I was devastated. I had made a decision that was going to affect an entire year of my life, and I was full of regret. It didn’t take me very long to realize that the country and city I had chosen weren’t the greatest choice, and I was miserable. Jakarta is dirty, smoggy, and not a great place to choose to move to without doing your research first.

I hopped on a plane, with 2 suitcases in hand, and zero awareness of what I was really signing myself up for. I was about to learn how much I would regret this decision. After 36 hours of travel and layovers in airports, I finally arrived at the airport in Jakarta. I was exhausted, scared, and didn’t speak the language. I was armed with instructions on where to meet my ride, as the school I was to teach at had arranged a car. I felt like I could handle that much.

One night, things got a little hot and steamy, more so than usual, and I found myself half naked on the beach. It was late, and there was no one around, so I felt safe. Until I saw the flashing lights, and panicked. I had not had great experiences with cops up to this point, and this was no exception. I was freaked out. Being a white woman in a foreign country and unable to speak the language, I had to put all of my faith into this man who I barely knew.

One cruise day, I met a couple of American men who were looking for some fun. Tequila shots and margaritas were a dollar, and I knew exactly where to take them. Pretty soon, I couldn’t remember my own name as shot after shot of tequila was brought to our table. I didn’t care. I was living my best life, flirting with these men I would never see again, and laughing it up on a beach in Mexico.

I had five concussions that season at the ski hill. I took a job at a place called Tube Town which was part of the ski hill owned by an Australian company. Tube Town was a place that had a lift that pulled you up the hill on an inner tube. At the top of the hill, we would find numerous different arrangements of tubes to send careening down the hill at top speeds. At the bottom, it flattened out, and we laid out straw to slow the tubes down.

I was broken and lost. And my Mom had no clue what to do with me. I was going for a week without food or sleep as the cocaine had taken a grip on my soul. I didn’t have a clue how bad it was, I was invincible! I figured that I could keep this lifestyle up forever. I was unhealthy and looked like a ghost.

I started dealing drugs to pay for my habit. I was by no means a big name in the business but I realized that I could make just enough to support my addiction. This meant that I was working when cocaine addicts were awake, and driving around town at all hours of the night.

My time in this town was to be short lived however, due to the nature of my relationship with this older man. The fighting was off the charts, and we would rarely be able to go for a full week without a raging argument. Some of those arguments ended in physical violence, with him and I both hitting each other.

I had traveled down the road of addiction so severely that at this point I was going for about a week without food or sleep. I had lost so much weight, due to my jaw surgery, and the fact that cocaine suppresses your appetite. I was tiny and looked very ill. Nutrients weren’t soaking into my body because of the drugs, and I was consuming very little in the way of healthy foods.

Challenge accepted I became obsessed with passing his class and doing well. I don’t take well to someone telling me I can’t do something, and this was no exception. I put my nose to the grindstone, and the cocaine, and worked harder. I started using cocaine more, as a stimulant to keep me going when studying got hard.

It was Halloween, and I was looking good. I was hanging out with my new friends and had been invited to a big Halloween bash. Dressed as a sexy devil, in a red mini skirt, red horns, and red lipstick, I knew I was getting the attention that I was looking for that night.

It was at that moment that everything changed, as I smashed the rear end of my beautiful truck into a cement post. There was a brief moment of hesitation as my brain processed whether or not this situation was real. And then reality sunk in. I had damaged my baby, and a $7000 paint job on my most prized possession. If I thought I had rage before that, now I saw red.

What does every Canadian girl do when they turn 21? Well, for me at least it was a trip to the United States. My aunt had friends who lived in Portland, and I was invited to go spend the weekend with them. He was significantly older than me, but a trusted friend of the family and so it was assumed that I would be in good hands.

A few weeks prior, my surgeon started recommending to me that I fatten up, and he ordered me to eat fattier foods, and a lot of carbs, because I was going to lose a lot of weight after the surgery, and I had no weight to spare.

My whole life I felt like an ugly duckling. I was made fun of in school, I was tormented, and my nickname was chinny. Every time I looked in the mirror, I hated myself. Every time someone made fun of me, I loathed myself a little bit more.

I packed up everything I owned into the back of my pickup truck, and said my goodbyes. I was off on an adventure, and ready to take on the world. Somehow I knew that this decision was going to change my life forever, and I wasn’t wrong.