I used drugs for the same reason most drug addicts do: because I was in pain and nobody taught me another way to live through that pain. My father died suddenly from a brain aneurysm in the late Fall of 2011. The sorrow I felt was tangled up with the typical pressure from other teenagers, convincing me that the fastest way to get past my grief was to stop feeling it altogether. Alcohol worked until it didn't. Then, a Percocet prescription turned into something I could no longer control, and by the age of only eighteen, I was a full-blown IV heroin user. Addiction took things from me slowly, then all at once-- my health, relationships, and the sense of who I was outside of the constant need to use substances. Most kids inherit money, estates, or stocks from their family members. But I am not most kids, and my inheritance did not involve any financial gain; my siblings and I inherited Substance Use Disorder. My brother, Brian, died from a fentanyl overdose in February of 20234. My biological mother was killed by her boyfriend only a week later, also a result of the fast life she lived in active addiction. I grew up watching addiction shape the people I loved as it passed through their lives, long before I realized I was no longer watching a series of tragedies unfold. I was watching a pattern develop that would continue for generations to come. It took a long time before I could see a way out of that pattern. The high I received from the drugs I consumed became the only manageable technique I had for quieting the thoughts in my mind and easing the pain that was not physical. It was no longer about chasing a high as I was now simply trying to survive in a life I had to be awake for. When you have never lived this sort of life, understanding an explanation like this can be difficult, which is why I feel it is important not to treat addiction as though it is a flaw of the human character. I believe, rather, that it should be looked at from a different perspective: addiction is just unaddressed and untreated pain that has nowhere else to go. The turning point for me was not one single 'Aha!' moment, so much as a slow-developing realization that I refused to accept this as my life's outcome. I got honest with myself and the people around me as I began to make choices as if I was already the version of myself I strived to become. I no longer allowed my family's history to dictate my future. Recovery is not linear, and the process has been anything but easy. I still have days, often, where old instincts take over, and old habits reform themselves. The difference today is that I have the tools that I have developed along this journey. My community is made up of people who give me a reason to reach for them instead of a drug. For me, moving forward means turning my survival into a career that will guide others walking the same path. I understand personally what it feels like to need and ask for help, and this inspires me to pursue a degree in Social Work. I cannot undo the damage addiction has cost my family and myself. However, I am determined to make sure that everything I survived was not without good reason-- to turn the worst parts into something that helps someone else find their way forward.

Christmas Eve was the last time I used fentanyl; I did not know that yet. Hours later, I was drugged, sexually assaulted, and strangled. Somehow, that night ignited a fire within me, rather than putting out the one already burning. This is where the essay could continue, but it makes more sense to start from the beginning. I was sex-trafficked as a toddler and later left alone to care for my blind, autistic, seven-year-old brother, Stephen, and my three-year-old brother, Brian, when I was only a four-year-old girl myself. Once the state became involved, we were separated as a result of the abuse I had already endured. We saw each other a total of three times over the next two years, only when our parents bothered to appear for scheduled visitation. We were eventually reunited and later adopted together by the same selfless woman. But by then, I already knew something most children never have to learn: the adults meant to protect you can fail you, and the people who do wrong things can live life without consequences or remorse. Not one person suffered legal consequences after sexually assaulting me, then nor later in my childhood. I carried that weight, quietly, until my father died from a brain aneurysm in the Fall of 2011. Grief, factored in with typical teenage peer pressure, convinced me that numbing my emotions was the easiest way to survive the loss. Alcohol worked for a while, until a Percocet prescription quickly spiraled into an uncontrollable IV heroin addiction at only eighteen years old. I used drugs for many years because it was the only way for my body to say aloud what my mouth could not. My brother, Brian, died from a fentanyl overdose in February of 2024, followed by my biological mother, only seven days later, after her boyfriend killed her. Same cycle-- trafficking, addiction-- repeating itself, circling through my entire bloodline since long before my birth. The years that followed became a battle for my life as I struggled with my physical and mental health, and it would nearly cost me my life on that Christmas Eve, in an assault I am still in court over. I know some of this is hard to read, and I intended for it to be this way. It is easier to look away from things like this, and that is precisely how abuse and violence remain quiet and unpunished. Advocacy begins where comfort ends. I was failed by a system that let the people who hurt me walk free; I was the kid no one came for, protected, or saved. But I am also the woman who filed that report and will walk into that courtroom next Wednesday and testify to twelve strangers, refusing to cower or stay silent. Christmas Eve did not change what happened to me; it changed whether I would keep letting my past dictate my future. I was no longer searching for a reason to survive-- I wanted to build something that would make my life worth living. This is why I am pursuing a degree in social work: I know what it costs when help does not arrive promptly and how much it can mean to a victim when it does. I want to work with the victims and survivors of sexual assault and domestic violence, advocating for the rights and justice they deserve from day one. Oftentimes, I still catch myself thinking of that four-year-old girl nobody came for... No one protected her. But I am, and I will.