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Here I was again, in jail. I was being arrested for the same old thing—prostitution.
I'd been prostituting since 1985, when I got hooked on crack cocaine at the age of 27. At first, my cocaine use was purely social; I tried it at the parties I attended while serving in the Navy, living off-base in Norfolk, Virginia. I loved the euphoria cocaine gave me; it produced such a rush that before long, I started using it by myself to keep the feeling going.
But I quickly learned the downside to a cocaine high: The rush wears off quickly, and in its place come feelings of fear and depression. In order to avoid coming down, I repeatedly tried to capture that initial euphoria by using more and more. Before I knew what hit me, I had a full-fledged drug habit. What started as a recreational pastime became an ugly monster I couldn't get off my back. To pay for my habit, I turned to prostitution.
I began my career as a prostitute in Daytona Beach, Florida. After receiving an honorable discharge from the Navy, a friend and I moved to San Diego, California, where I got more heavily involved in crack. I decided a move to Daytona Beach might help me get my act together. But with no job, I soon had to find other means to feed my growing habit. After a few years working the streets, I eventually got arrested. The cops knew I was a street junkie, so it only took a small offer to lure me. Most of the time I was so high, I never saw it coming. Eventually a judge told me I had a choice: Either I could go to prison, or leave Florida. I chose to move to Winston-Salem, North Carolina, where I'd grown up. However, my mother and grandmother both had died before I was 10, and what little family I had left wanted nothing to do with me.
After I'd been on the streets awhile in Winston-Salem, I found myself homeless. Sometimes I slept in abandoned houses, empty apartment hallways, even empty cars. I once even sought shelter in the bed of an empty 18-wheeler during the dead of winter, when the wind chill made the temperatures sub-zero.
During my years of addiction, I gave birth to three beautiful babies as an unwed mother—each of my children had a different father. I eventually lost custody of these precious angels and was even sent to prison twice for child neglect. I made my first trip to prison in Raleigh, North Carolina. My cocaine habit had consumed me. The department of social services removed my children from my custody, but I still couldn't get a grip on my life. Losing my children was the darkest, most dismal time of my entire life. I felt unable to climb out of the stinking black hole into which I'd fallen.
I repeatedly sought comfort in the arms of lovers who abused me physically and emotionally. Smoking crack seemed to be my only way to escape the reality of my pain. I had nowhere to turn and no one to which to turn.
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