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It was during the beginning of the Coronavirus when I went into the field to break down and scream, "God! What are you doing to us?" Shortly after that event I left home. Packing up my stuff to run away from unideal circumstances, let's just say, leaving my four year old child behind with my parents as I went into an abused women's shelter. I set off, packing all my belongings into a cab to start my journey. I said a prayer, "Please God, bring Jhonny, Jhonathan Alma Hill as an angel to watch over me. Jhonathan had been a friend, a Mormon missionary, who had returned home and lost his way. Our love/hate relationship was cluttered with passionate poetry and story-telling. He more talented than I. And so I asked for his angel to come watch over me.

The cab driver was friendly and instructed me to read the Quran at least once. He even gave me his email for me to contact him when I was finally settled so he could bring me the book.

An intake was done at the center but because of the Coronavirus and the need to social distance I was put up in a hotel which will forever remain a secret on my lips.

I was out for a walk and misplaced my keys. It started to thunder and pour and I, intoxicated on marijuana decided to seek shelter in the fire car which had the doors open. I curiously looked around for two seconds when a police cruiser stopped by. I jumped out and explained to the officer I was locked out of my hotel room. It was raining quite heavily at this time. I stood standing in the rain and more officers came and left. One familiar to me said, "Just stay back...you know.....the Coronavirus." This officer I had encountered outside the ER on a very hectic night. I had approached him in his vehicle to place my hand on his arm and breathe. I made that connection and it helped me to calm down from the chaos being construed by the young eighteen year old who kept insisting that the ER should help everyone. Pleading with security over and about the gentleman who had misbehaved and was ushered out of the ER. I tried repeatedly to explain to this young man that bad behavior denies entrance into the ER. "But why won't you help him! He needs help!" He kept on exclaiming. While I kept on repeating, "Bad behavior gets you denied admission to the ER!" He just wouldn't listen. So I approached the nearby cruiser, put my hand on the officers arm which he had laid out on the windsow-sill and said, "I just need to breathe and calm down and I'm staying right here with you." Now that same officer was present but I had to keep my distance. For reasons I still do not today understand I flipped out. Screaming and throwing my arms about, not really remembering much of it until there was an interjection by another officer standing in the rain with me. He repeated back to me my ramblings, "You want to dance Sandra?" I had not remembered saying that. Next the question came, "Where are you staying at?" After a long pause I replied, "At an undisclosed location that I have to keep private for the safety of the other women." But I won't walk away without telling you the conversation prior with the officer in the car. After having my Crisis I stepped as close to him as he would permit me to and said, "If I was truly suicidal I wouldn't actually do anything. I would just go around and kiss everybody."

"You would, would you?"

"Yes," I replied. I'd kiss you" Not the first time I had flirted with a cop after pulling a stunt. So they pointed upwards, towards the sky and said, "Go home." And in looking up I was able to see my hotel and later thought this to be smart for those officers to instruct me to look up as such to find my way home.

The next day I ventured out to find Rohan. Finding him in poor condition. Shaking and laying on the bed. I ask what the tremors are about. He says, "Just nerves." Then asks me to sing a song for him. "What song do you want me to sing?" In his deep throaty voice he begins to sing Amazing Grace and his voice slowly tapers off as I continue with the lyrics. He thanks me after. We then move outside to enjoy the fresh air and sunshine and Rojer makes me promise to take care of Rohan when he himself is incarcerated. "You see this ring?" I say pointing to Rohan's finger where I had placed a ring I had impulsively, manically bought at Casa Chevalla along with $200 worth of other stuff that the clerk had become concerned about me spending too much money.

Rojer approves. We lay out in the sun laughing, joking, and when Rohan spits I make the dirty joke. "Don't you ever spit like that on me! I want it in the prenuptial; No spitting on my pussy!" With much amusement to Rojer, we all laugh. I ask Rohan what can I do for him to fix the tremors. Rojer then insists that he needs Crystal Meth. I am not too familiar with this drug but I know to stay away from it. I go to the bank and pull out $200 and tell Rojer, "Buy Cocaine, not meth." Rojer argues with me that cocaine will not solve Rohan's problem. He buys the Crystal Meth. I take off spending as much money as I can so as not to buy any more Crystal Meth. But to no avail. $600 later we are all high and Rojer orders me, "Come here." He puts the pipe in my mouth and tells me to, "Pull, pull,pull....." Then he sends me into the room next door where Rohan lays, no longer in withdrawal. I take off my clothes and he does as well. I climb on top for him to please me. Riding him fast, then slow, head banging against the wall. Shortly after I take off leaving Rohan sleeping and Rojer asking me if I was to come back. "I don't like the Crystal Meth'" I tell him.

