Walking on Eggshells: Discovering Strength and Courage Amid Chaos (18 page)

One or two mornings later I was awakened when two detectives in business suits pounded on our door. During my life I’d had a lot of law enforcement people bang on my door for one reason or another, but they were always in uniform. These were my first “suits,” and they scared the crap out of me. The detectives asked me to show them where everyone in the house slept, so I first showed them Ken’s couch in the living room. Then I took them into the one bedroom where Brendan, Abbie, and I slept.

One of the detectives then took me outside and started in on me. “What are you thinking?”

In short, they gave me twelve hours to pack my things and leave the house with Abbie, or my daughter would be removed from my care. The detectives were quite firm about this, and when they left I knew I had no other choice. The detectives were right; we needed to leave. I also know without a doubt that God stepped in and sent those detectives to my door to get us out of there. I shudder to think what might have happened to Abbie had we not left when we did.

The trouble was that I had nowhere to go. Barbara had moved in with a man who was actively doing hard drugs, so I couldn’t go there. My mother and John had no room, and besides, they had made it clear that they didn’t want Abbie and me.

My only option was to move into the old mint green Ford Focus that Brendan had given me. As I prepared to move I became very angry with Brendan. Here I was having to move into a
car
with our toddler daughter, and his attitude was “Oh, well.” His lack of concern for the situation and “easy come, easy go” attitude should have let me know how deeply he was back into drugs, but my own drug use most likely masked that thought process for me.

★

I spent the next few weeks moving the car from place to place so as not to get caught by the police. I even drove from Fairbanks to Anderson and parked the car by the river there for a few days before I was chased out. On the way back to Fairbanks the car began acting funny and I was afraid we’d break down, but we didn’t.

In Fairbanks, most businesses do not let people park in their lots overnight because they do not want “riffraff” around their storefronts. After searching long and hard, I finally found a safe enough place where a lot of homeless people parked. Then it hit me. I was one of these people.

I was homeless, too.

How had I gotten here? I wondered. The past few years had melted into a sea of memories, and while I tried to find the one reason why I was living in my car with my young daughter, I couldn’t come up with it. Instead, the reasons were way too many and far too sad.

There was a third person living in the car with us, though, and that was our dog, Pepper. Brendan had come home with Pepper one day a few months back but I soon realized that he was not going to be responsible enough to take care of her, so I gladly stepped up. Pepper was a knee-high black-and-white mixed-breed dog. She could possibly have been some kind of Labrador/terrier cross, but it didn’t matter to me what she was. I loved her, and her shaggy presence definitely made me feel safer at night when Abbie and I slept in the backseat of the car. Never have I underestimated the role Pepper played in keeping us safe during that terrible time.

By this time it was October and it was getting very cold in the evenings. I was so grateful to have Pepper in the car with us. I’d put her between Abbie and me when we settled in for the night, and the heat of her body kept us warm. That dog could really put out some heat. But I knew the nights would only get colder, and with no other options in sight, I broke down and called Dad’s bonds office in Hawai’i.

I had wanted to call my dad for some time but didn’t have Beth’s number. To get Dad on the phone, everyone has to go through Beth first. I had hoped that either my dad or Beth would answer the line at Da Kine, my dad’s bail bonds office, but instead I got another bondsman, Wesley.

Through Wesley I learned that Beth was having surgery soon and that Barbara was coming out to help with the kids while Beth recuperated. That was news to me, and honestly I didn’t think
it was going to happen. Barbara was so absorbed in her new boyfriend that I didn’t believe anything short of a hurricane would pull her out of Alaska.

During the next few weeks my conversations with Wesley moved to discussion with Beth and then with Dad. I hadn’t spoken to him in three years, and with the exception of my brief visit in Colorado when we went after the gang rapists, I hadn’t seen him in more than six years.

I didn’t know what to think when Dad said he wanted me to come to Hawai’i instead of Barbara, but I knew I was going to do it, even after Dad began listing my upcoming duties in a very businesslike manner. I know he wanted to be sure that I knew I was expected to work and contribute to the family if I was to live in the house with them.

