Mom…We Need to Talk About How Your Meth Addiction

Mom,
I need to talk and I need you to listen, to really listen. Then I need you to talk.

I have questions I deserve to hear the answers for.
I feel I’ve earned the right to know the answers. The honest answers.

I know you’re an addict. Meth held sway over you since long before me or even Nik. Your first love… your most indulged in little monster. You’ve tried to hide that from me. Please, don’t try deny it. Don’t say you haven’t used recently…that it’s been years…that it was just once… whichever lie you grasp at to defend and deflect the truth, just don’t. We’ve been here before Mom.

I talked to Nik the other day. God she sounds good, happy, really happy. She looks good too. We FaceTimed and WOW. She looks…healthy. She said right away, “look at me sissy, I’m clean, staying clean.” She did say she’s had a few setbacks, but she’s doing better and hasn’t in a long time. Hopefully this time it’s for the long haul. She’s 40 and she’s been battling this inherited demon for most of her life. You two have that in common.

I asked her how you were. We talk, real talk, because she’s on the front lines of this battle with you. She, like you, avoids talking about your use to “protect” me as she so often says. I’ve battled this as well. Keeping me in the dark makes me feel like an outsider, which I very much am and not by choice. It’s damaging and allows for absolutely no way for me to help…to share in shouldering the burden as much as I can. And it is a burden. But, we worked out the deal, that if I ask a direct question I get the straight truth.

Nik said she didn’t know really how you were. She said she’s been staying away, that she has to…for her. She doesn’t want to go back once again to how it was before. She says she can’t. And really she can’t, the terms of her probation alone she’s not willing to compromise, the cost just to high pay this time.

WOW, that’s a first mom. It used to be it didn’t matter what it cost her…kidneys, her children, her relationships, jobs, freedom…the High was worth paying for with all of it. It sounds like she has finally stopped believing she doesn’t deserve good in her life, that she’s suffered so much tragedy because she deserved to be punished, for…existing. What she went through had nothing to do with her addiction, but it sure did fuel it. I would do anything to numb my pain too. I have, just in different ways.

What she went through, a great deal of it and the coping skills she had developed, YOU had a lot to do with mom. After all, we learned from you. Maybe that’s why being the youngest and the one who escaped before the madness set in, I took the best parts of you.

I remember every field trip, every late night talk, all the love you showered on me and my heart still fills up. I know that was real. I know that in these moments, you acted as the mother you were meant to be. Nik didn’t get that, you and I both know that, and I’ve said as much to you face to face after I was old enough to recognize and absorb the reality of what I saw. I had it bad sometimes. It was bad for her ALL the time. It’s time I stop sugar coating. This is the raw version of what your addiction and your choices thereafter caused. This is what I need to say to you…

Nik is not the reason her Dad left you. You made your daughter suffer because you latched onto that idea so that you didn’t have to deal with the truth of your stupid choice. You knew the relationship was ending. You were the one who stopped taking your birth control intentionally without telling him. You had thought a baby would make him stay. You knew at that time he wanted nothing to do with being a father. All he wanted and cared about was chasing that High. Hell, he got you started. When he found out about the baby, he left. Nik didn’t ask for this. These were your choices and the results of which were the choices of another. Both equally selfish. both equally shameful.

How you treated Nik from the moment she was born is unacceptable and horrific. I know what kind of mother you were to her, having heard it from enough people what her early childhood was like before me and before I can remember. What I can remember was horrible on its own. And then, to see her baby sister being showered with all the love and affection she never had is heartbreaking. How could you do that to one of your children? How could you vilify an innocent child?

You called me your miracle baby, the one you said you were told you couldn’t have. I don’t know if that’s true or just another lie you constructed for self-serving purposes. You know, like the boy you had told me you lost before Nik as an infant? The one who just on timing alone and from Grandma’s, your own mother’s, account could have never existed? The one you never mentioned to anyone else but me? Was the story of the miraculous birth of a baby by a supposedly infertile woman a true one?