I take a walk. I look good on this day and am complimented by a passerby. A shirt with a skeleton on it, jeans, and the black fedora hat resting on my head. But I am lost in my addiction for the time being and head back home.

I encounter Charlie behind the Downtown Mission where she is in fear of her life saying the snipers are to come and kill her and Lady cop will come to witness it. Concerned, I run off to the police station for help, leaving my laptop I had brought with me behind to record the activity. But once I get to the cop shop, and interesting turn of events. It is determined that I am the one to be brought into the hospital.

I converse with the two officers about my ex-husband and they tell me he is doing well, or so they've been informed. "I don't care! Is he? Okay Good. Not doing so well myself." They struggle to pronounce my last name and the white cop finally says it properly. Up to that point I had never realized what a sexy last name I had and I loved hearing him say it and repeat it five times.

Finally in the hospital, the psychiatric assessment nurse approaches me after my blood tests have come back and says to me, "You are all fucked up!" I laugh. I am admitted onto the third floor psychiatric unit where I can recover and stabilize.

Things are never more chaotic on the third floor. Code White's, (violent patients), units spilling out onto each other and it seems as though the nurses themselves at times could use a PRN (medication) Then the nurse makes a mistake with me. He tells me, the new medication will prevent me from going into psychosis should I use Crystal Meth again. This is a mistake because now I can give myself permission to use freely and now I am hooked. After discharge I return to the Women's Shelter but shortly after I am asked to leave not adhering to the Coronavirus rules they have set up for everybody's safety. I touch the pregnant women's belly, I forget to wear my mask, I forget to call before going downstairs to the smoking area and such nonsense. The rules were changing all the time. I also in that moment declare my impulsivities....wanting to climb walls and jump off of them, fences; My safety now becomes a concern and I am put into a cab and sent towards the Mental Health Clinic for help. At the mental health clinic I reassure my social worker that I am not a threat to myself and arrangements are made for me to enter into a women's homeless shelter. On the fifth day of being there I then move to a rest home while on priority for subsidized housing. I meet Helen who was a Hell's Angels and we become friends. I dance for Russel much to his amusement. I am taken advantage by a neighbor who preys on the fact that I am an addict and a mental health patient. I advocate for myself with the Central Housing Registry to get the hell out! I am assaulted twice that summer and I reach a point where I don't care anymore and my friend from the psychiatric unit describes me as broken.

That summer the music spills onto the streets and dancing is not allowed inside the bars because of Coronavirus. The Windsor Circus School is out and I connect with them, doing little performances on the side.

One night a gentleman in a wheelchair accompanies me by the river and we go on a date. At one point I sit on his lap and reach below his shirt. He stops me and pulls me in for a hug. I begin to cry after being violated so many times. He comforts me and seems to know my hurt.

A year passes and I have my own home and am waiting to get into rehab. I went off the straight and narrow and am fighting to find my way back. In my internet searches I find an opportunity for disadvantaged women to become millwrights and I enroll in the program. This is my way out, I tell myself. This will be my independence. As much as I fell lost to my addiction, I will find my way back and bring my daughter back into my life. But having left under such circumstances does not permit me ever to return to that small room in my parents house I once called my room. It is so. It is good. I will succeed in this life. As Agatha Christie once said, “I like living. I have sometimes been wildly, despairingly, acutely miserable, racked with sorrow; but through it all I still know quite certainly that just to be alive is a grand thing.” The End

Here I stand never looking back. It's grown-up time. At 43 I've learned how to open my first bank account on my own. I'm not such a bad cook. I make mistakes and I will learn despite what my intelligence tests revealed to me.....that I don't learn from my mistakes of the past. "But don't worry," the psychologist reassured me. One day it will all click!

Click! Click! Click! Click! Click!