Some of you have read my story and some of you have not. I get asked often about it so thought I’d share again.
I’ve moved away from the place that harbors my childhood horrors years ago and yet, as I come back to visit this little country town we once called home, a place that hold’s so many memories, memories that have happened so long ago that now the place and time are littered with cobwebs. Those memories that were part of my past, that I experienced as a younger version of myself, having laid dormant in my mind for many years now. These old roads and water towers bringing them back to life for me. All thats left of that time are recollections of an older version of myself, who has finally come home.
My husband and I were both sexually abused as children. Both by numerous people. My most significant being my step grandfather, who sexually assaulted me from six to twelve years old. None of the people ever faced justice for what they did to either of us. I’d like to share the story of my husband’s passing. As I believe it shows how addiction is used to numb immense pain and the consequences doing that can have. I have awoken, there is a clarity of purpose, a long awaited understanding of my place in this world. Due to every death Ive ever died, my writing will disturb the living. Even though it brings madness to people who want to hide, it’s a call to all others. Here I am. Come find me. You’re not alone…. So I throw my head back and I howl with a call that shakes the walls.
My husband’s name was Daniel, he was brave and he was a fighter. His addiction started at 18, from a football injury. He was prescribed Percocet, which then turned to heroin once the prescription ran out and he couldn’t afford the pills off the street anymore. Thus beginning his journey into addiction. In October of 2021 Daniel was introduced to death, disguised as a little blue pill. They were called “blues” or “dirty 30’s” and all we really knew is they had fentanyl in them and they made you feel good. From the first hit, Daniel was hooked. I watched my husband fall in love with, not another woman, but a substance. One I knew I could never compete against. I was now on the losing end of a game I was never meant to win and I had no more fight left in me. After almost eleven years of this merry go round, off and on with different substances, trying to “save” Daniel over and over, I was tired. So I made the worst decision of my life and joined in.
I distinctly remember the feeling of dread as I took my first hit. The realization of the power this little pill held, quickly sinking in. Like a semi truck barreling towards me at full speed as I just stood there looking in horror, unable to move, not yet realizing the full magnitude of the weight of the decision I just made. A timer had just been set on the life of the only man I had ever loved. From that very moment a number of how many days on this earth he would have left, had been placed. BUT Daniel loved me and his kids and Daniel was a fighter, so he squared up and he fought fiercely. We would get clean and then we’d relapse, get clean, relapse. It was an endless cycle, those last 10 months of his life.
I remember screaming into the phone trying to keep him awake, terrified he was going to die as he was driving home from picking up blues one night. He was so high he was throwing up on himself and nodding out. I also remember him giving me a hit of it while I was in the bathtub, it being so strong It immediately made me slump over, unable to keep my eyes open. I remember his fading voice so clearly as he frantically shook me yelling “ baby wake up, talk to me Sarahya, talk to me!” How sad that those are some of my memories of us towards the end, how tragically, devastatingly painfully sad. Our ten year wedding anniversary, the last wedding anniversary we would ever spend together, July 28th, 2022 would be spent in a hotel room smoking crack, meth and fentanyl together the entire night. Even writing that holds the weight of a thousand suns falling to the earth.
On August 4th, 2022 Daniel and I realized we could not beat this monster that was wrecking havoc on our bodies and life, so we flew to California and both entered separate rehabs. It took me seventeen days and Daniel twenty two days to finally have a clean UA. It was hell. It was lonely. It was scary but it also taught me so much. On August 26th, Daniel and I flew home with a new outlook on our relationship, our sobriety and what we wanted our future to look like. We were so hopeful. The three following day’s were some of the best days we had experienced in years. There was so much love packed into those last couple days, for that I will always be thankful.
Monday night Daniel was contacted by one of our old drug dealers who he thought he had blocked. I remember the look on Daniel’s face after he spoke with her, there was a visible internal battle of the soul going on inside of him and it was obvious he was losing. When he hung up the phone he stated “baby I’m going to get four blues, I promise I’ll never touch them again after this.” Sitting on our bed I began crying, looking at him I responded “I’m going to lose you Dan, I’m going to lose you this time for good.” He stopped putting on his shoes, locked eyes with me and said “if you tell me not to go, I won’t. All you have to do, is tell me not to go.” But I had just gotten out of rehab and it was drilled into me that “it has to be a decision he actively makes himself, you cannot save him” along with the many years I had tried saving him without success. I put my head down and whispered, “I can’t Daniel, you know I can’t make that decision for you.” Looking at me for a second longer he slowly finished putting his shoes on and said “It’ll be OK baby, I promise this will be the last time.” Little did I know the clock that was set on Daniel’s life just 10 months prior was almost up. It truly would be, his last time. If I’d known I would have desperately screamed “don’t go! Please don’t go!” I would have clutched onto him, dragging him from that car in desperation. That’s the thing about life though, we always think we have more time.
