when the devil comes knockin

What is it about us addicts that make us so damn impulsive, risk-taking and down right retarded when it comes to considering the consequences behind doing drugs? I don't know....maybe its just me personally.....although I'm sure that's not true....that becomes a complete idiot when you ponder getting high.
Its like all of the sudden, no matter how long you have been clean, that one day you wake up and everything in the last time frame of sobriety, holds no weight in your decision making. Its as if that time didn't even exist and your right back where you were five, ten, twenty years prior.
There are times when I catch myself being so vulnerable to the idea of using again, its scary. I wish I could say that enough time has passed that I don't think of using anymore, but that would be a lie. A tragic lie to myself and anyone else listening.
Maybe its similar to when people wake up one day and change their entire style. or when someone suddenly cuts off all their hair or gets a huge tattoo that everyone can see a mile away. Once you do it there is really no going back. Like, what the hell were you thinking man???
And there is no real answer. Maybe because I wanted too, I felt like it, I'm trying to make a statement, I thought I'd do something different, I was bored, I want attention etc.
Sometimes after you relapse, you just want to beat the shit outta yourself, because you yourself don't even know why you did it. You didn't see it coming, it just happened, and now here you are. It's like when you ask the little kid why he shaved the dog, or why he jumped off the roof. He just looks at you and shrugs his shoulders with the "I don't know" expression all over his face.
Ya know, I wish I could say that addiction is easily overcome and sobriety is easily held but that's bullshit. It's not.
It's a fucking pain in my ass and I hate it. It's the dumbest thing I ever did and the hardest thing to keep from doing again. I know the consequences that would undoubtedly come if I chose to get high again, but some days that doesn't even matter. It's like the devil knocking on your door. You knew he was coming so you left the door open just a little. What did you expect would happen?
Then, before I destroy my entire fucking life in a split second, I take a moment to breathe. And to remember where the last time I thought this way got me. And I look at my kids. I do know where this story ends....I know for a fact.
And so I close the gap in the door. I remember why they say addiction is powerful and cunning. I feel like a complete jack-ass. And yet, it's okay because I understand myself just a tiny bit more than I did one day ago.

I remember why I don’t drink

This is a perfect place for me to vent and the blog topic couldn’t be more suiting. Let me start by saying, I have not drank in almost 5 years. I have never been a drinker because I was more concerned with other drugs, so alcohol has never been a drug of choice for me. I can drink and then not drink again for a long time. I pretty much stop drinking long before I got clean from drugs. It kicks my ass the next day, and sometimes it takes a couple of days just to recuperate from a good night out getting wasted. My body just won’t shake it off like it used to. Another reason, and the most important, is because when I drink two things can happen….it can go reeeally good or it can go reeeally bad. After a lot of bad ones, I just gave up. I had a lot of emotional issues and when I would drink they would surface. It’s like a light switch, one minute I’m having a blast, love everybody and feel like a superstar, and then something happens and I go from happy to angry and ready to burn the whole world down pissed off. And, if someone is with me who I have unresolved issues with, it is all bad news from there. I cry, I hit, I get evil, and I want to lash out at that person and anyone else that gets in my way. So, I stopped drinking.

Well, my son’s father asked me to celebrate our birthdays together this year. We are only a few days apart and I haven’t did anything for my birthday in years so I said what the hell, why not go out to eat, go play some pool, have a few drinks and call it a night. I was throwing back shots of tequila having a great time when baby daddy started acting a little weird. Let me take this time to say he has always had an issue with my other child’s father, and we do not have or ever have had a physically abusive relationship. I am not, nor have ever been, a woman that puts up with domestic violence.

