Conquering Chaos by Catelynn Lowell, Tyler Baltierra Read Free Book Online Page A

around me, too. I had one uncle who had a huge
     meth problem. I can remember him hallucinating while I was at his house, asking him
     if I could see the government people flying around his house. He was always in some
     kind of trouble, in jail or getting bailed out. Once he went on a meth binge, got
     drunk, got in his car, crashed into a school bus, got caught with a gun he wasn’t
     supposed to have, and got hauled off in handcuffs. But the worst was when he’d beat
     his wife in front of the kids. He’d freak out and start to whoop her ass in front
     of us, until she’d get away, throw us all in the truck and speed off to get away.
    It was like scary movie stuff sometimes. One time, my mom had to go over there because
     he was screaming he was going to chop her head off with a machete! When she got there,
     there he was, actually standing there with a machete ready to chop her head off.
    I wasn’t safe from violent addicts, either. When I was thirteen or fourteen, Tyler
     and I suspected my mom’s boyfriend at the time — the father of my little brother —
     was doing crack. We found proof when we found a crackpipe hidden in the bathroom,
     and three days after that, we found out we were suddenly being evicted.
    Because my brother was just a little baby at the time, the landlord gave us a few
     extra days to pack up and leave. Tyler came over to help, and so he and my mom and
     my sister and I were packing up the whole house. The boyfriend, though, was just sitting
     in a chair watching, and he was obviously high on crack. He was running his mouth
     saying ridiculous stuff like, “We don’t have to go anywhere! I paid everything! We
     don’t have to pack, we’re not leaving!” But my mom and I knew that wasn’t true. We
     all just kept working while he sat around, high and talking crap. Then my mom left
     the house for a bit. While she was gone, I made the mistake of making some remark
     to the boyfriend about him not helping us pack.
    This guy just lost it. I mean, he lost it so bad he jumped out of his chair and I
     took off running. He chased me to the bathroom, with Tyler running right behind him.
     My sister got so scared she had run ahead of me to hide in the shower, so she was
     in there screaming when he caught up with me. This man picked me up by the neck, threw
     me to the ground, and pinned me down on the floor between the toilet and the shower
     and started choking me. I was trying to kick him and punch him, and my sister was
     screaming bloody murder. Tyler got some burst of Hulk strength and pulled the guy
     off of me, and we shut the door and called 911. The cops came and took him off to
     jail. My mom fell apart over that, crying, “How could he lay a hand on my kid? How
     can I ever be with him again?”
    Tyler:
    I don’t know how that happened. He’s a big guy and I was just this scrawny little
     fourteen-year-old. But when your girlfriend’s getting attacked by somebody you go
     into panic mode. Adrenaline, or something.
    That was the first time we looked at each other and said, “Something seriously wrong
     is going on.” We find a crack pipe in the bathroom and three days later they’re getting
     evicted and she’s got this guy choking her on the bathroom floor. Obviously something
     in that household was not right. I mean, that’s an understatement.
    Catelynn:
    Right after that, we had to move to a really bad part of Detroit, right on 7 Mile
     and Mound, which is a horrible place to live. Our next door neighbor was named Fats.
     He was a drug dealer and had his four-year-old kid dropping dime bags out the window,
     like a druggie drive-through. We went to bed hearing gunshots. It was awful. We could
     barely even go outside. So I got out of there every weekend I could. Tyler and his
     mom would come to pick me up all the time, just to get me out of there.
First Tastes
    Tyler:
    The first time I tried cigarettes, drinking, and weed was that week at my dad’s house.
     Yep, I was