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Plaid Boots and Light Forgery

The Struggle Between Good and Evil is as old as Time

By Susan Eileen Published 2 years ago Updated 2 years ago 7 min read
Top Story - April 2022
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Plaid Boots and Light Forgery
Photo by Taylor Friehl on Unsplash

I find myself waiting in a line to visit my boyfriend in prison. That very sentence makes me cringe, but the truth is I got in way over my head with this boyfriend. Truth be told I'm only talking to him because he supplied me with free Xanax. Now I'm returning the favor. I have drugs smuggled into my pants. I have an honest girl next door look, plus I'm a teacher. I'm also a hardened criminal.

I've lived both a collegiate life and a thug life at the same time. I'm a little slim, little shady, little hippy, little hood, little plaid, little thug. My work personality is plaid through and through, but my down time is filled with getting drugs and committing crimes to get those drugs. I will struggle all my life to find balance, but at this particular moment, my life is out of whack. There is a permanent duality to my personality. It won't go away until I make peace with my past.

My former boyfriend was in a prison in Grafton, Ohio, for dog napping. Yes, you heard that right. Dog napping. He has bipolar disorder like me; if I will learn one thing over the years, it is that bipolar people should not date other bipolar people. He went through a painfully bitter divorce, and lost custody of his only dog. In a fit of rage, he broke into his ex-wife's house to get the dog back. The police were called. He resisted arrest and was tased. He pulled the barbs out of his chest and ran. This just ended up adding the felony of fleeing and eluding to his rap sheet. Between fleeing, resisting arrest, breaking and entering, and dog napping, he will accumulate a half a dozen felonies and serve one and half years behind bars. I will supply him with drugs the entire time to keep him comfortable. It's a ridiculous scenario as I am a teacher at this point in time at a very affluent suburb. If I get caught I could end up with felonies and live the life of three hots and a cot.

If you think this story is ridiculous, strap on, you're in for a bumpy ride.The reason for all this absurdity is my former addiction to pills. I went to the doctor quite innocently in 1999 for troubling headaches. I came out with a life altering prescription to xanax. I would use it responsibly for many years, until I didn't. The emotional pain of a troubled marriage drove me into abuse. The abuse fueled many petty crimes and infidelity.

It's quite embarrassing that I made fake friendships only to get access to their pills. But my life of crime started so much earlier than that. For reasons I can't quite even explain, I loved shoplifting. I guess I just have a devil inside. But there is also an angel as well. I'm assuming my tendency to love the dual life is comparable to the genetic defect that makes men lust for killing, serial killing to be exact. The genetic tendency, or lack of a nurturing enviroment are both to blame, but I'm 52 - my lifestyle of Mrs. Party Time was no longer cute, so I got sober. Plus there is still the angelic side of me.

The angel is a well-respected science teacher and volunteer at the YMCA. No ones knows that she used her husband work key to rob the pizza parlor he was a manager at. Yes, I robbed a pizza parlor, not once, but twice. The total haul was only four hundred dollars. Again, my entire freedom was on the line over four hundred dollars. Wouldn't it just have been easier to tighten the boot straps a little instead resorting to robbery? Why, yes, that is the logical thing to do, but when you are an addict, all logic goes out the window.

Once my former boyfriend was locked up, I resorted to a ridiculous level of doctor shopping. Pills, appointments, and conversations about pills consumed all of my time. At this point in time, there is no national data base that tracks all of your prescriptions. In fact, it's people like me that are the reason for the database. I got pills from a family doctor, a pain management physician, and a psychiatrist on the regular. I was probably taking a thousand pills a months. Somehow, this still wasn't enough pills. I still ran out and would bug my friends for them. Somehow my month long script would only last three days. Somehow, in a fit of rage at the Walgreens in my hometown, a psychiatrist figured out my sham and the pain management doctor was reported for being a pill mill. His office never reopened. I feel guilty about getting the holy trinity of pills from him (muscle relaxers, anxiety pills, and pain meds), but he was obviously doing it for a lot of people.

Once the database showed up, I had to adapt and change again, as my body was hooked. At this point I lost my teaching job and my husband, but I was still using. I ordered pills online. My daughter to this day calls it Chinese Ambien.

I was just about four weeks out of rehab, and I wasn't sleeping at all. I was also in a daily drug treatment program and my urine was tested daily. I couldn't drink, didn't want to drink, just wanted sleep really. So I hopped online and bought some Chinese Ambien, anxiously awaiting it in the mail. It finally arrives. It's like Christmas morning when it arrives. Of course, I don't just take one and nap - why that's logical. I take almost all of them and I black out, hallucinate that my chair is a person, and wind up in the ER. Yes, I argued with a chair for hours. I thought the chair was a person. The urine screen at the ER showed that the Chinese Ambien had fentanyl in it. I'm truly lucky to be alive. I feel very guilty about my daughters having to witness me in this state, but I'm sober now. I can't change the past, but at least I'm getting better now.

So why light forgery? As I've said, there's always been a duality to my personality. In order to get early release from high school, I forged documents to end my senior year early. I guess I pulled off the greatest senior prank of all time. I convinced the principal, and I met all the requirements for early release - all of the supporting documents were forged.

As I said, growing up I had a terrible shoplifting addiction. I could scarcely walk into a store without stealing make-up, even though I was the kind of girl who really didn't want to spend the time putting make up on. I guess make up was the gateway drug. Once I could get away with stealing eyeliner, it was on to forgery and robbery.

All the while, I'm scrapbooking, quilting and meal planning at home. If I sound like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, I am. I have bipolar disorder with psychotic features. The psychotic features starkly differentiates this mental illness compared to others. Psychotic features will lead to a life of crime, a lapse in morality, an inability to tell the truth, stay faithful, and a host of other moral lapses in judgement. At times, it has caused me to separate from reality.

I do beat myself up about this dual personality, but there were no positive role models in my home growing. My mothers favorite child burned down houses, dealt drugs and shoplifted. He was the one I was told to look up to. Seriously - yes, seriously - this was the best role model I had. He always had a smile on his face, was always laughing, was always ambitious - because of those positive attributes, we were to look over everything else.

I think some people must be shocked that I am willing to put myself out there like this - completely naked at times in my honesty, but I do it to give people hope. If even one person reading this gets sober and stops a life a crime, I will sleep happy tonight. I've decided that the world has enough billionaires. I'm a dreamer who wants to save the world one person at a time. My heart is too soft for this cruel world.

Secrets
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About the Creator

Susan Eileen

I am an aspiring writer currently writing a book on the Sober Revolution we are in the midst of, a book about essays that will change the way you think, and a novel about a serial killer. I am also working on a book of poetry.

Reader insights

Nice work

Very well written. Keep up the good work!

Top insights

  1. Heartfelt and relatable

    The story invoked strong personal emotions

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    Well-structured & engaging content

  3. Excellent storytelling

    Original narrative & well developed characters

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