If you haven’t already been made aware, I am operating under a new twitter handle and blog.

Blog: My Beautifully Imperfect Life
Twitter: SparklyDisaster

Come follow me and read about me now.

=)

Sometimes, it happens in good ways.  Sometimes, in bad.

In the last month, I have experienced both.  A whirlwind of emotions and thoughts.  I have been unable to blog.  I have had absolutely no desire to pick up my computer, log onto my blog, and just write.  For that, I apologize.

I’m not sure that I even have regular followers anymore.  Or, if I really ever did.  But if you are out there, if you do exist, I apologize for my silence.

Hopefully, life will slow down for me soon.  That is my wish.  For there has been too much going on, and I am unable to wrap my head around all that has happened. 

I have been keeping up on writing, but not here.  There has been too much for me to share on my blog.  Again, I apologize.

Know that I am here.  I am alive.  And, with any luck, I can be back to blogging soon.

But….. Likely not here.  My year is up later this month, and I am still undecided on if I should keep this URL.  There is too much that doesn’t belong.  I don’t feel that this blog is really me anymore. 

Still undecided…………. Still not sure.  As with my life, there are a lot of uncertainties right now.

I just hope that you all can understand.  Life isn’t what it was a year ago when I started www.thejakafiles.com………  Not at all what it was a year ago……..

However, if I choose not to keep this blog, you will all still be able to find me.  Chances are I will start a new blog.  If you are on my twitter, or my Facebook, I will let you know where I go.  What new adventures I start.  I will not fade into oblivion. 

No matter how many uncertainties there are in this life, writing is what keeps my memories alive. 

When all else fails, I can read my own blow and know that I truly did exist.

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 Disclaimer:  As with all my Stories Of My Life segments, this is not only long but is a deep post.  No negative comments will be tolerated, and I would like to thank you in advance for understanding that I was young and stupid.

 

 

Do you know what it’s like to drive a Kia Sophia at 120+ MPH w/ three good tires and a donut tire?  I do.  Well, as much as I could know for being a passenger, scared for my life, as the flashing lights behind drifted further and further into the darkness.

It is an experience I will never forget, as we contemplated running the Kia into a tree instead of being carted off by police.  Luckily for me, for us, there were no trees that we could successfully hit in the desert, so we opted for ditching the car and running into the desert in the middle of the night, with no food and no water.  Just a couple of cigarettes, a lighter, and the clothes on our backs.

Eight days earlier I was talking to my best friend, giggling on the phone after a full day of high school.  It was our Sophomore year, and as you can imagine, we had plenty to talk about.  The boys, the teachers, the upper classmen who didn’t show us the time of day.  It was all simplistically complicated as anyone who has been there can tell you. 

Little did my best friend know, I was planning the craziest decision of my life for the very next day.  The motive was a life that I no longer wanted to live, and a promise of a better one on the other side.  Yes, I fell for the old grass is greener on the other side gimmick.  I made myself believe that leaving home, and running away with a man much older than myself would solve all my problems.

Only, it just made things much worse.

My mom dropped me off at school that morning.  She told me she loved me and would see me after work.  I told her I loved her too, and we left it at that.  She went to work.  It would be a typical day for her.  For me, not so much.  I turned away from the school and to the street, where I awaited to be rescued.

He pulled up in his black Kia Sophia, smile on his face.  A smile that, over the last few months, I had grown to love.  Almost every night, I would sneak out of my house to be with him.  Hanging out, watching movies, driving around, talking, and other (not so good) things to occupy our time.  We had formed as real of a relationship as we could by night, and lived our lives as normal by day.

As I opened the door, my favorite song was playing, and the smile and kiss that greeted him when I sat down was enough to tell him for the 50 millionth time that yes, I was ready for what we were doing.

Arriving back at my house, I knew among throwing stuff into the Kia, I also needed to leave my mom something.  A note.  Letting her know I hadn’t been kidnapped or worse.  It was a simple memento to put her mind at ease when she got home.  Well, that’s what I made myself believe, anyways.  I told her in the note that I loved her, my siblings, and everyone else, and that when I could, I would call her so that she would believe me to be okay.

It took 3 trips to get all my stuff out.  We had it all planned out.  His family had a house in the outskirts of a nearby town.  No one would find us.  They had a trailer on their property that we had cleaned out.  Perfect for two people to stay in.

After about 5 days, the woman (his aunt or something) called us up to the house.  She was in tears.  Hysteric.  Angry.  The cops called her.  They were looking for us.  She said we had been spotted in the area, and the cops threatened to charge her with harboring a runaway. 

