addiction, terrible people came along with that. People that my ex introduced me to. I saw things that confirmed they were terrible people. They were scary. Things were getting scary. I decided that I wanted to get away from them. I knew I needed to get away.
I called and made arrangements with my son’s father to meet me to pick him up, because these people were making threats. It was getting nasty. I took my son to stay at a motel to get away. A man came to the motel and acted like he was trying to look out for me. I was an idiot and believed him and let him in. He was one of the four involved in what happened to us. He was the last face I remember seeing before I was unconscious.
The last thing I remember is being in the motel with my son and being shown a video of a woman in a basement getting pistol whipped. They told me that I was going to be me next. I woke up in a field three days later, naked, and was told that my son was dead lying 30 feet from me. My knee was crushed, my fibula was broken, my jaw was broken. I had been raped and drugged. I kept saying, “This is my fault. This is my fault. I killed my son. This is my fault. He’s dead because of me.”
So they charged me with second degree murder. They didn’t take into consideration that any mother who had made some bad choices would feel responsible. They never did an investigation. There were so many holes in the story. There were so many things, so many leads that they had and they didn’t do anything with any of it. They took me straight from the field--I couldn’t even walk--they had to carry me to a sheriff’s vehicle. They took me straight to the police office for interrogation. I couldn’t even hold my head up. They had to put me into a wheelchair. Instead of taking me straight to the hospital, they had me in interrogation for hours.
I don’t even remember the interrogation, I just know what I saw on the video. I was in the hospital and had several surgeries. They came and arrested me in the hospital and took me straight to county jail, where I sat for 45 days. I fought my case for almost two years and then took a plea. I took a plea for involuntary manslaughter and adult elder abuse, which I didn’t agree with, but I was tired. My family had been through so much.
I felt like the involuntary manslaughter charge was my part of accepting responsibility for the choices I made. Because I knew that if I’d never made those choices, we never would have ended up in that field. It doesn’t mean that what happened to my son was ok, and they still should have gone about things differently, but I know had I never made the choices that I made, we wouldn’t have ended up there.
They charged me with adult elder abuse because my son didn’t have his medications that he needed. I was unconscious in that field and couldn’t give him his medications. My son was blind and autistic. So, I was tired. I just took the plea. I would have never taken a plea for a murder charge. I told my attorney that. They wanted me to do three years in prison and I said no. I did 120 days, 5 years probation, and a 7 year back up. So here I am.
At first, I was mad as hell knowing that I had to go to prison. But I’m glad that I went to the program. It taught me a lot. I had an amazing counselor there. I learned how to handle negative people who are just so nasty and quick to jump on the wagon of saying “you did this, you did that.” People who don’t know the truth. The program taught me a lot about how to handle negativity. It empowered me, because there were so many women in that program that were like, “I can’t wait to go home and get high,” and they had children at home waiting for them. A few days before I was going to be released, my counselor told me, “Kim, you’ve got to share your story. There are so many women that need to hear this.”
So I got up, without writing it down or anything, I just got up and I started talking. And I was mad. Because so many of these women just wanted to go home and get high. I got up and I was crying, but it was mad crying. I said, “Some of you women have no idea the chance that you have right now. You have the chance to go home and kiss your babies. I’m going home to kiss a headstone. So think about that.” I had many women come up to me after that and ask me if they could write to me and stay in contact with me. Still to this day I have contact with a lot of women, probably 90 women, who I was in prison with. Three of them have died from overdoses since then.
Love for my son is what keeps me going. I wanna be with my baby again, and I feel like I’m still here for a reason--to do something. There are days when I question it, days when I feel like I don’t have a purpose and I feel like a worthless piece of crap. And there are other days when I think, “I got this, I’m gonna be ok,” and I feel strong. But I know that I’m still here for a reason. I know that God has got a plan for me. I feel like today, right now, this is part of his plan. You really don’t know how strong you are until you have to be.
So many people will tell me now, “Kim, you don’t see your own strength. You don’t see how far you’ve come.” I don’t think I do sometimes. When you’re actually the one doing it, but not on the outside looking in, you don’t see. So it’s kind of like that saying goes, you really don’t know how strong you are until you have to be. Without love and hope, I wouldn’t be breathing right now. I live for the day I’m going to be with my son again. I have strength through him and through God.