My name is Johnathan Shane Fulton TDC# 2269120. I am serving a 70 year sentence for Manufactory and Delivery of a controlled substance (Methamphetamine).
I became addicted to methamphetamine in 2006, shortly after my beautiful firstborn daughter came into this world. I began using not as a product of my environment, or anything to do with my upbringing, but simply because I chose to be selfish and decided to travel down a path that would eventually consume, take, and destroy everything that meant anything to me.
My drug use over the next couple of years became uncontrollable and every relationship I had in life began to unravel. In 2008 shortly after my second child, my son, was born, I caught my first charge which then started the cycle of being in and out of jails, treatment facilities, and prisons.
I first went to S.A.F.P. in 2008 where I would do 9 months before being released to a halfway house to complete a 3 month stay there. After being in the halfway house for about a month and a half I had my first relapse. I never even made it home before my drug use was completely out of control again. Somehow I managed to make it almost three years when in 2011, I finally went to prison for the first time. I would do 17 months on a 8 year sentence for possession.
After being released in 2012 I did well for just a few months and again somewhere in that year I would relapse. It was also in this year that my drug use would have such a hold on me that even the death of my father would not subdue it. I hadn't talked to my dad In years when I got word from a friend that he had passed away from a heart attack in his sleep. His sister had found me on Facebook and sent messages to me asking me to go with her to spread his ashes in my hometown of Flour Bluff Texas. Even though I had the perfect spot in my mind where to do so, I just kept putting it off over and over again to the point where she would go by herself. I wasn't there nor have I ever gotten any of his belongings she had saved for me.
The next three years would be like all the ones before. My children's mother had left with my son and daughter, and I was living off my mother, living in her house, and using her vehicle to do nothing but live out my addiction.
I would go to I.S.F. which is a parole punishment facility 6 times in those three years. Cutting off a leg monitor three times. Finally in 2015 my parole officer recommended that I be revoked and sent back to prison again. In December of that year I found myself on the Gurney until for my second stay. Life would never be the same again this time though.
In August 2016 I was at the Coffield trusty camp, under parole review for my mandatory shortway. On the 2nd of that month I talked to my mother in what would be our last conservation ever. My kids were up visiting her for the summer and she was the happiest I had heard her be in quite some time. As our conversation ended she told me " Shane, you don't have an answer yet, but you're coming home. " I told her I know mom and tell the kids I love them. The last words I heard my mom say were " your daddy says he loves " then the phone cut off.
On August 5, I was driven to the back gate, escorted into the majors hallway by 2 Sargent's and then told my mother and my son were involved in an accident and unfortunately neither one of them made it. It was at that moment I began to suppress the emotions that I am just to this day barely starting to deal with. I knew if I reacted in anyway other than calmly they were going to lock me up for observation. Worst case scenario in my eyes. So I politely asked them if I could return to the camp I had been at, with the friends I had, and the job I worked. Somehow they agreed, and at 2:30 am on a clear a starry night I walked out the back gate of the Coffield maximum security prison completely unescorted and alone. I will never in my life forget that walk as long as I live.
29 days later my mothers words proved true, and I was released. I wasn't out 36 hours before I had a needle in my arm and completely refusing to allow myself the process of grieving whatsoever. I was hell bent on doing everything I had to do to stay as high as I could and make as much money as I could so I would not lose my mothers house and property.
My grandmother got sick and was admitted to the hospital in this time. I never made it to the hospital and she too would pass away. I was completely a zombie to any emotion whatsoever other than my fixation on my drug use. For 14 months life would go on this way up until Christmas eve 2017, when I caught this charge I'm currently serving time for.
This charge and the time that came with it would be what it took to finally save me from my destructive ways. It took this to finally wake me up and show me just how much I lost in my addiction and everything it cost me. This is what it took to save my life and bring me to a place where I could finally begin the process of healing that my soul so desperately needed.
In this journey I have been on since being arrested I have had the chance to meet the person involved in the wreck that took my mother and sons lives that day. I was able to wrap my arm around his neck at a visitation in county and tell him I'm sorry, and I dont hold anything Ill toward him, it was an accident, a statistic. I met the E.M.T., who was first on the scene of the wreck and who just so happened to be the nurse at the same county jail. I was able to ask her if they both went instantly, which she said yes. I was also able to meet a guy in my cell who turned out to be the guy who built their crosses on the side if the road. And finally I learned the officer who arrested me, well his first name is Angel!
I'm a believer in Jesus Christ. I know he's been guiding me throughout all this journey I've been on. Everything I have been through up to this moment is all according to his plan. Even though it hurts, I've learned to find peace and count it all as joy. I know my family is in heaven smiling down on me and completely proud of the changes I have made. I know their love continues to surround me and I know that without any doubt after the experience I had at Kairos #59, when for the first time in my life I truly felt the love of Gods presence, and in that moment he allowed to feel their love, the love I've been searching for since my addiction first began to tear me away all those years ago.
I still have my daughter in my life and am grateful that she has never given up on me no matter how much of a failure I have been at being a father figure in her life. She recently wrote me a letter telling me that no matter my mistakes, I will never be the villain in this story, and that she will always be my #1 fan.
I'm excited for my future and my chance to use all I've been through to help those going through the same thing or worse. Its on my heart to come back into the same institutions I've been in and to share my testimony and spread the love and reality of our Heavenly father.
Change is possible, healing is possible, restoration is possible, I am a living testament to that. God Bless all who read this!
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