We had lied to her when I came to stay.  I said I was 18, and was sick of living with my parents.  It was halfway true at least, but I was not of legal age.  That is what infuriated her the most.  My lying.  She told us we were to be off her property in an hour, or she would call the cops and turn us in.

I didn’t need telling twice.  Not wanting to go home, and him not wanting to go to jail, we took off.  Went to a friends down the road to sleep for the night.  He was in the shower, and I watching T.V. when I first saw my face on the news.  I was in shock.  Screaming for him to get out of the shower, I watched as his face appeared and then a picture of his car.  The Kia Sophia. 

What came next I wasn’t prepared for, at all.  My moms pleas for my return filled my ears.  The tears welling in her eyes as she spoke in front of a local Starbucks Coffee Shop that we visited hundreds of times before made my heart ache.  It was too late to go back, though.  The consequences would be too great

We decided after seeing the news that we had to flee.  Get out of town, out of the state, and back to his hometown in Louisiana.  That was the plan.  But we had no money.  Sure, we had a full tank of gas, but how far would that really get us?  It didn’t seem to matter at the time, so we went, and he assured me that he had a plan.

(The plan is something I am not willing to share.  Not now.  Not ever.  Nobody but him and I know the plan, and my intentions are to keep it that way.  I will say this:  It was a scary plan, and had it been carried out, my life would be very very different……)

We drove through the night to hopefully prevent any police spotting the Kia and pulling us over.  While it should have been a fairly intense drive, it was not.  I was mostly at ease, enjoying the breeze and what scenery there was to see.  Never a care in the world, since I was with someone I trusted, who assured me everything would be okay.

Pulling off along a dirt road in the desert as the sun was rising, we decided to try and get some sleep.  We knew that where we were, we couldn’t be discovered, and it would be safe to sleep for a few hours.  Which we did.  However, imagine our surprise when we woke up to a flat tire.  Fantastic, right?  Luckily, he had a spare in the trunk, a “donut tire,” which had clear warning that the maximum speed the tire could reach was 40 MPH.

Not expecting to have to use the car for too much longer, (we were on “E” when we arrived and wouldn’t be able to travel much further) we decided to just wait until dark to travel again.  It was then that we planned on going to a rest area a few miles down the road, and carrying out our plan.

Nightfall came and we headed for said rest area where we parked.  And waited. 

20 minutes later, a police car with its lights on caught us off guard.  He was pulling over a semi truck, but knowing that the entire state of Oregon was on the lookout for our Kia, we tried to pull out of the rest area without the state trooper noticing us.  We figured that he was much too busy with what he was doing, so we headed back to our hideout in the desert.

I don’t remember how long we sat in the desert, waiting…. It seemed like forever.

When we pulled out of our hiding spot onto the deserted dirt road, heading back to the highway, I was not at all expecting a half a dozen cars to turn on their headlights, and more surprisingly, their red & blue flashers.  Apparently, the cop noticed our wannabe-sly getaway at the rest area, and called for back up.  No intentions of stopping, he made his way to the highway, and floored it.

Picking up speed, I watched in horror out the back window as the red & blue lights got smaller and smaller.  I could tell he was panicking as he asked what I wanted to do.  He said he didn’t want to live without me and that he loved me.  He asked if we could just run into a tree and end it, which I thought about for a minute, in the heat of the moment.

Like I said before, luckily there were no trees to be found in the part of the desert we were in.  Instead, we decided to ditch the car (the lights were too far behind for me to see), and take our chances in the wilderness.

So we did.

I grabbed the smokes and the lighter (we had finished the Doritos and water earlier in the day), pocketed them, and he slammed on the breaks.  When the car had barely come to a stop, we both threw the doors open, and took off running into the desert.  Still no lights.  Still so dark.

About 100 yards into the run, I was stopped abruptly.  Head over heels, I squealed in pain as I saw him stopping in an instant as well.  Pain searing in my legs as I pulled myself up, I realizede we both had hit barbed wire.  Cursing as I ran, each step now hurting worse than the one before, we ran another 500 yards before we noticed the lights were finally gaining on us.

We dropped behind a tree, laying flat on our stomachs as we watched the cops stop around the car. 

It was below freezing that night.  Well below.  The cops got out of the car only long enough to search ours to make sure we weren’t still in it.  They used their spotlight to scour the area, trying to find us, but had no luck.  No intention of coming into the cold night to look for us, they used their PA system to tell us we’d never survive through the night, and to just come out.

We didn’t budge.  We stayed rooted to the spot we were in.

