Meth Anne Considers High School
by Linda Folden

The anxiety I felt was so great I could hardly stand it.

I had been incarcerated in a Texas Youth Commission facility for a while and then turned over to the next in a long line of foster parents. It would never work. I had tried living with foster families before, but the adults never wanted me around the other children. Well I didn’t want to be around them either.

I decided to try to make it on my own. I worked her way from place to place, sometimes sleeping in a sleeping bag on the ground, sometimes finding a place inside for the night. But wherever I went, I had a knack for finding the one comfort I could count on —the meth. Meth was my life, my reason for existence. It’s all I had.

Then one day someone from my school found me while I was cleaning houses with a friend. They wanted me back in school.

Could it really be true, I wondered? I hadn’t been to school for a long time. I had actually been to a regular high school only for a brief time. In fact, all my high school credits were earned while I was locked up in the TYC. That was where I learned to read, to write a complete sentence, and to multiply and divide. I have to give “the system” that much credit.

Could I do it, I asked myself. Would I be able to stay inside a building all day? What about taking a shower and washing my clothes? I hadn’t cared about that stuff for a long time. What I did care about was finding someone who was cooking a batch of meth.

Just thinking about school was really getting to me, making me feel nervous and not good enough. If that’s what school does to you, I wasn’t sure I needed it. After all, I had gone this long without an education and my life was OK. Sure, it was a little rocky and most nights I didn’t even have a bed to sleep on. But still, I wasn’t doing too bad for myself—especially if I could hook up with somebody cooking a batch.

I decided to think about school later. Life was for me to live, to breathe, to be free, and to find my next fix.

Linda Folden, Greenville High School Success Counselor, is also a member of the DFG Public Education Committee