Page 9 - March-April HER

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right up in your face. And he had said before, ‘I’m gonna kill her. I know where she is, I’m gonna find her.’”
Living in Wisconsin at the time, Tilley’s then-boyfriend, Mason, set on his way back to Hot Springs around the end of January.
“It really sucks to say this and I hate that it happened this way but the only thing that really got me out of there was my husband, who was my boyfriend at the time ... ,” she said. “We were dating this whole time. He knew what was going on, but he couldn’t do anything about it. All we could do was Skype each other. He was tired of seeing me be thewayIwas....Allofasudden,I wasn’t worried about getting high. I needed to get him out of here be- cause this (house) is awful.
“It started getting worse. More people started coming over and bringing heroin and all this other stuff we never dealt with. It was getting kind of scary.”
Feb. 12, 2015, was the day she abandoned this illicit lifestyle and embarked on a path of recovery without formal rehabilitation.
“We moved in with my grandma about two weeks after he had come down,” she said. “I was like ‘Alright,
I don’t want to be high on our first holiday together.’ So I decided that Feb. 12 would be enough time to come down and not be out of it. I didn’t expect to get clean. It wasn’t in my plans or anything but it just kinda happened. I made all my deal- ers mad. I purposefully made them not like me so I could not go back.
“From there, I just kind of tried to better myself. Within a month, I got a job doing drug tests which was weird. I got a car and then we found out we were pregnant with twins.”
An “incredible” support system aided her as she eased back into normalcy.
“Mason has supported me through and through. When I’ve had really bad days and just broke down and cried. I just wanted it so bad and I knew I couldn’t get it. I wanted it but I didn’t want it. It was like a diet and not wanting sugar ... (My family) almost acted like it nev- er happened. We didn’t talk about it at all. I didn’t start talking to my grandma about it until maybe a couple months ago ... I appreciated it because it wasn’t thrown back in my face,” she said.
“The first two years were the hardest. I was struggling with trying to get over addiction. I didn’t know
who I was. I didn’t know how to talk to people and I felt like I was learning everything over again. I had to learn my likes and dislikes and figure out who I was. I had lost it completely. Trying to find who I was and get clean, raise kids, and be all these things that were really far from what I was. It was a lot.”
As she keeps moving forward, Tilley recognizes her husband and four children as the key to remain- ing clean.
“In the beginning (of recovery), I thought ‘I can’t let him down. I can’t let my kids down,’” she said. “He uprooted his whole life and came down here for me, who had nothing to offer him. They were my world before all of it happened. I guess I took advantage of my grand- ma being able to watch them so I’d go do whatever and I was really young. I was only 23. I didn’t really understand what it took or what it meant to be a mom until I came back ... I realized what it meant to have the privilege of being a mother and being able to raise kids of my own, teaching them stuff, and see- ing them grow and their personali- ties coming out. I wanted to create memories with them.”
With the idea of starting “Find-
HER Feature
ing Emily” being presented last year by an adviser in Tilley’s life, she has future plans of developing the blog into a book. Eventually, she plans to venture into a career of public speaking, spreading in-depth aware- ness of drug addiction.
“I didn’t think the blog would go past my friends and family,” she said. “I started it in March last year. I’ve had several people say that I’ve saved their lives. I can’t wrap my head around it. I’ve got peo- ple from Scotland, Australia, all over the world, messaging me and telling me they want me to keep writing because they get a better understanding of what their loved ones are going through or they can relate to it. ... If me being open helps one person or shows somebody else who’s still out there and they can see all the things that I’ve gone through — hit rock bottom and I’d hit another rock bottom. If I got out of it and can be where I am today, I want them to know that they can too.”
To follow Emily’s story, go to emtoast10.wixsite.com/findingem- ily/home.
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HER MAGAZINE ¯ March/April 2020 9