Tory Price: Journal Entry 10/20/2014

Today I went to my first support group class. I have to admit, it was nice to connect with other people in the same situation as me. At the start of it, we were asked to write our  backstory and what we hope to improve about ourselves from this class. I was very nervous, at first, to write my backstory down on paper. For me, it’s too painful to reflect on. The teacher saw my blank page and told me to write. I rolled my eyes and stared at the paper a bit more. After a couple minutes of boredom, I finally picked up a pencil and began to write my story. 

 Life has not been easy since I landed myself in prison for possession of meth. In my early years, I had jobs in waitressing at Joey’s Bar & Grill and the Rolling Spoon Tavern. Joey’s mostly had me working Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays from 11 pm to 7 pm. The Rolling Spoon was a popular late night bar in town and I was working Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Fridays from 8 pm to 12 am. With demanding customers and critical managers, both places would drive me to the brink of exhaustion, but I had to do whatever I could to make ends meet.

On top of that I had a rental apartment with my boyfriend Roger. I met Roger at a  college party when I was 22 and we really hit it off. I was standing in the corner of a frat house living room trying to avoid the crowds when we made eye contact. Before I knew it, I saw him walking over to me.

“What’s your name” he asked.

“Tory.”

“What brings you here? And why are you alone in a corner?”

“I’m out with friends, but I am trying to avoid the crowded dance floor,” I replied.

“Yeah, I’m not much of a crowds guy myself. I have a hard time loosening up in front of people,” he said.

We continued to talk about ourselves and laugh at each other’s stories. We learned that we were both in the same graduating class and we talked about life after graduation. We continued to date for a couple months after. We would often go out to bars and stumble out of the bar laughing at how much fun we had. After graduation I decided to move into Roger’s apartment that he had been staying in while in college. I promised to help with paying rent and I got my jobs at Joey’s and Rolling Stone’s to help with it. When the week was over, Roger and I continued to have our usual date nights out at the bar.

One day after we got home from a date, Roger asked me if I wanted to give meth a try. He said that he had tried it with his buddy before graduation and he thought it would help us loosen up even more. I remember sitting on our living room couch with him, getting high, laughing about life, and forgetting our responsibilities. It used to be our treat at the end of our long and stressful work weeks. We held that tradition for over three years.

But then one day, I felt sick. I was really tired all the time and spent a couple of days with terrible cramps, and I threw up in the bathroom. I was curious and decided to go to the  CVS to get a pregnancy test. After I got home, I went to the bathroom to take the test immediately. I waited in anticipation for three minutes until it was time to look at the result. POSITIVE 

I felt an overwhelming mixture of emotions: excitement to be a mom, but also anxious about the pregnancy journey ahead. What would I do about my addiction? I couldn’t think about that in the moment; I wanted to tell Roger as soon as possible!

We both embraced and cried over the excitement of this miracle. 

“We have to do something to get ourselves clean,” I said to Roger. We both made a plan that day to wean ourselves off of meth. 

The road ahead was  difficult for both of us. The withdrawal symptoms along with the pregnancy symptoms made  the whole experience 10 times worse. Both of us had shakes and the worst migraines we had ever experienced. After 3 months, my symptoms were beginning to subside, but Roger was still having difficulty. 

“Tory, I can’t do this anymore,” he exclaimed. “This damn baby is taking away the very thing that brought us together. These symptoms are not getting any better for me.”

I was appalled at Roger for blaming our own baby on the struggles that we had endured. 

“That one thing that had brought us together has been killing us,” I said. “Do not blame our baby for the struggles that withdrawal has brought you. For all we know, this baby is a wake up call to show that the life that we had been living was destroying us. And having this new life that I want to protect has open my eyes to-”

Roger had heard enough. “I DON’T GIVE A DAMN!”

“Quit shouting at me” I retorted. “This is not good for either of us, especially for me with the baby.”

“Then how about you and your precious cargo get out of my apartment?”

I stood there frozen; my eyes filled with tears.

“I’m dead serious Tory! The withdrawal is too much for me and I can’t keep up with our pact”

Tears began to stream down my face and I began feeling physically sick from our argument.

“I can’t believe I trusted you! Just when I thought that we were making a better life for ourselves and our baby, you took that away in one day.”

Roger sat there silently and I could tell he had nothing left to say. I stormed out of our living room and down the hallway of our apartment. I got to our bedroom, slammed the door, and began to sob.  I packed up a suitcase without saying a word to Roger. I walked to my car and loaded my suitcase in the trunk. I didn’t know where I was going, but I knew it had to be far from Roger. 

