#elevatedellie

Chapter One | Humble beginnings part 1 November 19, 2014. This is the most influential date of my lifetime, or maybe that’s June 10, 2023. It was the day my life changed for better or for worse, or whatever they say. No, that’s not the day I got married, but it may as well have been.

November 19, 2014 is the day I fell in love at first sight with Christopher Ryan Willey (WILL-Lee). He would have wanted me to put emphasis on the pronunciation of his last name.

I’ll give a little background on me. I was born on a Friday, June 14, 1991, as Alexandria Christine Taylor. I was raised by my mom, Sheila, a true badass hippy lady who didn’t take shit and my dad, Leroy, a marijuana advocate musician that struggled with addiction and has a strong faith in Jesus.

The youngest of three with my sister, Camille, the artistic, quirky, intellectual middle child and my brother Daniel, the quiet, nerdy, intelligent oldest child. As far as families go, I believe we are all pretty close and have a rather unconventional, yet deep love for one another.

In my childhood years, the motto was ‘Never go a day without a hug’ and ‘Do as I say, not as I do.’ We all vibe really well and bonding over a fat joint isn’t beyond us. I met the best of friends any girl could dream of having as soon as I moved to Florida when I was 4. Her name was Tiffany Crystal Worman and I met her after my families very spontaneous, unplanned move from Dillwyn, VA because an undercover FBI agent was apparently investigating my dad for getting mailed hundreds of hits of acid from New York.

I met Tiffany in Van Doren Avenue in New Port Richey. Tiffany and I lived on the same street and her mom waitressed at the Denny’s my dad cooked at.

I did not want to be friends with her when I first met her. Pink bow, pink sparkly dress and matching sparkly Mary Jane’s against my disheveled long hair, oversized Pocahontas T-shirt and purple pants and I was either barefoot or my laces weren’t tied.

But, after our parents forced our friendship we immediately clicked.

She had everything I ever wanted from a family. A nice house, family portraits, lots and lots of toys! Tiffany and our families spent every holiday and birthday together. Her mom even got us season passes to Busch Gardens every year. We went through our phases of worshipping Eminem and The Used and I’d spend weeks at a time at her house like a second home, going to Youth Group and summer camps. We were inseparable.

I spent my younger years wondering about the swamps, feeding gators little frogs I’d find and coming home with a missing shoe.

Around age 6 I saw firsthand the fight that resulted in their eventual divorce. Looking back on it, I remember the pain in my mother’s eyes and her screams from all the years of being mistreated and cheated on. I saw it break her down until she couldn’t take it anymore.

I saw her lunge at my father with a boot horn and him back up and fell into the ironing board. But, I also remember my mom making me walk with her to the pay phone outside of the Big lots in the Southgate shopping center to call 911, she made me say I saw daddy hit mommy and he spent the night in jail.

I remember being so very little and having the police pull me Camille and Daniel to the side and ask us if we ever saw daddy hit mommy and us all say no and then ask if we ever saw them smoke something that smelled funny or wasn’t a cigarette and being trained at a really young age we all knew to say no.

When I was 8, as a means to fix their broken marriage, my parents decided to sell everything we owned and put the rest in storage. They bought an RV and we drove to New Jersey to spend some time with our cousin Megan, then hopped on a plane in New York City to London, England. I thought I was saying my very last goodbye to the most important person in my world, Tiffany.

We backpacked from London to Wales and took a ferry to Dublin where we spent Christmas Eve and Day. Then, we took a bus to Sligo and spent time up there with my Great Uncle Christi and got to see the town my maternal grandmother lived in. Ireland was absolutely incredible with the greenest grass a shade you weren’t even aware you could see, castles built in the sides of every mountain and sheep as large as buffalo.

We almost moved Chapter 24 | Treatment My mom picked me up almost immediately after Chris had left and we drove to my dads house 3 hours away in a small town called Crescent City. My dad had a small plot of land with a single wide trailer on it as well as the 5th wheel that my sister and her family lived in.

There was a lot going on for the two or three days that I was there. I tried my best to be as festive as I possibly could, at least for my Nephew Axle, but I just didn’t have the energy for it.

I spent most of my time catching up on sleep in the back bedroom in my sister’s RV and I ate. I ate like I hadn’t seen food in ages. Granted, the traditional meal cooked on Thanksgiving and Christmas happened to be my favorite dishes to speak of.

I sat my whole family down at one point during my stay and I apologized for my most recent fuckery when I came back from Seattle. I told them about my plans to go to detox so that they can get me into a rehab and after rehab I would be going into sober living. I told them I was finally done with my life of drug use and addiction and I was ready to heal.

Then the question they had all been waiting for me to answer: Was I going to go back to Chris? Of course, I had every intention of going back to Chris but for the sake of my family I decided to lie. I said I had no intentions to ever speak to him again. I said whatever needed to be said in order for the subject to be changed.

On the way back to Pasco County my mom stops by the BayCare Harbor in Port Richey and I get out of the car with all my bags and I rang the doorbell at the front entrance of the detox facility.

They let me right in the door and I gave my mom a hug and a kiss goodbye.

This was a huge step for me… admitting I needed help and actually going out to seek it on my own. All by myself.

I hardly remember detox. I did happen to meet two very nice gentleman while I was there – Stephen and Jacob. I gave them both my contact information for when I got out of rehab they could hit me up.

I spent 5 long days in detox. But, it was just the amount of time needed to facilitate me going to a rehab center. I was accepted at two different facilities. One was the Phoenix House in the Ocala area and the other one was called Acts Keystone which was much closer in Tarpon Springs. I chose Acts.

