Stripped Down: Unfiltered and Unapologetic

Chapter 1 Still Here

Still Here

THE THING ABOUT ME IS THAT I SHOULD BE DEAD.

But in those last few minutes before it all went dark, I was riding high, my girl Tamra behind the wheel of my Cadillac Escalade EXT, blasting music and screaming at the top of our lungs.

I lay my head down on the edge of the door, letting the cool breeze tingle across my skin through the open window.

I wasn’t thinking about the man waiting at home for me, or how Tamra and I had constructed an alibi so I could get some damn breathing room.

He thought we were with a client, and there was no reason for him to know the truth.

I don’t let people drive. I need to be in the driver’s seat.

The one in control. But even I could feel I was too far gone, and she was completely sober.

So I gave her the keys and stopped thinking.

I didn’t think about the F-250 barreling down the other side of the highway, getting closer. I didn’t think about anything but the bright, sparkling lights of the Strip, growing fainter as Tamra drove us home.

When it hit us at seventy miles per hour, my brain went to the crackling static between radio stations.

All six thousand pounds of the Escalade flipped into the air, and everything slowed down.

Without a seat belt to keep me in place, I arced through the car in slow motion.

I swear you could have played a classical concerto as I was tossed around like a rag doll.

Metal crunching, windows shattering. Then finally, crack.

I hit the windshield face-first. My legs whipped up behind me like a scorpion. Crunch.

I came down hard in the driver’s seat, twisted metal and broken glass everywhere. I couldn’t get my bearings and finally clocked Tamra hanging over me by her seat belt.

“Tamra. You okay?” I asked. I couldn’t see her face, just her body gone limp.

“Yeah, I’m okay.” Thank God.

I smelled gas, and I knew we had to get the fuck out.

I unhooked her seat belt, and her dead weight slammed on top of me.

The entire front windshield was crushed, but somehow the driver’s-side window was still intact.

Smoke filled the car, so I kicked the window out.

It was only a matter of time before a fire would start.

Dazed, I pulled myself and then Tamra out.

I still had my phone on me. I called Eric and told him we flipped my truck, and I needed him to come and get me before the cops came.

“You’re a lying bitch,” he said. “You didn’t get in a wreck.

You sound way too calm.” Going silent and eerily calm in the face of a crisis is a textbook trauma response, but it would be years before I’d even begin to understand how much I needed to heal.

Out on the road with broken glass all around us, I hung up the phone.

Fuck this motherfucker. I’ll get you back later, bud.

The cops pulled up, and everything started to go black.

I did the only thing I could think to do.

I took off running like a bat out of hell.

“Why are you running?” the cop screamed after me.

“I don’t talk to police!” I screamed back.

“You’re in shock!” he yelled. “You need to sit the fuck down!” But I kept going, one foot in front of the other, running for my life. Or maybe I was trying to run from my life—to outrun everything that had come before.

I put my whole body into running, but lit as I was, I must not have gotten very far. The cops caught up with me easily. Hell, maybe I was even running in place. Someone strapped me to a gurney.

Lights out.

* * *

I’M GOING TO BE REALLY honest with you. I’ve spent most of my life trying to get up and get out—to run as fast as I could to escape the pain and the trauma and the past. Whether I was bombed out of my mind on drugs and booze, slipping from one toxic relationship into another, creating drama and reveling in the chaos, packing up to change my life and start fresh, or trying to save people because it made me feel like I was a better person, I was an absolute expert at flooding my bloodstream with numbing agents.

But I’ve got news for you: None of that shit works, at least not in the long run.

Eventually, I had to get healthy and get therapy and get honest. I had to start seeing myself as worthy of healing and protecting.

It’s been a process. It still is a process. I’m not done.

I’m blessed that my husband and I found each other, but that wasn’t all Cinderella and Prince Charming from the jump.

We both tried to dip a time or two—but time, maturity, twisted wisdom, and true fucking connection has brought us to where we are now.

I’m blessed that I get to parent our daughter and watch her grow up surrounded by love, but our happy family didn’t come easily.

I’m blessed to find so much recognition among the flawed, imperfect, beautiful humans out here trying to heal and grow, who find me online or at shows or listen to every single podcast and make me feel less alone.

I’m blessed to finally be at peace with myself.

The life I have now wouldn’t be possible without acknowledging that I had to stop doing what I was doing. Running away into the arms of a man, into the embrace of a high, or into my own destruction wasn’t leading me anywhere good.

I had to find and keep real love—especially for myself.

I had to learn how to stay put—to sit still in the pain, to stop pushing away the trauma, and let this body heal.

God never left me, and I had to learn how to accept His blessings by showing up for myself like He always had.

I had to face death many times over, to look the Grim Reaper in the eye and tell him I wasn’t ready to go with him just yet.

Writing this book is part of the healing.

I’m not perfect, and my story isn’t always pretty.

It’s a testimony of the many, many failed hits on my life, and an honest excavation of the times when I was the one to try to pull the trigger.

It’s living proof that when the darkness seems like it’s going to pull you under, we’re still all worth saving—you and me.

I’m still here, living and breathing and feeling. Thank God.