So, baby daddy starts acting a little asshole-ish in the bar and gets himself cut off. I say “it’s time to take me home.” Instead of pulling out towards my home, he guns it onto the freeway towards his home. I am not happy about this and I am telling him so in a pretty bitchy manner. He is speeding way too fast when he comes off the freeway exit and wrecks his car. He took out a pole on my side of the vehicle, which broke out my passenger window. It scared the shit out of me because I saw it coming, and thought it was going to come through the windshield right at my face. I jumped out of the car when it stopped and ran. I live on the west side of town, and right now I was stuck on the north side. Anyone familiar with Saginaw knows it’s probably not where you want to be at 1 o’clock in the morning. At that time I didn’t care, I just wanted to run home.

I ran until I came to a fence. It was long and tall. I wasn’t about to hop a fence into some strangers yard, so I tried running along it in hopes of getting somewhere I could get back on track and somewhere that I recognized. All the while, I can hear baby daddy screaming my name. I wasn’t running because I was scared of him, I just didn’t want to deal with him as drunk as he was. I didn’t want to argue about going to his house, I just wanted to go home. And, he was being an asshole at the bar so I was done with the evening. He can be a handful sober, and we haven’t drank together in over 5 years, so I wasn’t interested in the outcome of the night together. I wanted to make it home safely to my kids and pass out.

The next thing I know, and this is like something straight out of a movie, a train is coming down the tracks. I ran towards it because the way home was on the other side. I did not make it, so I’m just standing there, watching it go by, waiting to cross, when he pulls up on the road I’m standing in. His car has a flat tire and is wrecked and he is obviously pissed off. He gets out of his car, and the argument I was expecting turns into him dragging me by my hoodie, which he had wound up so tight it was choking me, down the side of the train tracks. I’m begging him to stop. I tell him he is hurting me and I can’t breathe. At this point, I am fuckin scared because I’ve never seen him like this. I’m trying to get away, but he just keeps twisting the hoodie tighter, choking me more. Finally, in the middle of him screaming next to my ear, some crap about my other kid’s dad, he lets go and I get up on my feet. I ran to his car and jumped through the window because I couldn’t get the door open. He pulls me out through the window and does the same crap all over again. Now, I am pissed. So I start swinging to get him off me. That, of course only made things worse.

We tussled and wrestled. He never hit me but what he did do was enough. I got enough space between us while we were arguing and I ran to the car again. This time I made it before he could grab me, and I gunned the car in reverse and left his ass there. I drove all the way back to the west side on a rim with part of a tire attached to it. I parked it in a parking lot and walked the rest of the way home. I thought about calling the police. I thought about having his ass whooped. I thought about our son. I thought about a lot of things. I thought about how we don’t drink and haven’t in years. I thought about how I have acted when I was drunk, and flipped out on people, including him.

To be honest, I hate not knowing what to do. I told him to leave me alone for as long as it takes for me to figure out just how I do feel, because right now I just don’t know. I have no family here in Michigan or I know the circumstances would be different. My brother would kick his teeth in. I know I’m making excuses for him at this point and I know it’s unacceptable what happened, yet I’m trying to be understanding, because he just keeps telling me he doesn’t remember and he’s sorry. It’s hard also because I have an example to set for all my children. If it were someone else telling me this story, I would tell them to lock his ass up…..I think.

If you think you wont, then think again.

So here’s the lowdown on messing around with drugs and thinking it’s going to be all fun and games. I’ve decided to dedicate this blog to offering some extra special insight into the world of what you think won’t happen to you. First, don’t ever think that it won’t happen to you, I can assure you that drugs do not discriminate. Second, never say never. You will almost always find out that you are capable of doing just about everything you thought you could or would never do. Desperation can be quite a motivating force. I think it’s time for me to share some things I did, that I thought I could or would never do when I was at the wise old age of 18.

I can start by getting the obvious out there first. When I was 18, I went from graduating with a 3.8 and being enrolled in college to meeting a boy and doing heroin and crack all over the course of a summer break. At first it was just now and then, and I only smoked the heroin and snorted the cocaine. I considered myself a recreational user. Before long though, I was smoking crack and sticking a needle in my arm for the heroin. All in the name of love. Not only was I addicted to drugs, but I was addicted to loving this boy who introduced me to them. At the time, I truly believed that I could change him or save him somehow. I thought one day we would be clean together and it would all be happily ever after.

