Speak Up

My dad had a good future ahead of him in Greeley Colorado. He was going to go to school so we can have a better future. But we got the total opposite. His girlfriend took my sisters and left us, and came back to Cheyenne. My dad needed help with bills so allowed a friend to move in with us. He caught him smoking meth in the basement and he turned the pipe over to my dad. I was in the 2nd grade when this happened. After my dad took that first hit everything was over. He began selling meth making more money that i ever thought possible. I came home and seen cameras set up all around our home, and in our basement my dad monitors with every angle of the house on screen. I didnt know what was going on. Not long after that my dad never left his basement. People came in and out of the house , when they came in they went directly to the basement. I was dirty, my dad wasnt feeding me or washing my clothes it got to the point where i started taking care of myself. I learned how to cook and i was stealing clothes from the mall we had a block away. I would come home from school and find my dad asleep in his basement by himself i would try and wake him but it was useless. Hed sleep for weeks on end, then when he woke up he was back to dealing and partying with his friends in the basement. He would talk to himself saying people were in the house and that they needed to believe. He would take things apart and never fix them. He wasnt eating, just smoking his life away. We had a chandelier that had glass tubes on it. I would see my dad pull them off and blow the glass up with a torch to make a meth pipe. I always found them lying around the house. So i would put gloves on and pick them up so i can throw them away. I would find beer bottles with holes drilled into them with a colorful liquid at the bottom with a tube through the hole. My dad was very skinny and he wasnt himself. However one thing that stuck with him was his cleanliness. He was constantly cleaning the house when he wasnt selling or partying. One day at school detectives came and were talking to me about my dad, asking me questions about life at home. Me being in the 2nd grade didnt know what was going on, but my dad programmed my head to lie whenever people asked about him or what home is like. So i lied to protect my dad, i couldnt lose him i didnt have my mom. So one day my aunt picks me up from school and says my dad went to Cheyenne to visit and i was going to stay with her for a while. Well days turned to weeks, and weeks turned to months and no sign of my dad. Finally i threw a tantrum and my aunt told me my dad was in jail. My dad told me what happened when i got older. He went to the mall and had alot of drugs on him people called the cops because he was drinking alcohol in the store, my dad seen a cop go to grab him and he punched the cop he threw his bag to his partner and told her to run but she left the bag and ran alone. The police recovered the bag and found it all. While my dad was in jail his meth friends came and robbed our whole house and took everything we had. My dad got released after a year and we came back to Cheyenne Wyoming. Its been about 11 or 12 years since all this happened. My dad has been sober since then. And he promised me when i seen him in jail that he would never do that again. And hes a man of his word. I am now 17 years old, my dad is 41 and he is going to school for his human services of addictionology degree. He has a full time job and we are living the best life we always wanted. Meth is ugly and i dont want to put my kids through it like i was put through it. From that one hit my dad took in the basement that day all of this happened. Remember not even once.