Dad has said over and over again he can’t recall you ever being told you couldn’t have children before I was conceived. He did say things were already bad between you two. He did remember the drug fueled life you were leading up until you found out you were pregnant…somehow already 7 months along. When I was born, and you found out there was something wrong with me. Did you create that story to release yourself from the guilt of possibly being to blame for my birth defects and deformity because of your addiction?

I required so much, so much care, so much attention just to survive those first few months. And when I almost died at 6 weeks, not because of anything you did (I know that’s true too), and somehow I made it through, maybe that’s when that maternal switch was finally flipped on, at least for me

I know those first few years were rough. I know all of the trips to the city, the surgeries your baby had to undergo, the times of recovery afterward, you had to weather the storm and you did so well. Everyone remembers that as the time when you were everything a mom should be…your best moments. And for that I’m grateful.

By 4, when the cleft lip and palate I had been born with, was less glaring, but still so apparent and my face still deformed, the reconstructive surgeries stopped. The trips to the city stopped. You told me the doctors said I had to develop a little more before anymore surgeries could be done. I believed you. You still worked with my speech on the flash cards, which had helped me learn to read by the time I was 3.

Sometime around then something happened. Everything for everyone changed. What triggered it mom? What was the catalyst that brought that raging storm upon Nik and I…and you and Dad? It started so small and escalated so quickly.

I remember when you and dad seemed to be happy. Well I have a handful of memories in which you seemed to be. Then both of you changed. Dad slept on the couch one night and never returned to your bed again.

We lived in a constant state of terror. I remember sitting on the couch, hands clutched over my ears as I tried to block out the assault of your raging words…the sounds of fist and hand meeting flesh…the screams of pain and sobbing that followed. While we listened, Nik would hold me and rock me…whispering it would be ok, that she would always try to protect me. And she did.

I remember you coming at me and Nik would be there, 7 years older than me, too smart to step in because we both would have received your wrath. So she’d use her words and a flippant attitude as bait. She’d lure you with insults. And draw you to her to save me from pain.

I remember the day we heard the crash and then your panicked screams and cries for help. Both us racing into the bathroom to see the your face, normally tan, completely drained of color and dad’s body so unnaturally twisted limp, posed lying in the bathtub, eyes closed and thinking you had finally killed him. You thought you had too. Luckily we were both wrong.

I remember the Easter morning you sent me into the yard to play in my Sunday dress while we waited to leave for my aunt’s annual Egg Hunt which had become a community tradition. I accidentally tripped and felt immediate panic and horror when I realized I had gotten my dress dirty. Then you appeared before I could conceal it, almost as if you had been watching and waiting for this moment as suddenly as you were there. You turned the hose on me in our front yard and called me to you. After soaking me with freezing water on an already cold morning, I received the rest of my punishment. The feeling of the thick rubber hose and the metal at its mouth as it hissed against my skin each time you whipped me with it is ingrained in my memory. I still don’t know how the neighbors could have not heard my screams. We missed the Hunt that year as I recall.

I remember Nik being held up by her throat against the wall, punched over and over again. The crime she was being punished for I can’t recall.

I remember the countless men you openly kept and made me privy to and your demands that I lie for you to my dad and keep your secrets. I remember one of those men raping Nicole when she was 13 on a camping trip. I remember when she came to you sobbing, you hit her and told her she had brought this on herself. You called her a slut.

After Nik had already rebelled and started to use the same drug that you had been a slave to forever, at 16 she became pregnant with my nephew. Do you remember when she was pregnant, far enough along for her belly to not just be visible but swollen and full with the life of your grandson inside? Do you remember that day when you hurled hate filled words at her? She said she would never be the mother you were…and you snapped. You knocked her to the floor You kicked her in the stomach over and over and over again. You didn’t stop until I flung myself on top of her and after kicking me several times you finally realized who you were connecting with. You’ve said it didn’t happen, that that’s a lie Nik made up, something you’ve even said to me. Is your memory really that bad mom?

