me and always thought that my odds were so horrible. What I began to realize is that everything I needed to succeed was sitting right in front of me. When I came back from Alabama, I guess you could say that I was changed for the better. I got pregnant right after high school, but my son saved me from relapsing into any of the behaviors that I had been doing before rehab.
My son was my new addiction, and he helped me escape from the world I had known before. I finally had someone who loved me no matter what, and I knew he would always, without judgment. My son is my whole heart, and he is my savior. It was not until I had him I knew I had to do better and make a life for us.
I met my ex-husband in 2009 when my son was two years old. Little did I know that turned into a complete nightmare. He was in the Army; he came home from one of his deployments with severe PTSD and a TBI. The violence began shortly after he was diagnosed. When he was dishonorably discharged from the Army, we moved on to Michigan for his new work, which six months later he got fired for failing a drug test. My whole world had been turned upside down, and it seemed like everything I had been taught and been raised to be like was just a huge blur. I wasn’t taking care of myself, just my son as best as I could. I was across the country from any family that I had ever known and was stuck up here with a horrible life, horrible in-laws who didn’t care whether I had black eyes or bruised arms, having to worry about being homeless with a young child and married to a drug addict. I was not the person my parents raised me to become. I was not a confident young woman at all. I was controlled by a monster inside me and outside of me. One thing I did have was my son; he was my hope, my one true love and my reason and will to live.
After six years of being physically and mentally beat down, I knew I could not just sit there and take it from him. Following a concussion, ...