Kat.

Sorry everyone! I know you've been looking at our blog this week in hopes of a new entry and I have had nothing for you. It's been a long week and I just haven't had the motivation to update. First off, Deacon finally blew and is much happier now. Haha. A lot has happened since Tuesday and I will gladly share with everyone tomorrow, but tonight I really want to share something that has been on my mind for a while now.

The last time I was in North Carolina visiting my family I also got to see one of my old friends, Katherine. She and I have known each other since 6th grade, we rode horses at the same barn and once we became friends we were completely inseparable for the next 4 years. We even moved schools together in 8th grade, but our freshman year Katherine drastically changed from the pony-loving, glitter-wearing, carefree girl that I once knew. She became a cheerleader (nothing wrong with that!) but with that image she also thought that she had to have a boyfriend who was a bad influence, almost flunk all of her classes, cut herself, and lose so much weight that she became anorexic. Within months it was like I didn't even know a girl who had been my best friend for 4 years.

I and a couple of my friends decided that we needed to do something about Katherine's behavior when we saw big gashes on the inside of her legs one day in gym class. We went to our counselor and had an intervention with Katherine, who then was taken out of school, and eventually sent to a home for troubled teen girls. Shortly after she was admitted she and her roomate rigged the window alarm in their room and jumped to the ground to escape. After being missing for 2 days she called a friend, and told us all that she had been in downtown Raleigh staying with a man that she didn't know- scared the living daylights out of everyone. Once she got home she was sent to Holly Hill (a mental hospital and drug rehab) for the first of a handful of times in the next few years.

After that Katherine continued to get involved with the wrong crowd and had started using drugs and drinking alcohol- many times mixing the two. She and I had lost touch for the most part at that point, every once in a while we would talk and hang out, but for the most part Katherine hung out with her other friends and chose not to talk to me because she knew that I didn't approve. She dropped out of high school after escaping from the girls home, and was struggling to hold a job with no education and no licence- we were only 16 at this time. One day Katherine's mom called me and asked me to talk to Katherine because she suspected that she was getting herself into things that were illegal and unsafe. I brought her to my house for a "girls night" and she spilled her story- not only had she begun experimenting with sex, drugs, and alcohol, but she had taken morphine and drank tequila right before I picked her up. After I brought her back home I called her mom and told her what I had found out, she confronted Katherine about it told her that she was going to rehab again. Katherine refused to go and I had to go back to her house, pack up her things, and take her shaking and hysterical to rehab. I was barely 16 and could not believe that I was taking my best friend to rehab in the middle of the night. This was the last time I heard from Katherine until my 18th birthday.


Almost two years later she called me out of the blue and told me that she was in a halfway house after getting out of a 6 month long intense rehab. My best friend Meredith and I went to go see her for the first time in two years on my 18th birthday- we barely recognized her. She was smoking like a freight train, had a completely different tone to her voice, and still looked incredibly skinny and worn down by the drugs. Katherine had become addicted to crack and crystal meth, among many other random street and prescription drugs, sneaking out of her parents house every night to go to college parties, sleep on park benches, and stay with friends who were anything but good influences on her. The day that Katherine told us about where she had been the last year and a half was the last time Meredith and I would hear from her for the next 2 1/2 years. Her house mom had given her a curfew and she hadn't told us about it, so when she got back late she told her to pack her things and get out-it was her last strike. Mere and I felt terrible, like it was our fault that she had gotten kicked out, but in reality Katherine would be forced to leave shortly regardless.

It was almost as if Katherine completely disappeared, we didn't know if she was alive, dead, healthy, sick, clean, or abusing drugs still. Meredith and I talked every week and at least once a month we wondered aloud to each other where Katherine was or what had happened to her. Last summer a girl we went to high school with found Katherine's MySpace and we were absolutely shocked by what we found. She was indeed still alive and still addicted to drugs, it was very clear by her pictures and comments on the page. We also discovered that she was a dancer at a strip club in Greensboro, NC, and I called to ask if she was still working there. The girl I talked to said she was and we were so relieved that Katherine was still alive! I messaged her just asking if she remembered me, and a month later she messaged me back and we began to talk again after such a long and uneasy 2 1/2 years. Katherine and I eventually exchanged phone numbers and so did she and Meredith, but we were completely unprepared for the voice that called us a few days later. We didn't even recognize her, it was like a completely different person! I can't even describe in words how incredibly dark, raspy, and drug beaten she sounded, but I agreed to meet up with her the next time I would be in Raleigh.


