I started panhandling again as soon as we moved into our apartment to support our drug habit, we very quickly after starting to use crack picked up a 300-400 a day habit. Chris lost his job at Food Lion while we were still living at Alton’s and had since started working at Lombardi’s as a waiter.
I was able to get a job at Walmart in Fruitland doing online grocery pick up – I was the one who loaded the cars up with their orders and I was making $17.00/hr. I wasn’t able to keep that job for long before I was almost caught shoplifting.
Luckily for us, after my old boss at Dollar Tree asked for nude pictures of me, I immediately hired a lawyer and was actively pursuing legal action. But, until then I was able to get a job at Subrunners which was less than a 5 minute walk from our house.
Malinda was in Maryland, staying with us on Baker Street for a little while. Chris and I were in treatment again, going to a methadone clinic every morning for our doses, but still using whenever possible too.
On October 18, 2021 I received a phone call from Nessa that would curb my whole reality. My best friend in the whole world, the little girl I met when I was barely 4 years old had died and from COVID, nonetheless. I remember the day like it was yesterday, Chris and I were walking home from D’s house after copping some drugs and I fell to the ground, sobbing.
I could not believe what I was hearing Nessa try to tell me. Grief spirals through your body like nothing I could ever describe when you first discover that someone you love has passed.
Tiffany fell ill one day, and without getting better she drove herself to the emergency room and not two days later she would be pronounced dead. Because of her line of work, a pediatric dental hygienist and because of her weight and because they put her on a ventilator made it so.
It couldn’t be true! I had to drop everything to be with her family. No if ands or buts about it – I had to go to Florida and be with Brenda, Jerry and the girls; with Malinda there, I knew Chris was in good hands.
I took a Bayshuttle bus to the Baltimore airport and flew into Tampa and spent a good week with them all. Brenda had set up Tiffany’s room for me to sleep in and I couldn’t bear to lie in her bed so I just went through her things. I didn’t know how to process all the emotions I was feeling.
It didn’t help that I did not maintain sobriety while in Florida trying to process the entire ordeal. I had no opiates to get me through that week so meth was the only thing making me feel remotely normal while in town grieving with her family.
While bonding and reminiscing Tiffany with Cody, I got a call from Chris accusing me of sleeping with Cody. Cody, the man who was madly in love with Tiffany, had only had each other for over 15 years and he had the nerve to accuse me of sleeping with him. Having sex with me was the very last thing on his mind.
My best friend was gone and I wasn’t equipped to deal with that reality.
I returned to Salisbury and got stuck right back in the same routine. I would work and when not working I’d be off panhandling or prostituting. Malinda would fly back to Florida to live on her boat and Chris and I would stop going to the methadone clinic and even worse than my heroin usage became my crack addiction. I’d go to grave lengths to obtain a fat rock to stick on top of some choreboy on my stem and get a real dead ringers of a hit and feel the euphoria spread throughout my body.
I slept with our dealer D whenever he had some drugs to offer me, I was sleeping with an Asian doctor that worked over at PRMC (the hospital) that Chris was okay with me sleeping with and I’d go off and sleep with another man and tell him it was Wenbo, the Asian. I didn’t understand why it was okay for me to sleep with some men and not the others so I’d just lie about who I’d be sleeping with and assume that as long as I was coming up with the money to get high everyday then he’d stay happy enough with me to not ask any questions. This proved to be true so I continued with my endeavors.
Sometimes if I did a really shitty job coming up with money from panhandling then I’d even get in the car with random men and sleep with them. I had absolutely no self esteem, my self worth was out the door and as long as Chris and I were fucked up and feeling good by the time we were ready to go to sleep at night.
The thing was that during this time it was like our friendship and sexual relationship was at an all time high. During the day whenever we were able to spend it together, it seemed almost magical. Like him and I were the only two people on the planet. We’d go off on adventures together, we’d spend the day taking pictures together, making love, recording content for our onlyfans and I’d end up asleep in his arms by the end of the night, or spooning him softly to sleep. I allowed myself to feel happy, however long that happiness were to last.
I was Mrs. Christopher Ryan Willey and I was so incredibly proud to be so. I felt through everything we put ourselves through as a couple that I undoubtedly earned his name and the title of his wife. I made sure he was high, happy, well fed, with a clean home and not a care in the world other than going to work at Lombardi’s Pizza waiting tables the shifts that he did. I took care of everything else.
Even when it came to paying the bills I made sure it would rarely or never be our responsibility to pay any of them. I got Diakonia or some other non profit agency to pay for our rent and electric. Which was easy because I was also enrolled in a program called the Act program which prescribed me all my mental health prescriptions and due to it being prime Covid season during the 2021 year it was actually quite easy to get different funding from different organizations to pay for our rent and utilities.
We were able to stay on Baker Street in Salisbury for the entire year of our rental agreement without having to pay out of pocket for the rent once. We never paid for the electricity or any of our furniture either. I got the entire apartment furnished via Facebook groups and Craigslist, even was able to get items like our couch and bed delivered to the apartment.
I met a man named Melvin when we first started renting the apartment and I was panhandling on the corner of Pemberton and Nanticoke Rd and he gave me $60 bucks after asking me what it would take for me to just go home. I’d go over his house sometimes and I’d let him lick on my nipples and fiddle with my snatch and he just took care of me. Chris knew and couldn’t have been happier with the arrangement. He bought me an AC unit for my birthday in early June so I wouldn’t be sweaty all day at home and a refrigerator because the apartment didn’t come with one.
Honestly, he was a really great guy and he didn’t deserve how I took advantage of him.
But, that’s how we were able to make ends meet, hold a pretty expensive and hardcore drug habit and still end the day with smiles on our faces the year we lived on Baker Street. Unfortunately, we weren’t ignorant to the fact that our lifestyle wasn’t going to continue on like this forever and our year there was coming to an end and to be practical, towards the end with all the eviction notices we barely were able to get around, we’d have to move.
The $6,000 that I got from Dollar Tree for suing them for sexual harassment had come and gone and we were able to save none of it or purchase anything that would have made life any better. It was time to find somewhere to go and we knew it had to be somewhere that’s get us as far the fuck away from Salisbury, MD and all the drugs that came with it.
So towards the beginning of the year we decided to make our search for our new home and we’d use the money from our taxes to get there.
Allie Willey 