Nik left home… things finally looked ok for her. She had Kyle who had loved her since they were kids. Even though he wasn’t the father, he wanted to be. He was with her before she ever had the baby. He would be going into the navy and they would be going away together. She was finally going to escape the horror that was our life. She and he were living in their own place until the time to leave came. And I was left alone with you and dad. The physical abuse stopped for the most part. Maybe it was less fulfilling now that your main target was out of range.

Then Dad finally hit his breaking point. He didn’t want this life anymore… didn’t want to be the man he had allowed himself to become. Didn’t want the drug that controlled him, the one you had started him on just like J did to you. He decided to move to Texas to start a new life and make a place for us away from the one we existed in, the factory that continually pumped out another generation of addicts and those dependent on the state. He sent for us after he was settled, but you refused to go.

Things in a way were better. All you had was me. There was no more violence from you or dad inflicted on me, no more bearing witness to the horrible things you’d done to each other… to Nik for all those years. The joy of being free from that left me unprepared for the new kind of abuses I would be subjected to.

All of a sudden, we had to move from the house I had grown up in. We never stopped being on the move after that. We just never seemed to be able to stay in one place for longer than a few months. You never seemed to be at the same job for very long either. That’s when I remember being kept awake at night by the hunger pains…when I hadn’t eaten because there was nothing.

You were a loving mother at that time, just like you always were when you weren’t being that “other mother”. Growing up with my deformity hadn’t been easy. Kids can be cruel when someone doesn’t look the same as them. That’s one thing I had always been jealous of Nik about. God she was so beautiful. She had the attention of everyone, something she found comfort in. She traded it receive the love she never got as a kid. I was ashamed of my jealousy.

You did teach me that I was beautiful, taught me that kindness to others no matter what was a remarkable thing, built my confidence at the same time you destroyed my ability to trust the people that said they loved me. That was too dangerous to do. People who love each other do terrible things to one another. That was my truth actualized.

The night when Rabbit came after me is something I have tried to forget in moments of weakness. The little girl inside of me struggles with the event and your reaction. You remember Rabbit, your boyfriend who you had been staying with, right? I say you because I was usually at home, well at the room you rented for us in that dodgy motel at the end of town a block from his house. I was happier there, I mean come on I had cable for the first time in my life. Plus, I told you how Rabbit always made me feel uneasy.

That night I was asleep on his couch, having been lured there by the chance to play with his visiting daughter who was my age. I remember in vivid detail waking up to find him sitting next to me. I still remember how the smell of his breath… the feel of it against my cheek as his face came close to mine. I can still feel his hands on my skin, on my stomach and my legs and hear his voice as he told me to be stay quiet.

I don’t know how he didn’t notice my hand moving when I reached for the knife Nik had given me before she had left for Florida with Kyle… the one she made me swear to keep on me at all times no matter what knowing I never broke a promise once made. He didn’t though, never saw it until I had it pressed against his neck. I told him to take his hands off of me or I would push it all the way in. I must have had pressed hard enough to make him really afraid this 12 year old girl could do him harm because he listened. Or maybe it was something in the way I said it. He quietly backed away, passed the room his daughter was occupying, and went back into the room where you were asleep in bed. I heard the door lock after he shut it. I told you about it the next day. And, you defended him, saying I had overreacted. I found out later, Rabbit was just another one of your suppliers.

I spent the next six months bouncing around from friends to relative’s homes and back again and not with you wherever you were. We were without a home anyway, so there wasn’t a home base I could hide in. I just knew that you couldn’t protect me, and more so you would place me in danger.

Nik had been back for a bit by this time. After the loss of her second child, the baby Kyle had given her two years after the birth of her son, she had never recovered. You know her story. The years that followed were similar to the what your life had been. The loss of custody of her son drug fueled binges, violence. She was your daughter after all. The only difference is the type of mother each of you had.

I was sent to live with dad the summer before 7th grade. He had no clue any of this was going on. How could he when no one told him. Nik finally made the call…forever my protector… she told Dad everything and begged him to get me out of there. I was on a plane that night.

