With every stitch of her clothing saturated to the skin and every fiber of her being chilled to the bone by the driving and frigid January rain, Toni Braxton's mind was comprised of only one thought: A stiff drink sure would be wonderful! Though it had been six months since Toni had her last drink of alcohol before joining AA, she could still taste the crisp and clean bite of an icy cold Budweiser sliding down her throat. Then chasing it with a shot of Tequila? Oh yeah, baby! God, it would hit the spot right now. Just one beer and one shot, that's all! Nothing more! She could handle just one. But no, she couldn't. It wouldn't be just one. It could never be just one. As they say in the program: "One is too many, but a thousand is never enough." And unfortunately for Toni, that statement fit her like a glove. If twenty years of alcoholic drinking and active drug abuse had convinced her of anything, it had surely convinced her of that. Or had it? It was really only the last year and a half that did the major convincing, and it had done it in the most destructive and painful of ways. In that seemingly short span of time, a mere eighteen months, everything of value in Toni's life had been lost; snatched out from under her like a rug from under her feet. Her career as a Registered Nurse: Fired! Her husband of 12 years: Divorced her! Her 2006 Dodge Ram 1500: Repossessed! Her home: Lost in the divorce! Her self-respect and dignity: Repeatedly defiled by desperate acts for money and drugs; even selling her body. The trust of family and friends: Gone; she had spent years stealing money, jewels, and other valuables, completely manipulating and humiliating them in every conceivable fashion. Her clean criminal record: Arrested numerous times for driving while intoxicated, possession of illegal substances, assault, and battery, public intoxication, embezzlement, bank draft fraud, and prostitution. Her health: Kidney infections, bladder infections, liver enlargement, high blood pressure, malnutrition, and physical abuse. But the most devastating loss of all: her two beloved children. Nine-year-old Devin and six-year-old Jodie were now in the full custody of their father and they had moved with him back to his hometown of Amarillo Texas. Toni now had limited, court-supervised visits with them one weekend a month in Amarillo Texas. So, Toni would drive nearly 600 miles round trip along old U.S. Highway 59 through rural East Texas in a battered, war-torn 1973 Chevy pick-up truck that she bought for 250 dollars from a guy in the program. The only thing holding that truck together was the paint and even it was falling off by the bucket load; rust was eating that grotesque old "hoopty" down to the frame but it ran. Having lived in a woman's shelter for the first 30 days of her sobriety, Toni's elderly parents reluctantly allowed their 36-year-old juvenile delinquent to move into the one-room loft over the garage of their home just outside of Houston. Now as she approached her seventh month of clean and sober life, Toni was still physically weak, frail, and easily susceptible to whatever bug was going around. But despite all her hardships, Toni loved and adored her children more than life itself and would do anything for them; even walk seven miles in a cold and bitter January rain along the shoulder of Highway 59 after her "hoopty" had finally decided to go to the big junkyard in the sky. Though this trip back from Amarillo had been cold, gray, and gloomy with a driving winter rain; in truth, it was no less miserable than any other. Even if there wasn't a cloud in the sky and the temperature was eighty degrees, Toni's heart always ached to the point of physical agony for she knew it would be another full month before she saw her babies again and another two weeks before she could speak to them by phone. She was allowed one mid-month phone call and it was court ordered that the children must be available to speak to her. If an emergency arose on either side and the call could not be made or taken, alternate arrangements would then be made by the court to reset it. Toni hated every aspect of the situation. How could these people do this to her? She was their mother! She carried them in her body, she gave birth to them, nursed them, fed them, bathed them, changed their diapers, wiped away their tears, loved them, and treasured them. Who the hell did the state of Texas think they were to do this to her? The words of her AA sponsor suddenly thundered through her head: They didn't do this to you, Toni. You did it all to yourself.
