2015 has been a great year so far. We've been through a lot of sadness and frustration due to the situation with the kids, but our second year of marriage has been full of great accomplishments too. In March we purchased our amazing home, and last weekend we took a little getaway and came home with the most beautiful Mercedes. My husband has been wanting this car since I’ve known him, and it’s such a blessing that we were able to make it happen. With all that he does to give me everything I could ever want or need, he truly deserved to be the spoiled one for a change. When we went to pick it up, he asked me if I wanted to drive it back to the hotel, and I drove the whole way crying happy tears. I had the same reaction when we bought our house. To some, it probably sounds kind of shallow to have such an emotional reaction to material things, but it’s actually much deeper than that. Achieving the things that everyone aspires to have in life comes with overwhelming realizations of just how far you’ve come when you've experienced so much loss, pain and heartbreak in the past. So, in those moments where I find myself experiencing something that was once beyond anything I ever saw in my future it immediately takes me back to the very lowest moment of my life, the night I truly almost ended it.

 

Sitting in that gorgeous car was such a long way from the night I locked myself in that hotel bathroom. At the time, I was so completely broken that I truly couldn't imagine surviving another day of the life I was living. We'd been evicted, cars repossessed and I'd lost my job because my life was so unstable. Everything I owned was piled up in the corner of that hotel room, and I hadn’t eaten in days. I was so emotionally and mentally sick that I couldn’t keep anything down even if I’d had any food to eat. The only thing I could remember eating in the last month was one chicken nugget. The Soul Stealer was kicking my ass regularly by that time. Saying my life was ruined wasn’t an exaggeration. Every direction I looked there was complete disaster ahead, and at that point in time there was only one way out that I could see. He told me that he didn’t have the money for the room fee for the next day, but somehow managed to scrape up enough to support his habit. I knew it was the end of the line. The next day we were going to be out in the streets. I quietly got up and went to the bathroom. There was a razor in there. I’d make it work somehow. It was the only option I could see. I turned on the shower so he wouldn’t get suspicious. The feeling that it was finally going to be over was the most inner peace I’d felt in a long time. I tried and tried to break the plastic on the razor and I couldn’t do it. I've never felt more desperate, alone and hopeless than I did that night. Soon, he caught on to the fact that I had been in the bathroom too long and started demanding that I come out. I'd already figured out the razor wasn't going to work. Either I was going to have to come out or he was going to break in, and the result of that was exactly what had me in that bathroom to begin with.