When Daniel arrived back he walked up and gave his mother a hug stating “mama, all your boys are clean. You can sleep peacefully tonight knowing none of us are going to die.” My mother-in-law nodded her head and hugged him, not knowing it would be the last interaction she would ever have with her baby boy. That night Daniel and I went outside and sat on our car, looking up at the stars while he held me. I can’t remember our conversation. Though I know we talked for at least two hours. When I woke that next morning to his alarm going off, he was looking at me and whispered “I love you, I never slept last night, I just watched you.” He then got ready for work, as he was leaving he popped his head back through our doorway flashing his crooked little grin and said “I love you baby girl, I’ll see you tonight.” I had no idea he would never enter that doorway again. I watched as he left, back to me as he entered his car and drove down our winding driveway. Blissfully unaware of the horror that would strike so very soon after.
Daniel went to work and was gone just four, short hours later. His time finally up. He entered a porta potty in a gravel pit, on his job site alongside the highway. Foil, tooter and one fentanyl pill in his hand. He began to smoke that pill and was dead before he even finished. Those he looked up to and respected kicked in the door and pulled him out. They gave him narcan and worked on him for an hour, to no avail. At 8:07a.m. Mercy came down and my beautiful husband was pronounced dead, entering eternity alone, as we all must do one day. Leaving all of us who loved him to be forever changed, longing for someone we will never have again, on this side of eternity at least. Please listen to these words and let this be a cautionary tale for whoever reads it. Our decisions and choices we make are set in stone, no way to erase them. Addiction will take you much further than you ever wanted to go. Lead you to places you never intended on visiting. It will take everything you love and hold dear from you. Leaving you with a life you can’t recognize, more pain then you ever had before it.
I will forever have to live with my regrets. The thought of what If I’d never joined in. What if I’d told him not to go that night. Could we have been so much more, could he have been so much more, echoing forever in the hallways of my mind. I guess that’s my retribution for my part though, so I’ll bear it in its full weight. Addiction is no respecter of persons. Daniel was high up in his career with the Carpenter Union, I worked alongside the state. We hosted family holidays at our home that we owned in our HOA neighborhood. We went to church on sundays and our children were in private school. Trust me when I say it’s not only the person you see at your local corner store or in your minds eye, when you hear the word “junkie.” It’s the politician, the high schooler, the doctor, the stay at home mom, that blue collar hard working dad. Addiction wears so very many faces. If our story can help even one person. If it can cause hope in even one life, to me that’s worth more than all its weight in gold. Maybe than Daniels tragic death, won’t seem so pointless. I now know what not to do going forward, wisdom has been granted to me. But I’ve paid so very dearly for it. Such a steep, sorrowful cost.
I’ll never know why I was allowed life and Daniel was not. Choices and decisions I made were no better then his, yet here I stand. Where my Daniel is in eternity tonight, I cannot say. I believe though, that from the moment Daniel took his first breath out of his mother’s womb in that hospital room in Texas, until he took his last inside that little porta-Potty beside the highway. There was a God who had him in his sights and held him in his hands and I believe, he has him still…
To the struggling addict: I see you, I am you. I know the stigma. I know it’s easier to hide behind closed doors, but I promise if you step out you will find your people. I promise you, you can recover. You may come out crawling with claw marks from a fight you both won and lost but you can make it out. You’re worth it. You’ve always been worth it. Your life still holds so much value. I promise no matter how desperately discouraging your situation seems, there is restoration and redemption waiting for you. Where there is breath, there is life and where there is life, there is ALWAYS hope. Find that Hope and run with it. Don’t waste the time you’ve been given. Life is fleeting and when it’s gone it doesn’t come back. I pray the next time that voice starts to lie to you, telling you to use, that you’ll realize that voice comes with half-truths. It brings just enough truth for you to be willing to listen to what it has to say. But a half-truth is a whole lie. So instead of listening, I hope you take pause and remember our story, about the little family from Washington state, who played with life and tragically lost.
I’m so thankful for your sobriety! And yes, cherish the life you have 
