squeezing every ounce of air from my lungs. I was high on crack cocaine and in and out of consciousness. I remember being attacked and losing control of my car, but had no idea I had killed anyone. I remember that exact cold and gloomy feeling that I wouldn’t live through the pain and guilt. I had to fight the hardest fight of my life to breathe every day and co-exist with what I had done. I have never been suicidal, but to find the WILL and COURAGE to wake up each morning and take a breath to live was excruciating. Guilt had always been used in my life to get me to do things, and now GUILT was sure to destroy me, in a much worse, self-sabotaging way that crack cocaine ever could (if that is even imaginable). When I sat in jail awaiting a forty year prison sentence I was fear stricken, ashamed and completely stripped of my identity from the cocaine and domestic abuse I was living in. I was not sure I could live a life without my kids, even though the crack cocaine was so jealous it had already taken them out of my life by having me on the streets days at a time away from them.
Sitting in jail after killing somebody without any therapy, anti-deppressant, or even a counselor allowed me to hit