Who can say the true value of family in one’s life? Especially a life marred by addiction. It can be a fragile thing to hold onto and an even more delicate thing to build for oneself. Rebeka S knows this all too well.
Beginning life in El Salvador, her parents got divorced when she was three years old. At seven, she moved to Miami with her dad, where she learned English. Her mother moved to Oregon, and her father began moving from state to state. Rebeka was ferried back and forth across the country—spending one year with her mom in Oregon and one year wherever on the east coast her father was living. “He lived in Miami for a couple years, then I went back to my mom, then he moved to Virginia, then back with my mom, then Maryland, then back with my mom. My mom was the only stable place I knew.” Her mother’s was a world of consistency and stability. Her father’s world exposed her to drugs and the lifestyle that came with it at an early age.
Both situations left Rebeka with freedom and rarely any supervision, but there all similarities ceased. Her mother was the strong and silent type not wanting to discuss things and doling out punishment and groundings without further discussion, leading to a sense of disconnection for Rebeka. “It was very much like, ‘Shush, you’re the kid. Adults are talking and you just respect us.’” At her father’s, she was left completely to her own devices. “He was barely home because he worked, but he was also an alcoholic and a drug addict, so he would have a lot of drinks around and a lot of weird people around.” Her mother remarried and had her little brother. At 14, as Rebeka started to party with older friends, her step-dad informed her that she would be moving in with her father. So, she moved across the country once again and started to get into harder drugs.
The drinking continued, partly as a way of staying entertained in a small town. Rebeka started doing ecstasy and morphine by the time she was 15, and met a guy who would prove to be the gateway into pain pills. She started partying at any and every available opportunity. She moved in with him and his grandfather, quit school, and continued her party lifestyle. He would also become the father of her first child, a beautiful baby girl. So 16, pregnant, and afraid, she moved back to her mom’s in Oregon. Her baby’s father soon followed her out there. After her baby was born, she got her first job, her GED, and life seemed okay for the time being—until she was awoken to a true nightmare. Her baby’s father was choking her out. He was swiftly kicked out and moved away.
She remained in Oregon and met a new man. A knight in shining armor that would prove to be a wolf in sheep’s clothing. He was all in at first. Rebeka was 18 and immediately smitten with the life he was wanting to provide. Within months, she moved in, and within a few more, they were getting married. However, the night before their marriage, he revealed a whole new side of himself: dangerous and angry. She still went through with the wedding and found herself on the roller coaster that was his emotions. Some days, everything was picture perfect, and life was great. Others, she was getting screamed at and things thrown at her. She kept up appearances, though, not knowing how to get out of the relationship.
When Rebeka got her wisdom teeth out, she rediscovered pain pills and quickly found that opiates made her husband and his disposition more bearable. Another pregnancy resulted in a miscarriage—that he blamed her for. He wanted a family and thought she simply wasn’t trying hard enough. Eventually she did get pregnant again, but it wasn’t enough to quell his temper. Rebeka stopped drinking and doing drugs, but struggled under the weight of how her husband was treating her. So after she was done breastfeeding, she quickly picked back up with the pain pills and drinking to cope. “It was just so much. I don’t know what I was thinking when I was with him. I just went with the flow, but it was just so much to be with him that I felt like I needed something. I couldn’t be sober around him.” She started to lose any attraction to him due to the fluctuation in his behavior.
A year and a half later, Rebeka was pregnant again. In between each pregnancy, she would get sober and get on suboxone, but after her last pregnancy, she gave it a try for good—the result of getting caught filling a pain pill prescription under a friend’s name. Her husband blocked any avenue she had of getting more, so she decided to go on Suboxone once and for all. “I was on it for the next ten to twelve years. And that’s when I raised my kids, I did everything really well. I did all the stay-at-home mom stuff: I was a soccer mom, did the sleepovers, field trips.” Even though her husband was still a volatile presence in the home, she was able to be the stable one for her kids.
Soon, they moved to a smaller town in Oregon and she discovered that he was cheating on her. Rebeka filed for divorce and took the opportunity to get away from him. “I signed everything away. I was just so happy to get away from him. I didn’t know how to stand up for myself at that point. I had no sense of self. And therapy was the last thing on my mind.” She moved only a few blocks away to keep the lives of her kids somewhat normal. She began to flounder as the alimony payments and her feeble paychecks from being a caretaker were not enough to keep up with her bills. “I didn’t know how to ask for help. All I could do was work and keep it going.”
Then one day her younger brother told her about fentanyl pills. Telling her that it would break through the Suboxone, she smoked it—the beginning of a dark journey with fentanyl. He also would introduce her to meth, something she only had experience with in the form of Adderall. “I was just getting high to run away from me, not being able to keep up with my bills, not being able to pay rent. Everything was stacking up and I was drowning.”
Heavy amounts of wine also became a constant in between bouts of using. Her kids had never seen her drink aside from an occasional beer. As she started to use more and more fentanyl, her kids moved in with their dad. Rebeka soon lost her house and began a three-year run. She tried to stay with her parents, but things weren’t working out, and she left. She started couch surfing and seeing her kids less. She met someone who used fentanyl the way she did, and that lasted for the length of a fever dream. Eventually, she found herself homeless. Two short months later and she moved in with a drug dealer. Then another drug dealer. Things continued to get darker, and she found herself in yet another abusive relationship. Finally, she grew tired of where she was at in life and moved back in with her parents.
“I didn’t want to stop using yet, so I didn’t. I would go see the drug dealer and stay with him one or two days, back with my parents, back with him.” A familiar lifestyle reminiscent of Rebeka’s childhood. Her parents were just happy she was back in their lives, so they said nothing of it to her. She got to a point where she was finally done with it. “I was like, I don’t get high anymore. I never wanted to be that person. I didn’t know how to deal with life, though. I had always been taken care of by somebody, and it was always someone narcissistic.” A family friend had come through Beit T’Shuvah and told her that it had changed his life, so she called. Upon hearing that it was a Jewish program, she was initially hesitant and hung up the first time she called. She didn’t want to do anything that involved religion. “I wasn’t comfortable doing the ‘God shit.’” She didn’t have any truly viable options in Oregon, so she called back and went through the interview process.
Rebeka came to LA and tried to get into a detox, but due to a lapse in her insurance starting, she found herself about to go through withdrawal. She went so far as going to Skid Row with her mom to try and score and keep the withdrawals at bay, getting sold fake fentanyl and going through them anyway. She finally got into a detox and before long, she was walking up the hallowed steps of 8831. “It took me like a month or two to come out of my room. I was so used to being isolated by myself or with a drug dealer, not 100 people.” She began to participate and come out of her shell, becoming a part of the community.
Five months later, and she’s finding herself and her capabilities. “I’m starting to feel more capable.” She’s doing real estate school, she went and saw her daughter graduate. Her kids and parents even came and watched her participate in the LA Marathon, the first time she saw them sober in years. “All I want is to be there for my kids. They’re older now, but they still need their mom.” She knows she owes it to her treatment team here and the program that she has implemented into her life. “I think this place helps you, whether it is big or small, it helps you learn to get it off your chest and share with others.”
The value of her family is not lost on Rebeka. She was just lost in the process of finding her place in hers. She’s a mother, a daughter, and a survivor.