The next two months I battled severe episodes of depression. I had no motivation to get up to get up in the morning; the weight of emotional exhaustion kept me in bed like a boulder on my chest. I hardly showed up for my shifts at Joey’s Bar & Grill and Rolling Spoon Tavern. When I did show up, my managers could tell that I was not in the right headspace to greet customers and mostly had me help the busboys in the back. After missing two weeks of work without an excuse, I lost my jobs and had to move in with my mother. I never spent too much time with my mom since she would always ask me about my addiction. She berated me with questions about why I would listen to Roger and do this kind of harm to my body. I had had enough and spent most of my nights wandering the streets, avoiding her until she went to bed around 11 o’clock. I would think about Roger and wonder where we went wrong. I felt a strong wave of depression and although, I was seven months pregnant at this point, I still craved some meth. I wanted to forget about the pain I was feeling. I wanted to forget about my mom. I wanted to forget about this pregnancy. 

July 4th, 2014. The day I fell back into old habits. I gave in to my cravings and bought a bag of crystal meth from my dealer friend. It was 9:00 pm, and I sat on the sidewalk outside of a pizza shop; it seemed like a smart thing to do in case I got hungry. The manager came outside and told me that I had to leave. He did not want the customers to see me. In retaliation, I spat at him and told him to fuck off and leave me alone. He went inside and in no time later, I heard sirens in the distance. They grew  louder until I saw flashing red and blue lights down the road. Two male officers pulled up and entered the shop. I tried to sit up to get a glimpse through the window and saw them talking to the manager. About five minutes later, they came outside again and one of the officers knelt down to talk to me.

“What’s going on here?” he asked me.

I was furious about the ordeal, and I made that apparent in my response. 

“Listen, all I want is just some peace and to be left alone! I’m not doing anything wrong here, officer!”

He glanced at me up and down and pointed at my hand. 

“Is that meth in your hand?” he asked. Then he looked at my belly and asked if I was pregnant.

“I don’t have to answer to anything,” I snarled.

“Alright, well you are under arrest for possession of meth. You have the right to remain silent and anything you say can be used against you in a court of law.”

Immediately following that, the two officers forced me up off of the pavement and put me in the cop car. We drove for about 20 minutes until we arrived at the county jail. When we entered, I was immediately swarmed with officers who began patting my breasts and thighs. Then they confiscated my cell phone, my meth, and the change in my pockets. I was taken to a desk where I got my thumbprint stamped and photographed. The court process was a blur to me, but I remember sitting in front of a judge who looked me in the eye, sentenced me to six years for possession of meth and assaulting a police officer (I guess spitting counts as an assault, who knew?), and told me to try and clean up my act while I was there.

I previously had no motivation to get clean. But little did I know how that would change when I had my child in prison. The labor pains were excruciating and I kept screaming for help but no one would come. I kept screaming for what seemed like hours until finally a guard opened my door and saw me in pain. The officer called for backup and I was cuffed, put in a wheelchair, then in an ambulance, and rushed to the hospital. When I got there with two officers I was ushered to an emergency hospital bed. 

“Arms up,” the female officer said. I put my arms up and I felt my wrists being chained to the table. I howled from the cold tight metal on my wrists. 

“Spread your legs apart,” she added. Then I felt two hands grabbing my ankles as my legs were pushed up. I then felt the rusty metal shackles being chained to my ankles and I could not move. I felt movement inside my stomach and I howled in pain.

After  all that hard labor, I had a baby boy. He seemed healthy from what I could tell, but of course Dr. Ghost wouldn’t tell me many details. My memory is foggy, but I remember the sound of him crying. Were they doing anything to him? Was he crying for me? I didn’t know. I tried to lean up and get a look at him but could only get a glimpse of his forehead before I was pinned back down to the table. The guards unlocked my shackles around my wrists and I moved them  around, trying to bring back any circulation. Just as quick as they unshackled my wrists, they moved them down to my waist and put them back in the cuffs. Then my ankles were released and I moved them around. 

“Sit up,” a guard shouted at me, and he put me back in the wheelchair. I was  handcuffed again and taken to another room. I could still hear him crying! My heart sank  at the thought of him crying for me, but I was not there for him.

Nowadays, I still get visits with him, though they are very brief. My jail has a program where if women have babies less than 8 months away from their release date, then they are taken to a separate space where there is one bed and a crib. This way the mother can bond with their newborn child in the first months of life. My sentence was too long, so I didn’t have that luxury. Now, whenever I want to see my boy, I have to sit behind a window with him and my mother on the other side and talk to him through a phone. He won’t be able to feel my touch until he’s about four years old. 

Maybe one day, when I am released, I will become an advocate. I want to advocate for better treatment of pregnant prisoners and prisoners with addictions. That’s what I think I want to get out of this support group while I'm here. I want to better myself so that I can help others. That is one thing that I hope to take away and that I would like my son to see. That I can overcome my addiction and my situation and  pass my encouragement to others, making a continuous cycle of empowerment. That’s my legacy, and I feel so motivated to fulfill it.