You cannot imagine how grateful I was when Dad sent plane tickets for Abbie and me. I was really looking forward to a new life, a new start. I also badly wanted to meet my younger sister and brother, Bonnie Jo and Garry Boy. These two cuties had been born in 1998 and 2001, but even though it was now late fall of 2004, I had never laid eyes on them. I also couldn’t wait to see Cecily again, and just be in Hawai’i where it was warm and the ocean could soothe me.

While I was excited about the trip, I was a little nervous about Dad and Beth meeting Abbie. This was because they had never supported my relationship with Brendan. I understand now why that was, but back then I was very angry with them about that,
especially because at Christmas the year before, Dad and Beth had sent a ton of presents to Alaska for Barbara and Travis but none for Abbie or me. I’d like to think because Barbara and Travis had been back and forth so many times that Dad and Beth knew Barbara and Travis much better than they did Abbie and me. But I really think it was more along the lines of “look what you got yourself into and now you are stuck with the consequences.”

The second reason I was nervous was that I had recently determined that, somehow, the perpetual cycle of dysfunction and abuse in our family was going to stop with me. All of the adults in my life had contributed to this where I was concerned—including Dad, Beth, my mother, and all of their combined spouses, boyfriends, and girlfriends. I was not going to allow any of that to trickle down to my daughter. I had seen normally functioning families on television and had gotten glimpses of them when I talked with other people. I realized, probably for the first time, that not everyone lived like we did. Not everyone drank or did drugs. There was an entire world out there full of people who didn’t constantly fight, who instead talked through their problems and made positive changes. There were even families who stayed together.

I realized I was a mess and knew I had a long, hard climb in front of me. However, I was done with the way I was living. I was done being around people whose only response to stress was to get high. I was absolutely done with abuse. I didn’t know how I was
going to stop this vicious cycle, but I definitely knew I was going to do it.

Since leaving Brendan I had not been drinking at all and my drug use was (almost) down to nothing. I was trying so hard to change and I knew that meant I had to stay away from people who used—people such as Barbara, Brendan, and Allen. I wanted to change for Abbie, but I also wanted to change for myself. In fact, this was the first time I had ever tried to do anything positive for me. It was hard, and I was scared that I would never succeed. So scared in fact that I put too much pressure on myself and partied way too hard every day during the short week before I left for Hawai’i. I knew that once I got there my cocoon of isolation would end. Could I stay sober with other people around? Could I not use when I was accountable to people other than myself? I’d find out soon enough. In Hawai’i I’d have to adhere to Beth’s house rules, and that meant no drinking or drugs whatsoever.

★

I
had lived with drugs
as part of my life for so long that it was terrifying to me to live without them. Even though I have been drug-free for a number of years now, my body was so addicted that I know I have to be watchful so as not to slide back into that lifestyle in the future. It’s like a smoker starting to smoke again after twenty years, only it’s a thousand times worse.

I have found that there is a very fine line between using drugs and not using drugs. Some of the people whom I have met in AA make their entire lives about not being high. This was the other end of the pendulum swing from my former friends who took drugs. Their entire lives were all about getting high. I knew I wanted to live a fuller, richer life, but that often is hard.

My biggest craving now is to pop a pill when I can’t sleep, am
stressed, or don’t feel well. After all, isn’t that what we are told to do in advertisements? In commercials? And it seems to me that many doctors these days do nothing more than write prescriptions for pills. I have been medicated since before I was a teenager, so I learned early on that the solution to a problem was a pill. I have had to unlearn all of that.

About a year ago I realized that when I was stressed my cravings intensified, so I took steps to reduce my interactions with stressful people and stressful situations. It took months, but I am now in a place where I am far less stressed than I used to be. Last week I went out with friends who were drinking. Not that I intentionally sought out friends who drink, but it is hard to find people my age who don’t. That night I drank my iced tea all evening and had a great time, which meant I had no temptation. Today I know my triggers and I have the tools I need to not use, but it wasn’t always that way.

