Long Blue Line: Based on a True Story (42 page)

The temperature began to drop as the holidays arrived. I got used to Derrick deciding to be around his brother, and once again, these people became normal. We all quickly gave up on life ever being happy and hopeful. Our best escape came in a small shiny rock. Crystal meth always came in to save the day. We were all empty and numb, and we didn't even care that we were most likely under a microscope. I was still on Probation, and I honestly didn't care. Going back to jail could have just been better than living as I was. I found myself praying a lot on a daily basis. Even when I was under the influence, I still prayed. A part of me felt guilty because I was high, but the other part of me wanted desperately to be saved. I told God that I trusted him, and I trusted that he would point me in the right direction if I allowed him too. I wanted to surrender, but I didn't know how.

I knew that my addiction was worse than it had ever been before because I found myself frequently hallucinating and seeing things that weren't really there. They were extremely vivid and it terrified me. My only comfort was that I knew that what I was seeing was not really physically in the same location. It was just a hallucination. They frequently happened when I didn't expect them to. One of the worst hallucinations that I had was after I had been up for a few days. I approached the extra bedroom downstairs, because that's where I kept all of my clothes. It was late and I was exhausted, and I just wanted to put my pajamas on. The office was dark, and most of the lights were off. Derrick was sitting in the living room watching TV. I saw a very tall creature that resembled something which would be half man and half demon. It was about 7 feet tall, and it was wearing my pajama pants. He was standing in the entrance of the spare room. The reason that I thought it was so real was because I could see every single pattern in my plaid pants clearly. I panicked and would not go back into that room. I made Derrick do it, and I made him turn on the light. Other hallucinations were when my houseplants morphed into monsters with tiny little claws and when I thought a helicopter was circling our house, and I was definitely going to jail.

After using such large quantities of meth and being awake for so long, the comedown was horrible. When we ran out of meth, the best thing to do was fall asleep. But it was nearly impossible to fall asleep with remnants of the drug left in my body. I became sick to my stomach, my mouth wouldn't stop watering, and I couldn't get comfortable, no matter how hard I tried. This was always the time when Derrick wanted to have sex. It was the worst time possible, but he wouldn't take no for an answer. I was afraid to refuse him because I knew that when he came down, he became extra angry and he had the potential to get violent. He always begged for a blow job, even though he knew that it wasn't going to happen. "It will gag me. If your wife puking on your dick is something that turns you on, then let's get started." He would finally drop it after whining like a baby. He always tried to bend me into a weird position that I just couldn't handle. I wasn't a damn yoga junkie, and it was almost as if he thought I was freaking Gumbie. I would complain and roll my eyes, and be thankful that I got it over with. I wondered if I was the only woman who saw this as a chore. With all of the stress that I carried on a daily basis, combined with my medication and flat out exhaustion, I never had any desire for sex. He never failed to remind me that any other girl would be, "begging." I rolled my eyes.

I didn't even realize that Halloween had come until the day it arrived. I had nothing special planned and neither did Derrick. I had him go to the store to get a bag of candy just in case some of the neighborhood kids came by. I decided that I would celebrate the holiday with two 24-ounce beers. I found myself drinking more often these days. That is, only when I could get away with it. Derrick got really mad at me every time. There may be a few reasons behind this. It could be from the time that we were driving home from a dinner with friends at the casino, and I wanted to go to their house afterwards and he didn't. I was pretty wasted.  When the turn came up on the highway that led to our friend's house, I turned the steering wheel in the direction that I wanted to go. I underestimated the power of a slight turn, and we flew off the side of the road and smashed into a stop sign. Derrick was in total shock and almost on the verge of tears. I immediately began apologizing and told him that I didn't think that would happen. I was super freaked out, and then I was afraid that we were going to get pulled over. Derrick had been drinking, too. We would both go to jail if we were caught. "I'm sorry, I promise I'll do whatever I can to make sure that your truck gets fixed. But right now you need to hurry up and back out and start driving!" He cranked the wheel and backed out of the dirt ditch we were in. The stop sign was completely demolished and laying flat on the ground like a pancake. When he got on the highway, he was still shaking in shock. I had to coach him, and my drunk, confident self was happy to take the lead. "You better step on it! Hurry up and get up to speed with the rest of the traffic. We are going to get caught if you don't!" As he sped up and got to the normal speed limit, we passed the intersection that we were supposed to be turning on. I didn't have my glasses on so I tried to turn us onto the road about fifty feet too soon. As we passed through the green light, I noticed a police car waiting on the right side of us. The car was waiting to turn left, in the direction that we had just crashed. There was still dirt flying up in the air. The rest of the 15-minute drive home completely sucked. I was convinced that the cops were going to catch us. We somehow got lucky.