It felt like another eternity, but finally they got a tow truck out to take the Kia, and then they too left. 

The next 36 hours we spent in the desert.  With no food.  No water.  

During the first day, I got really weak.  We started drinking water off the rocks, and the only hope we had were that the power lines we were following were the same as the ones that we saw at the rest stop.  What we learned (or, I learned, rather) is that those power lines never crossed the highway and never came close to the rest stop.  We would have been lost in the desert forever if we wouldn’t have decided to stop following them.

When nightfall came, it got really cold again.  Not that it wasn’t cold before, because it was.  Really cold.  But when the sun was replaced by the moon and the stars, there was no way we could carry on.  For one, its hard to have any sense of direction in the desert, when everything looks the same.  And for two, it was really freaking cold.

We found a rock big enough and flat enough that we could both lay on.  Then we found some dry brush and sticks and built a fire on that rock.  When it blazed on, I found myself able to sleep, but when the fire started to die, I would wake up shivering, and we’d have to build it up again. 

If it weren’t for that fire, we would have froze that night.  I would not be alive to tell this story.  It was the second time in as many days that I should have been taken from this Earth, and was not.

The next morning, I didn’t want to move.  We would never get out of this desert, so why bother trying.  He nudged me to keep moving, but I wasn’t going easily.  Having to stop every tenth of a mile or so, I was losing hope by the minute.  It was all I could do to keep putting one foot in front of the other and not crumble to the ground and sob.

When I saw the sign for Moon Reservoir: 1 mile, I could barely believe my eyes.  For sure I thought I was hallucinating, and that was it.  I was going crazy and would soon really be dead.  He saw it too, thankfully.  It was all I really needed to start walking with a purpose again.  To pick up the pace and smile.

Yet another eternity passed before I could see the water.  Oh sweet relief.  Not even realizing how dirty or contaminated a reservoir could be, I went and drank deeply.  Barely noticing the two trucks with fishermen (or hunters) in it.  Unable to comprehend anything but the feel of the cool water running down the back of my throat.

The bathroom across the way was our next stop, where we took in the warmth of the shelter it provided.  Don’t get me wrong, it felt great to pee as well, but the warmth felt so good after having spend 36 hours in the elements.

A man in a little car happened to drive up to use the restroom, and we convinced him to give us a ride into town.  He let us eat (well, inhale, really) a sandwich from his lunch that he packed, and gave us each a bottle of water.

It wasn’t more than a couple minutes driving down the little dirt road that we saw an SUV, driving too fast to be a civilian, pass us going the opposite direction.  When they slammed on their breaks and flipped a bitch, he and I knew our journey was over.  The lights flashing behind made the nice man driving give us a suspicious look as he pulled over. 

I gave the best apology I could before being pulled out of the car by the man in uniform.  The nice man who offered us the ride was let go, while my assumed boyfriend and I were cuffed and taken to the police station.  Immediately separated when we arrived, I was led to a nice office and offered as much food and water as my stomach would allow while he was led to I don’t know where.

As scary as my whole ordeal was, I was actually more terrified of them calling my Mom.  Yes, I am dead serious.  I knew I fucked up and I knew that I wasn’t ready to face whatever it was she was going to say.  So, I let the officer do all the talking, while I sat quietly eating.

The details of the next few hours are unimportant.  There was a trip to the hospital, a trip to the Kia Sophia, and then back to the police station to wait for my mom.  Her and my Aunt came to pick me up and drive the 6 hours back home.

While the whole experience should have left me dead on more than one occasion, I am alive to tell the story.  It was the defining moment in my life that turned it all around, and never again did I despise living at home.  As a matter of fact, it is what started the road to healing the relationship with my Mom, and today?  That relationship has never been stronger.

I finally got a charger for my laptop!  Woop woop!!!

Did you miss me?  I bet you did……….. not!  Haha.

Well, here’s the run down.  Broke my charger.  New one cost too much money so I had to wait until now to buy it.

I have lots to tell.  Apparently I started writing a seriously deep post when my laptop died.  Sooooo, you have that to look forward to.  Another installment in the Stories Of My Life posts.  This one from when I ran away and why I shouldn’t be writing this right here.  Right now.

Also, there are some serious pictures that need to be posted.  Christmas was a fantastic epidemic in my house and at my mother’s.

What else……. Oh yeah I have to catch up on my Weekly Recap posts and maybe even catch up on the In My Neighborhood Tuesday posts.

Regardless, I have a lot to catch up on now that I have my computer back.  I swear I wasn’t ignoring anyone.

Oh and by the way, I hope everyone had a Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, and Happy Holidays!! =)