Earlier today I had lunch with a girl, “Jessica,” who could easily have been one of my daughters. Jessica is in her early-30s, with clear eyes and smooth skin. She was attractively dressed, and has an easy smile that flashes often and brightly. She was raised in a home similar to mine: middle to upper-middle class, strong family values, emphasis on education. Words like “drugs” and “addiction” and “jail” were bits of a foreign vocabulary, having nothing to do with her.

Jessica’s parents divorced when she was 12, and though it was a “civilized” divorce and she continued to be on good terms with both her parents, it hurt. Always a nervous child, she gradually developed traits of anxiety and depression. Not wanting to burden her parents with additional stress, or even knowing why she didn’t feel quite right, she shut down communications. She ran with a “wild crowd,” and drank alcohol at parties to help manage her internal pain.

At college, the pattern only got worse. Jessica had no idea what she was doing at the university, and not a clue as to what she was supposed to learn from her classes. She had no focus or direction, she changed majors often, took incompletes. After seven years of off-and-on again higher education, she met an older man who seemed to her eyes to offer everything she didn’t have. He was a friend’s uncle, an older man but very handsome just the same, who had lived a hard life. The fact that he had just gotten out of prison only added to his appeal. Within a month of meeting him she was pregnant. Within three months, she was married.

Although many convicts have trouble finding work, her husband had no trouble earning income. Exactly what he did was a bit confusing, except that it took him out of town a lot. Left at home, lonelier than ever, she began to drink and use marijuana heavily. One night her husband returned, found her in the kitchen, and told her that alcohol and grass weren’t gone to solve her problems. He had some crack cocaine handy, and he would be happy to share. He told her it would change her life, she would do things she never dreamed she would do.

In this, he was correct. Jessica found herself doing all kinds of things she never dreamed she would do. She had another baby, this one suffering from drug addiction and placed for adoption by the state. She stole for drugs, she sold everything she owned, and she took to the streets. For four years, she lived a street life, homeless, and desperate for a fix. Eventually Jessica was picked up in a drug raid, and charged with possession of drug paraphernalia. She was booked, jailed, sent to trial, and sentenced to probation. She violated her probation twice and visited the jail each time. She continued to steal, live on the streets, and get arrested for a total of seven times in a single year.

Two years ago she decided she had had enough. She had hit her low: estrangement from her family, her children, and her idea of who she was. She had betrayed every principle she had been raised up to hold, and she no beliefs that could replace them. Jessica finally admitted she needed help.

Jessica was placed in a newly opened halfway home in Crestview for women leaving jail. She was paired with a minister, Pastor Carol, and enrolled in a program run by Mia Hagedorn called “Restoring Dignity.” She regained her religious core, and started rebuilding the bridges she had so defiantly burned years before. Her mother has custody of her oldest son, and she visits often. She sees the son who was placed with an adoptive family, and values them for the love and concern they lavish on her child. She prays every day for forgiveness for those she has hurt, and for a future in which she can repair the damage.

Tomorrow Jessica starts work as a waitress, another something she never thought she would do. She is as excited about it as anything she’s ever encountered in her life. Her face lights up at the idea of earning her own living, and making her way n a world that can be filled with love and support.

Jessica lived on the streets, using drugs and alcohol to treat anxiety and depression for four years. She was in jail for the better part of another year. She’s been out for two. She’s still not all the way back home. But no matter what happens, she has two years of proving to herself that she is a woman of value, who can contribute to society, and be loved for who she is, and who can ask for family, community and medical support – and get it. This will sustain her if she needs to fight her way back again. 

But I don’t think she will go back to a life of hell. The doors to trust and respect are far more tempting now than anything she lived on the streets. She will always remember the women who took her through those doors, and they will remember her.

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Okaloosa Walton Homeless Continuum Care / Opportunity, Inc.
941-L Central Avenue  |  Fort Walton Beach, FL 32547
 Phone: (850) 226-7694  |  info@okaloosawaltonhomeless.org

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