That time came in September last year when I was 7 months pregnant with Deacon. She came to my baby shower, and the next day was put in the hospital for an asthma attack. Meredith and I went to see her and she told me all about what had gone on in the 2 1/2 years she completely disappeared from my world. After leaving the halfway house that day, Katherine was taken in by a family who had gone through the same situation with their son. Eventually she again got in with the wrong crowd, got back into drugs, left the house, and moved to Greensboro. She then started doing dope (heroin) and dove deeper and deeper in to the black hole that would become her life for the next 2 years. A couple times she went to rehab and got clean but it never lasted long because she could never bring herself to stay away from the crowd that continued to get her involved in the drugs. She then started dancing at a strip club, and eventually got in the business of escorting. Katherine slept with hundreds of men and did things that I could not have imagined in my wildest dreams, and spent all of her money on drugs. She had to disappear and leave town to get away from the pimp who was using her body and providing her with drugs, and ended up in Carolina beach with a friend of hers. One night Katherine and this group got in a fight at a bar, she for some reason had brass knuckles with her and beat a Marine in the parking lot. She was arrested and charged, but the worst part in her eyes was detoxing in a jail cell all on her own. After that she was brought back to Raleigh and put in a facility for recovering drug addicts that uses a step or phase program to get the women who live there out into the world with a job, a car, a home, and help them to deal with the emotional baggage that comes along with being a drug addict. I don't think my jaw could have stayed shut if I wanted it to, I was in complete shock of what she was telling me. As disappointed as I was in the path that she had taken, I was more sad than anything else. Katherine had completely changed from the sweet teeny-bopper that I had once known, and I didn't even know the shattered woman who sat in front of me.


After returning to Texas Katherine and I stayed in touch and she seemed to be doing well until her 21st birthday rolled around. For some odd reason her parole officer told her that she could leave the center! Seriously?! Katherine had been court ordered to stay at the facility until she had completed the phases, and they were letting her leave two days before her 21st birthday. Meredith and I were furious with her for coming so close to beating this monster and then giving up the first chance she got. Katherine moved in with her parents, and a week later I went back to Raleigh for a visit and got to see her again. Meredith, Deacon and I went to her parents house one afternoon to see her and were blown away by what happened while we were there. Katherine told us that she had decided to date a girl named Megan who had just been released from prison on drug charges. RED FLAG!! We smelled marijuana when we walked into her room, but nothing beat when she opened her underwear drawer and a straw, lighter, and spoon full of white powder was sitting there plain as day. I was baffled that not only was she getting back into drugs a week after leaving the facility, but she had brought my baby into a home with drugs in it. It was at that point that I went from being a supportive friend into total Mama Bear mode and I decided that until she decides to get clean and stay that way I want absolutely nothing to do with her. Meredith and I were furious, disappointed, shocked, and felt that we had been made a fool of for actually believing that she could change after this long. We called her mom and told her what had happened, and even though it was not disclosed who gave the information, Katherine has yet to try and contact either of us after that day.

Two weeks ago I was watching Dr. Phil and it was about a drug intervention so I texted Katherine's mom in the off chance that they would be able to catch the episode. After that we exchanged emails and I told her that I would love to know how Katherine is doing and what is going on in her life, but as far as talking to her I am too mad to bring myself to do so. Nobody puts my baby in danger and just gets away with it, Deacon is my world and I would give my life for him in an instant- she's not worth losing my baby. I just don't understand what it will take to get her to clean herself up and reach the potential that we all know she is capable of.

I have watched a couple other Dr. Phil episodes on drug interventions lately, and while they make me angry with Katherine, they also have made me realize why I have felt the need to be so involved and supportive in Katherine's journey. In a way I have felt responsible for her addiction, like I should have been there for her more, I should have voiced my oppinion about her friends and boyfriends, I should have been more aggressive with her about the drugs, and I should never have allowed her to leave my life for as long as she did. But it is NOT my fault and there is NOTHING that I could have done to help her. And most of all, it is not my responsibility to FIX her because I CAN'T.

Her parents and brother have been through such a rollercoaster ride with her, I just cannot imagine your child going through what Katherine has the last 7 years. I look at my sweet Deacon sleeping in his crib and pray to God that I never have to experience the pain that Katherine's parents have, my heart goes out to them as they continue to deal with everything that she dumps on them. Please keep them in your prayers, God is the only one who is in control of this situation, I know He has a plan for Katherine and her family that none of us could even dream of.