Still, the story is one of the many Marie is willing to share. She has no problem discussing who she once was because, ultimately, it would shape who she’d become.
The beer pong games with family members that began at age 11 ... receiving money from her mother to buy booze ... the alcohol-related crash that forced paramedics to pull her unconscious body from the backseat of an upside-down car ... the trip to the detox center that changed her life.
“I’m so tired of living like this,” Marie told her rehab counselor in November of 2020. “I can’t do it anymore. I want something more, something better.”
The counselor looked into her eyes.
“Remember this feeling,” he said sternly. “Hold onto it. Don’t ever let it go.”
Marie hasn’t. If anything, she’s embraced it.
“I spent a very large portion of my life being unhappy,” Marie tells PornCrush. “I was in that ‘victim’ mindset, but now I know everything is in my hands.
“I’m sharing my story in hopes that others will see they can change their future, too. I would do anything if that one little seed is planted in someone’s life, even if we never cross paths again.”
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She loved being a fry cook at Burgerville and enjoyed interacting with customers at Kentucky Fried Chicken. But Xxlayna Marie felt she’d truly achieved elite status when she was hired to operate a forklift at Lowe’s Distribution Center.
“I was only 19,” she laughs, “and I felt like I’d already hit the peak of greatness as far as what my hometown had to offer.”
Marie was raised in Lebanon, Oregon, a hiccup of a community about 45 miles north of the state capital in Eugene. Her mother worked at a dialysis center during Marie’s childhood; her father left his warehouse job to open a food truck.
Like many of the town’s 19,000-plus residents, Marie said her friends and relatives navigated through life with minimal ambition. They placed a low ceiling on their potential and saw no use in dreaming big. If you were born in Lebanon, you stayed in Lebanon. Anyone with the talent to escape rarely had the support—or the drive—to do so.
“In Lebanon, the definition of ‘making it’ was simply to have a secure job at Lowe's or the Target Distribution Center,” Marie says. “I never believed anything beyond that was possible. There was nothing to shoot for.
“I remember a girl on my street went to New York one weekend on a trip, and it was the talk of the town. I thought it was the biggest deal ever. That’s how small my mind was. Everyone just went through the same routine, day after day.”
For Marie, that routine involved drinking.