The other reason than that caused Derrick to hate me consuming alcohol even more is one that I am certainly not proud of. It's one of those tales that you hear and shake your head in disgust. You always know that you'll never be one of those girls. Well, when I got drunk, I wanted excitement. I wanted to break the rules and see what I could get away with it. I don't remember exactly how I ended up at his best friend house but I did. I was wasted and it was probably one in the morning. Derrick’s best friend ended up bending me over his truck in the garage of his house. It may have been my subconscious way of retaliating. Derrick had already slept with his best friend’s girlfriend, and it upset me more than I realized. Without getting into the dirty details, I was a definite slut for the night. For the record, this was before we were married. For the record today, I no longer consume alcohol.

I was sitting on the couch bored out of my mind on Halloween night. Derrick smoked a bunch of pot that night and he fell asleep early. I was annoyed because I wanted to at least have some sort of excitement. It definitely wasn't going to happen. I chugged my beers as fast as I could, knowing that they would only give me a short buzz. I ate some snacks, and zoned to the TV. I forgot, again, that it was Halloween night, until I got a knock on my glass door. I picked up my bowl of candy and opened the sliding door. The person standing in front of me was definitely not a trick-or-treater. It was a big guy, probably about 6 feet tall. He was wearing a blue windbreaker jacket. It had gold letters painted on it that read PROBATION. My adrenaline kicked in, but it wasn't as bad as it could have been since I was slightly buzzed. The big Probation Officer welcomed himself into my house and waved in everybody else tagging along with him. They all marched in, and they found my can of beer sitting on the floor. Luckily it was sitting on the floor away from the couch that I was sitting on. It had become routine for me to always think of the little things that could possibly get me in trouble. "Whose beer is this?" "Oh, that was my husband. He drank it and fell asleep. He's upstairs." I responded. The Probation Officers were searching the crap out of my house, and they were all completely in awe over how nice the trailer was. It was in the crappiest neighborhood that you could think of, and it didn't look like anything special from the outside, but when you walked in, it was seriously like a mini castle. One of the nicer Probation Officers went upstairs to search. Derrick was asleep, and I became annoyed that he always seemed to be asleep when these people were trying to ruin my life. I was pretty nervous when the officer went upstairs, because I knew that Derrick had a bag of pot with him, but I didn't know exactly where he was hiding it. The officer came down the stairs and didn't announce any illegal findings. Somehow, they didn't even know that I had been drinking. I must have played it off pretty good.

The time started to go by a little more quickly as I got into the routine of doing absolutely nothing, and pretty much wasting away. Derrick eased up on wanting to hang around with his brother. We still saw Donnie and Casie periodically, but it wasn't nearly as much as it had been before. I had come to the conclusion that Donnie was a horrible influence on his brother and horribly influenced every aspect of his brother's life. Derrick had actually become pleasant to be around. He treated me with decency and our fights were very infrequent. Before we knew it, Thanksgiving arrived. I wanted to have Thanksgiving at our house, and Donnie wanted to have Thanksgiving at his house. I didn't like going over to his house. It made me sad and it had negative energy. We couldn't agree, so I decided that I would just make a Thanksgiving dinner on the day before Thanksgiving. That way I could cook and make everything how I like it. I did just that, and it was amazing. On Thanksgiving Day, Derrick and I got dressed and ready to head over to their house. We initially had planned to simply go over there, watch football, eat dinner, and leave. We should have known better. When we arrived, there was a good dog and brandy, and the turkey was cooking in the oven. Donnie was acting like his usual erratic self, but I didn't think that he was actually using drugs this time. He appeared to be more drunk than high. Derrick and I hadn't used nearly as much as we normally did in the last month. This was probably because we stopped going over to his brother's house as often. We both knew that as long as we didn't allow ourselves to go anywhere near it we would be okay.

