Kenya "A Better Reason"
PHOTOGRAPHY BY RANDY BACON
I grew up in a completely "normal" home. My family spent a lot of time together, and even though they divorced when I was 13, we were comfortable and happy together for a long time. I don't know why I even started doing drugs in the first place, but it didn't help that I began hanging out with a new group of people in high school that were using them. Using was more of a social thing to begin with, and I never thought in a million years I would become an addict! I started by only using marijuana...the good ole gateway!
I was always in sports and was a cheerleader in high school, I even cheered competitively, but then I started doing drugs...mildly at this point in time, and then dropped out of school. I went from a straight A, honor roll, very active and somewhat popular young lady to a nobody doing nothing but partying. I still did the same things...worked some jobs here and there but mainly bummed. I started doing meth at the age of about age 20. It was all I ever really cared about, and my friends and I thought we were living the good life!
There was nothing going on in my life that made me feel as if I needed to lean on using drugs, but my boyfriend had landed himself in jail at this point and it was easier to stay busy using versus face reality. Being an addict is so ugly. That is the best explanation I can give. I was functional as I would work, but I would always be late or look like I had been up for days. I also was so thin that I looked sickly. My friends and I would stay up for days at a time doing only God knows what. Cleaning, coloring, and most of the cliché things you would think comes along with meth. My fears were not valid at the time as I felt like nothing in the world could harm me. I did get tired though. I never felt bad about myself. I always felt good as long as I had something to use. I thought I was in great shape. It is kind of funny to look back on now.
I can recall sitting at a friends house for days just smoking meth and smoking cigarettes and being foolish. But this lifestyle was wrong and I got tired of being an addict. I tried to stop but literally I couldn't do it on my own. I specifically remember praying one day. I asked for help and a solution and better yet..something to help me stop the horrific cycle I was into. About a month and a half later, my answered prayer came. It was February 9, 2004. I will never forget it. I found out that I was pregnant. My boyfriend was not a user and we had been together for several years at this point. That is my clean and sober date...I have been clean since that moment. Never once have I looked back and thought to myself "hmm I wish I could do some meth.” I knew I wanted more than that life for my child. I had my first child in September 2004. This was absolutely the most amazing blessing God could have given me. I always knew that if I was ever blessed with a child that I would quit using drugs. I knew I never wanted my child to be exposed to that kind of life.
Today I have three beautiful kiddos. My husband and I have been together for 16 years now and married for eight. I got my high school diploma through a correspondence school and I just recently graduated with my AAB from OTC and I will be attending school at MSU this fall. I am very active with the crossfit community and my children are active as well. I have a great job but as we know life is never picture perfect. Years and years went passed and with three kiddos, life becomes so much more special and busy. I have always been that Mom that has been very involved in all things that revolve around my kids. My daughters are following in my footsteps and they too do competitive cheer. I would never want to miss out on those things in life. Last season we were in KC at a cheer competition and I started to have horrible anxiety and panic. I didn’t know what to do. I was crippled. It took over my lift for a period in time. I couldn’t eat, sleep, workout, heck I could barely go to work. It was like I became a prisoner in my own mind.
This went on for months and then February rolled around and guess what happened? I had a breakthrough with Christ...almost to the exact date of my sobriety date. My children and I got baptized on Easter Sunday and our lives are new! I can't say that I don't struggle some days with anxiety but I feel like when I hit a mountain, I always climb..I always succeed and make it through, because of what I have experienced, I now passionately want to be able to help those who have suffered or do suffer from anxiety, depression and addiction. This is my dream.
My advice for people struggling with drug addiction or other issues is, first and foremost, you have to want to change. It kills me to see children being raised in homes that are being formed on the use of drugs. I changed because I had a better reason to change than I did to use. Using only makes you feel good temporarily. It isn’t something that is even an option or something that is questionable when you have an eye opener. Seek God and become so involved with faith, that it is the only thing you can truly be addicted to. Nobody knows exactly the affects drug abuse will have on you in later years, but I do feel like now I am suffering from using. The anxiety I have is like nothing I have ever faced in life. I feel as if the anxiety struck me down much lower than the using ever did. Why? Well it is part of my journey in faith. It is all part of realizing that my God is bigger than anything. We recently lost someone very dear to our hearts and it doesn’t seem fair that she is gone, and without my faith in God, I couldn’t be that rock for my children because He feeds me strength in His word. This loss made us realize how unimportant material things are, and that most important is loving life. There is a last time for everything in this life and do as much as you can in a day, because we are not promised tomorrow.
So I have realized a few things and I have witnessed many. From using, getting clean, becoming a mother, to finding a career, graduating college, kicking ass in Crossfit, to falling apart again - only to be rebuilt on a new foundation by finding God. That last part is everything. I finally found what I had been missing for so long. All of this was part of the plan.