My teenage years were so different from my childhood. I excelled in school which I always had, but with so much more stability. Within months I had the first of the last set of surgeries to correct my deformity. The doctors all wondered why so many years went by without one. I should have begun having surgeries a few years after they had stopped, not the 8 it had been. I was forced to deal with the cruelty of others that my top lip and nose had elicited for far longer that I could have. You made that happen. You placed me at the bottom of your priority list.

I was your average teen. Dad did a good job. I stayed out of trouble, maintained good (amazing) grades, and kept an after school job. I flourished. The only changes were my summers home with you. Those are a blur, drunken hazes from the booze you plied me with. All I thought at the time was how cool you were, even after chasing you down the HWY as you stepped in and out of traffic calling me an ungrateful cunt who deserved to go motherless. I didn’t see what you did was your way to excuse your own drunken life…the effect of another one of your addictions. Add on the pills you gulp down now by the handful. Oh I know they are prescribed (at least some of them).

After I graduated school and had my son it took 10 years for me to come back to the county. I hadn’t been home for so long, I was a stranger among the familiar. 10 years for me to step foot in your home. Twice you came to visit. All you did was sleep. I guess you needed it based on what I discovered later.

When you had your heart attack 5 years ago, I almost died…twice. First when I thought I would lose my mother and then to hear that they had to bring you back on the operating table. The second death was made up of a thousand small ones. I finally was told how you had been living your life. First one came when, by your own admission, you revealed that your arrest the year before was not because you had been caught selling weed but, in fact meth. You told me because you knew someone else was going to or someone would slip. See, our entire family knew the truth about you. I was faced with the real version of you as an adult that couldn’t be fooled like the child version of me had been. They saw you every day. Trapped together in the same small town a stone’s throw from each other, they saw and heard everything.

I knew deep down about the meth use as a kid, but thought you hadn’t done it since I left home. I thought it had been all pills and liquor from that point on. I was so naive. I died another death each time someone else sat me down and revealed another side of the you explained in a story… again each time a lie was uncovered…again each time a tweaker showed up at the house looking for you, looking to score…again with each crystal, baggy and pipe I found in your home when I worked to clean it for when you came home from surgery which there were unbelievable amounts of. Then, that final death when, after I confronted with the truth I knew, you lied again to me. I couldn’t be revived after that. There wasn’t enough of the broken pieces to put me back together.

During the 5 years that followed I retreated into some very dark places. Dad got sick, really sick. Grandma and then Papa were both gone. Even when I came back for Papas funeral I couldn’t bridge that gap between us even though I saw it was killing you. I had struggles in my marriage because you left me un-whole. I didn’t know how to be loved.

One day I woke up and couldn’t find the energy to hate you anymore. I accepted that I couldn’t make the decisions for you that I so wish you would make for yourself. I knew that you had an illness. On top of that you were a product of an environment where everyone used meth. Every time I talked to a childhood friend, they admitted to their use or a struggle with it. Some would bring it up so casually you’d think they were commenting on the weather. So I called more. You came and visited and it was great. I made sure I made it great. Mom, I forgave you.

Your health has been declining for years now. Within the last few, it has at an alarming and increasing rate. Your time left is limited. No more than a year. I know you didn’t tell me. Nik did. It hurts me to know you’re using right now. It scares me to know that it’s only speeding up what is coming.

It scares me that Nik will lose the relationship that you and she finally had been able to share, the one she wanted where she felt love, when she had only just got it. With so much tragedy in her life already, I worry what another devastating loss will do to her. Will it undo the progress she’s made? God, I hope with all my heart she’s strong enough now that it won’t.

I needed to be able to tell you how your choices have affected me, and how I’m learning continues to affect me today. I needed to able to explain what being the child of an addict or addicts, as was the case with me, is like for me personally. I need you to know I know, whether you can admit it to me or not.

I have to wonder at the end of your life if you could give it up for us. One final way to at last put us before your addiction. Are you capable of finally showing us you can stop because it hurts us even now that we are grown? Could you make that sacrifice for us? Do you even want to try? There’s still time Mom, but its running out.

Love,
Your Daughter