I met Jaime in the Harmony Project, a citywide choir for which I volunteer. But, prior to that, I had met her at the women’s prison in my state. She was in a recovery program called Tapestry and through Harmony Project, I visit there, singing with the women in that program. Now, Jaime is on the outside and came to Columbus because she knew she had a support system through the Harmony Project. She sings in the choir. I didn’t really know her story but I knew that she always has a smile on her face and is outgoing and making good use of this second chance. I didn’t know her background but knowing she had been in a recovery program in prison let me know, at the very least, her life had been somehow shaped by substance abuse. When she sat down and started talking to me my jaw dropped to the ground.
Jaime began by telling me that at an early age, and by early I mean within months after her birth, her life became a series of sexual assaults by nearly every man with whom she came in contact. She developed Dissociative Identity Disorder, DID, to protect herself from the pain, both physical and emotional. “Dissociative Identity Disorder made everything bad that was happening to me feel like a dream. I had to escape that horrible reality to survive,” Jaime told me. She soon was placed in the foster care system, where she found more of the same abuse. She thought her luck had turned but her adoptive mother was extremely mean. Something was still missing in Jaime’s heart.
She married after leaving her adoptive home and had two children. She was afraid to touch her first child because she was terrified that she would abuse him: it was all she knew. What was still missing in Jaime’s life was a relationship with her biological family. She left her husband with her two children and returned to the family that she craved and the love of her biological mother. But, she had unrealistic expectations of that family. She said, “I was looking for Little House on the Prairie. I was always running from something and running toward something at the same time.”
For an extended period of time, Jaime was in a healthy relationship. She had had another child, a son, who was living with her. She told me that the man in her life said he could tell when she was “zoning out.” “He said he could look into my eyes and I was gone,” she told me. She began to use methamphetamine, which to her felt like reality, something so strange to think about now. The man in her life took care of her son as she was unable to do it herself. She was an addict. She became promiscuous and became involved with a bad guy.
Now she was being trafficked, she was an addict and was being held captive by her “boyfriend,” Then her life changed. She was arrested for drug trafficking. As the arrest was happening she said that she felt relief, the relief of finally getting away from that relationship.
To Be Continued…
Jaime’s story was featured in a short documentary you can view here.
For more information on DID, click here.