Before I left for Hawai’i, a “friend” gave me a gram of meth. I knew I couldn’t smoke it in the air, so I chopped it up and snorted as much of it as I could on the plane. That meant I had to leave Abbie in her seat while I went to partake in the bathroom. What kind of mother does that? I can see now that while I truly wanted a different way of life, I was not yet ready to do all the work that entailed.

Upon my arrival in Honolulu, I was amazed at the height of the buildings and the size of the city. In Fairbanks they have a limit of roughly seven stories on the buildings due to the tundra there.
In Honolulu more than a dozen of the hotels were forty stories or taller. Currently there are more than 470 high-rise buildings in Honolulu, and the city ranks fourth in the nation for these towering structures. Only New York City, Chicago, and Los Angeles have more tall buildings. It was total culture shock. I couldn’t fathom that there were so many places for people to live. Then I realized that it had been about nine years since I had been in Hawai’i and even longer than that since I had been in Honolulu. Compared to Anderson and Fairbanks, the many tall buildings were a huge sensory overload. It didn’t help that I was as high as a kite.

I vaguely knew that my dad had a television show, but I didn’t understand what being on national—or international—television meant. Earlier that year Barbara and I had watched one or maybe two episodes of the first season of Dad’s show. Neither of us really understood the concept. You have to remember that this was back when reality shows were brand-new and not everyone knew what they were.

My dad had ordered a limousine taxi for me, and when I arrived at his modest ranch house I was even more astonished to find a
Dog the Bounty Hunter
video camera stuck in my face as I tried to get out of the vehicle. Abbie and I walked to the door, and I was a little surprised that Dad was there to greet me. He had sounded so businesslike over the phone I wasn’t sure if he was going to be glad to see me. But his big Dad hug let me know how he really felt.

Our reunion aired on the first episode of the show’s second season. It is titled “Baby’s Back in Town,” and discerning viewers
will notice that my eyes are fully dilated. I watched the show again recently and was shocked at my dirty, stringy hair and the horrible dark eye shadow I wore. Even worse, a lot of what people said to me seemed to go right over the top of my head. I could see that I was desperately trying to get up to speed on all that was happening, and failing miserably.

Back then, however, I thought no one would notice that I was high. I also thought I looked a lot cooler than I really did. That’s drugs for you. They completely distort reality.

After my arrival had been filmed, we all sat down to eat. If you have never been to Hawai’i, it really is a long way from anywhere. Flying from Fairbanks to Anchorage to Honolulu takes the better part of a full day, and both Abbie and I were exhausted. But instead of resting I realized I was supposed to make conversation at the table. I did my best to hold up my end of the discussion, but I was so clueless. Later, when we’d go out to eat, I didn’t recognize a thing on the menu. I always looked for a cheeseburger because it was the only item I was familiar with. Once, Dad gave me a $100 bill. I held on to it for about a month because I didn’t know what to spend it on. It had been a long time since I’d seen that much money.

On that first day everyone asked how it felt to be back with my dad. I really didn’t know. I had been there only an hour or so and hadn’t had a chance to talk to him much. I did get a chance to meet Bonnie Jo and Garry Boy, though, and found them to be very sweet at first.

After lunch Beth had a follow-up doctor’s appointment from her surgery, so she and Dad got in the car and drove off. They left me with Garry Boy and Bonnie Jo, and Beth’s daughter, Cecily, whom I hadn’t seen in many years. Garry must have been about three, Bonnie about six, and Cecily around eleven years of age.

Garry Boy immediately punched me in the face, Bonnie Jo got out her pet gecko, and Cecily turned up her rap music so loud they could probably hear it all the way over on the Big Island. The day deteriorated from there. I was so overwhelmed and frustrated that I wanted to cry. Today I have great relationships with these kids and I love them with all my heart. But back then they tested me every time I turned around.