Experience SUD Through Their Eyes: Three Sisters’ Perspectives continued…
Natalie’s Story
My name is Natalie, I was a rambunctious kid and teenager. I always pushed the limits with my parents. Breaking curfew, sneaking out to see boyfriends. Rebellious in every sense of the word. I loved my family, adored my little adopted sister, Emily, and, by all accounts, had a relatively stable upbringing. But something was still missing – an inherent “wrongness” permeating my innermost self. Out of place. I always felt like I was overcompensating for something. Trying to get on equal footing with my peers and the people around me, and yet still a step below.
I got hit by a car while riding my bike. When I was 18 years old. I was severely injured, internal organ injury and tremendous pain. As is customary, I received pain medication while I was hospitalized. Fentanyl. It was like a switch flipped on in my head; the fears, anxiety, my low self-esteem and worth, the “wrongness” evaporated entirely in an instantaneous symphony of lightness and relief.
I had almost no experience with drug use prior to this moment of my young life. It overtook me that very first time. When medical staff asked, from that moment forward, if I was in “pain” I said yes, regardless of the truth. Because I knew answering in the affirmative would get me the comfort and solace I craved.
They sent me home with a prescription for oxycodone. Within a week I was trying to purchase more on the street. Within months I was overdosing in my parents’ home and the paramedics had to be called. My family saw all of this. Thus began the insidious internal cycle of addiction within that would permeate the entirety of my being, and those around me.
Consequences. Physical, material. My parents took my car, my things. Pushed me to go to an intensive outpatient program. In those days I’d only agree to get my stuff back. I couldn’t help myself. The phenomenon of craving was all encompassing and obliterated anything in its path; my relationships, my livelihood, my physical and mental health. I wanted to be a good big sister. I wanted to be a caring daughter, friend, and person. But I failed and fell on my face repeatedly. My dad was my enabler. The addiction in me knew how to get what I needed from him, and it did. The torment, the misery, the air of tension and anxiety were struck through our lives, our foundation shaken, crumbling. This era culminated in eight months of homelessness, graduation to IV drug use, and an eventual year and a half stay in a treatment program. It wouldn’t be the last time I used, despite every fiber of my being wishing it would. Things were going to get worse.
I got clean, eventually, gradually, the consequences stacking so high they teetered on edge, threatening to smash me into a thousand little pieces. I met a man. We got married. I didn’t use. We moved to another state, and I got pregnant. I had hope for the first time in what felt like forever.
In a tragic, rapid series of events the picturesque ideal that I envisioned and tried to build was decimated. I had moved back , I lost the baby. My husband and I separated. Broken, burdened with unbearable and tremendous grief. I started drinking. After a month I was served with divorce papers, and as I held them in my hand, the gravity of the situation swallowed me whole, and I knew I had to get high. After six years of being gone I was able to acquire black tar heroin off the street within ten minutes. I shot a gram and a half into my veins, anticipating the grief, the unworthiness, the failure, the absolute destruction of my spirit to all fade away into blackness, and they did.
Overdose. I slumped over, the weight of my body accumulating in the exact position to where all of it was centered on my left leg, completely depriving it of blood flow, oxygen, life. Compartment syndrome. My roommate found me, gave me Narcan. I come to in the hospital and the doctor tells me my leg needs to be amputated. Another specialist intervenes and suggests there’s still hope. A month in the hospital and seven surgeries later I live, and walk, another day.
While I was there my older sister, Jennifer, came to see me. Throughout all of this she’s loving, but matter of fact with me. Telling me that she believed I was going to die, but that my life still had purpose, meaning, that there was more to life for me if I wanted and worked for it. You deserve more she’d say to me. I wanted to believe it.
You’d think that such an insane turn of events would provoke nothing less than absolute dedication to achieving a new way, a new life, a psychic change. And for a time it did. I went to treatment. My parents were participating in PAL at this point. They wouldn’t have me back home when I finished inpatient – they were firm and resolute in their boundaries, and they’d grown. They followed through with what they said. My father learned to let go of enabling. Even through the boundaries he set, I felt the love. I longed to be a part of, to make up for lost time, to make amends and make things right – put back together the broken pieces of my life and be the sister and daughter I knew I could be. I didn’t want to go the way of my aunt and become a tragic footnote in the annals of our family history, to affirm and strengthen that cycle of sadness and grief. I didn’t want my little sister, Emily, to see that.
I fell down a few more times. Tried to do things my way. Thought I could casually drink or be like “normal” people. It never worked. It always circled back to the place I was running from in the first place. You think if you run far enough, you’ll forget where you came from. Who you are. But wherever I went, there I still was, as long as I tried to have it my way. It was surrender or die. The pain I was causing myself and others had to end, or I did.
I’m thankful today for the pain. One thing that kept me going, albeit sometimes I am not sure how was my faith that had been instilled in me since I was young. I believed deep down God was there for me, but many times I just could not understand why I was going through all of this.
That was three years ago. I let go. I got help. I trusted in God’s plan for me. All the agony, the suffering, the throbbing ever-present deep ache of grief reached its peak in a moment of clarity. I got the treatment, the therapy I needed. I stopped doing it my way. I listened. I trusted.
The education and support my family received from PAL was a keystone in this development. It helped me have the experience that I needed to have.I made amends to my parents my sisters. It’s been a process, building the trust back.
I’m involved in their lives today. My mom and dad don’t question my sobriety every time I’m having a bad day now. They learned not to react, but to respond appropriately. I spend time with my little sister, Emily. We talk about life, laugh, and have genuine fun. There is levity to our interactions. I spend time with my older sister, Jennifer, and her kids, and I’m not asked to leave because I’m intoxicated. We are all able to just be. I am genuinely the sister, daughter, friend, and partner that I always endeavored, and hoped, to be.
The ever-present goodness in me that was shrouded in bleak, unforgiving gloom shines through today. The unfathomable weight of the chains that bound me in addiction no longer hang on my shoulders. Against the odds, I am here. I didn’t follow the fated footsteps that everyone once thought I would. I gave the pain purpose and lived. We lived.