What started as a somewhat calm football game and dinner, quickly turned into a crazy and chaotic night. I was sipping on egg not and brandy, but I wasn't going overboard. Derrick and Donnie lost complete control. Within a matter of hours, they were literally chugging the alcohol from the bottle. Donnie hopped on one of his dirt bikes and thought it would be fun to go on the four wheeling trail. This trail was probably about 2 miles away. He pretty much took off without even saying anything. Hours and hours went by, and he still had not returned. It was starting to get dark, and it was definitely cold outside. Dinner had been done for a while, and it was starting to get cold. I told my drunken husband and Casie that we should probably call search and rescue. If he were stranded out there in this weather, he would definitely freeze to death. I got on the phone and made the report, and the woman was super nice and said that she was sending her team out right away. When I hung up the phone, I turned around and Derrick was burning rubber in his truck heading towards the trail. These guys were a bunch of idiots. I assumed that Donnie was probably going to return, but now Derrick would be lost. There was no stopping them. They were drunk and they were not controllable.

About an hour after Derrick left, Donnie came stumbling into the house with three other people at his side. It was two girls, about my age, and a guy that looked a little younger than me. I could tell that these kids were drunk, and they definitely weren't belligerent. Donnie was a horrible sight. He had blood all over his shirt and it looked like he was stabbed in the arm. The brunette girl was holding his arm, which was wrapped in a bandage. She walked him into the kitchen and told him to sit down. She introduced herself and said that she was a nurse in the military. I have never seen these people in my life. Donnie was slurring and he could hardly explain to Casie and I what had happened. The girl claiming to be a nurse was able to translate his drunken slur. "So basically, we found him when he left the McDonald's drive-through. He was bleeding, and at first when we tried to help him he yelled at us. We weren't going to let him just take off in the condition that he was in, because he would probably end up killing himself traffic. He got this cut on his arm because he walked through the drive-through and tried to order a burger. They wouldn't let him order, and told him that he to go inside. A person that was in a car behind him apparently said something to set him off. He walked up to their car and punched their windshield. That is how he got this cut on his arm."

Sadly, I wasn't surprised over the stupidity of his actions. It was almost kind of humorous, but it was just so stupid that it made me feel stupid to think it was funny. This cut was very deep, and it definitely needed stitches. Donnie refused to go to the hospital. The nurse found a first aid kit in the bathroom and cleaned out the wound. She tightly held the gash together, while her friend tightly wrapped the bandage around his arm. I was sitting outside smoking trying to let the weirdness sink in. I heard a clinking truck about a mile down the road. It wasn't driving very fast so I didn't think it was Derrick. The truck turned into the driveway. It was so messed up that I didn't even recognize it. It looked like Derrick had been 14 wheeling. It really looked more like he was on a suicide mission. The radiator with absolutely crushed in, and the headlights were practically hanging from their wires. Derrick stumbled out of the car, extremely drunk, but I didn't think he was as drunk as he was when he left. I wasn't even really all that worried about him when he was gone. He deserved to get a DUI. He knew how stupid it was to get behind the wheel drunk and he chose to do it anyway. I was not having sympathy for him that night. He walked in and he and his brother started talking, but I couldn't understand what they were saying because they were slurring. I made their plates of dinner hoping that they would eat and began to sober up. They scarfed down their food and slowly became a little bit more aware.