On December 30th of 2022 BayCare had placed me in my Uber and sent me to my very first rehabilitation center. It was a 90 day program and I had every intention of staying the entire duration of that time. Phone calls would be made once a week to one number only, computer use was prohibited and there was no smoking (or vaping) allowed.

I brought everything I owned with me and luckily for me my amazing mother had my back and bought me a small AM/FM radio, my own pillow and blanket, and I was allowed to have my gel pens.

At admission, they took my belongings and put them inside a heat treated bag that was meant to kill off bedbugs or any other germs. I met a girl in my intake who was also just arriving and her name was Caelon (Kay-Lynn). Caelon was roughly the same age as me with a fentanyl and meth addiction and she had just moved to Florida in the previous years from St. Louis MO.

We hit it off really quickly and to our surprise they decided to make us bunkies in dorm number 2. I met a lot of people while in rehab but the ones who stood out the most were Caelon, Kayla, and Allyson. Kayla and Allyson had been in treatment together for a while, having waited on a bed to open up while having to sit in a jail cell, they arrived at Acts together too.

The very first thing I found to complain about was the food. Who cares that the food was borderline uneatable but the portion sizes were for toddlers. I couldn’t order my restricted diet because if I did I’d have to eat nothing but a salad for 90 whole days and I don’t think I could have handled that.

But, men ran the kitchen so there wasn’t anything we could do about it.

I dove right into my recovery as soon as I got there. It took a minute to transition from the holiday schedule and Covid outbreak that happened before I got there but once we got back on schedule and they figured out which therapist they were going to assign me I made sure to complete the Phase A packet and start working on my step work.

The schedule for rehab looked a little like this:

730 Breakfast

800 clean

900 roll call/stretch/walk

10-12 groups

12-1 lunch

1-3 groups

4-5 free time

5-6 dinner

Doors to outside closed at dusk

615 coffee

7-8 AA/NA

As far as the curriculum was concerned, I was a rock star! Apparent not very many clients bother with doing the step work because you can’t really get a sponsor while in rehab and they don’t want to do step work without one. I was blowing through a step every week. I tried to be an overachiever and finish my Phase packets ahead of schedule but they only accept the packets every 30 days.

Caelon and Kayla got voted into the kitchen with me as a back up which quickly turned into me taking Kayla’s spot because she sucked at waking up in the morning.

A new girl came into Acts right around the same time we got voted into the kitchen. Her name is Amanda and she was an adorable southern bell.

It started off with just me and Kayla going out into the tall grass field after dinner and laying down to watch the waves in the sunset or to catch a group of deer frolicking at the base of the woods. Then, after sharing with them the magic we seemed to always share together soon it was me, Kayla, Caelon and Amanda every day after dinner just laughing, listening to music and telling each other stories of our life.

Those girls got me through rehab like they wouldn’t believe. I don’t know what I’d have done without those stress relieving magical nights sitting in the tall grass with my best friends. KEYSTONE KILLERS!

I tried my very first red meat burger while I was in rehab and I absolutely fell in love with burgers from that day forward.

There was a man at Keystone, his name was Michael or Big Mike for he was like 6’5. He practiced witchcraft and he had a very intense yet powerful outlook on recovery. He let me borrow a book that belonged to him called “The Power Of Now” which was all about living in the present moment and nothing else. But, not in the sense that you can set goals for yourself because that’s just preposterous. Living in the Now is more of a mentality than anything. It was an incredible book.

Big Mike frequently would lead the meetings for AA or NA whenever our guest speakers wouldn’t show up. He was very insightful and there was more than one occasion I sat with him to pick his brain about how he thought I could heal from my trauma.

I cried a lot in rehab. Actually, when I had first got there they had put me on a prescription for Wellbutrin and it took just about all of me not to kill myself right there. My depression got so bad that I actually handed in my razors to the BHTs. I immediately stopped taking my meds and talked to the psych doctor about switching my meds and he put me on Abilify, remeron and a low dose anti anxiety medication which ended up working much better for me.

By the time I was halfway through, I was over being there. I was able to get in contact with Chris’ mom while there and she informed me he had made it to Maryland and wanted to file for divorce. He wasn’t coming up off of his phone number for me. The entire time I was there I had this gut wrenching feeling that he may overdose while we were apart. I knew from his mom that he had made it to Baltimore and from there his grandfather bought him a ticket to Salisbury.

I knew he was with his family but I also knew that was prime opiate stomping grounds and I was worried.

My teeth started giving me a lot of trouble while in rehab so I scheduled a day to go to the dentist. At Dr. Monticello’s office I had 5 teeth pulled.

By day 50 I had enough of rehab and checked myself out. for good but by the Grace of God something changed my parents mind, and we unpacked the shipping container and stayed in New Port Richey, Florida.

To no surprise, the efforts to save my parents marriage failed and as a result my father decided to take off, pursuing the life of a rock star and headed to Amsterdam to find his dream band. I remember the heart breaking feeling I had watching him leave on that greyhound bus. I thought I’d never see him again. He was gone for a few months before flying into Miami and getting arrested for cocaine possession.

Driving 3 hours there and back just to have to see him through a glass window in the wall talking through a corded phone. Saying goodbye and holding our hands up to the window, pressing them up to one another through two-inch thick glass. I was a codependent daddy’s girl, and I was so hurt, seeing him in his blue jumpsuit every couple of months or so for almost a year.

My mom drank a lot back then. But, she had it rough raising 3 kids all about to go through puberty, fighting all the time, her working full time and paying all the bills herself while her party animal, drug using husband partied and traveled the world and ended up in jail. There’s no way I could have possibly done any better, but a kid remembers.