I spent about 9 years believing that. But that’s a different story, for another time. Let’s get back to me and the things I thought I’d never do. One of my personal favorites, and all-time lows was the day I went into the bathroom at a park and needed water in order to do my drugs. The bathroom sink did not work, and I sat there contemplating my options for about 2 minutes, before I realized there was only one if I was going to accomplish what I came in there to do. Long story short, the back of the toilet came off and that was the water I chose to use on that summer afternoon. Another fun fact is that you’ll likely end up homeless. I spent about 6 months living out of a backpack and sleeping in the bushes literally. I was homeless plenty of other times, like when we slept on a huge piece of cardboard, behind the same dumpster, behind the same church, for an entire summer. But there’s something about waking up inside of a bush, after it’s been raining all night, that makes you wish you had a roof over your head.

I think I’ll end this by giving you a visual that you may or may not be able to imagine. Once you’ve gotten the drugs in your hands and you’re safe in whatever room you’re in, if you’ve been an IV drug user for a significant amount of time like I was, chances are your veins are just about nowhere to be found. With that being said, you don’t just give up, you try and try until you are sitting on a floor with a bloody rag in front of you and still trying, determined to make this work. Usually time is of the essence, because once blood has been exposed to oxygen it begins to coagulate, and you begin to panic and then you really turn yourself into human pin cushion, just hoping that one of the many times it will work out in your favor. Usually in a situation like this, it doesn’t work out, but that doesn’t stop you from trying. Finally, you’re sitting there and you can only feel like the world has come to an end. Your drugs are ruined and you’re fucked.

Next stop….starting all over again at square one. And inevitably ending up the bloody pin cushion you were earlier and asking yourself how many times you’re going to keep doing this in hopes of a halfway decent outcome. I can assure you, I NEVER thought I’d end up in any of those situations but I did. Final thought being, I used to look at that lifestyle before I started doing it like it was glamorous, cool, punk, or fun but truth is it was none of those. It was death, destruction, despair and dis-function. If you ever find yourself thinking you won’t end up the way that I did, then you might want to think again.

   

Should we let the dogs live?

                Ok, so the topic of child sexual abuse came up today. This is by far not one of my favorite things to talk about. Let me just start by saying that I count my blessings for not having been a child that had to suffer at the hands of some sick f’n person. I cannot even begin to imagine what a horrible nightmare it would be to have to experience something like that. My heart goes out to anyone who has unfortunately been exposed to any type of child abuse in any form.

                The actual conversation was about how some people have the opinion that sickos who do these terrible things to children are punished through the courts and justice is served by whatever sentence is handed down by the judge. Others are wondering if that is not enough. Some believe that anyone who commits these acts against children should be sentenced to death. They argue that after all, when a dog bites a child we put the dog down. How are these offenders any different than a dog?

 First off, let me tell you that as a parent, and most parents I know, the first common reaction is that the courts better get to the person who violated the child before we do because if they don’t, we will kill them ourselves. Trust me when I tell you that is the honest truth and not an exaggeration. I’m sure most parents agree and those who don’t have something similar in mind.

With that being said, I’m sure it’s no mystery as to where I stand on this issue but I will make myself clear anyway. When you consider the age old sayings “an eye for an eye” or “what goes around, comes around” I guess maybe some can take a very small comfort in knowing the general rule when it comes to pedophiles who go to prison. Yes, they end up locked up with men who have children and those men make sure they receive what they have got coming to them. But is that enough? Does that somehow make it tolerable for the parents knowing that the perpetrator is now the “victim”? And what about the children? Would they be left feeling any better with that knowledge? I doubt that is enough to make anyone feel like justice has been served.

                I stand with those who say to put them down like the animals they are. Some people may say “they are human beings”….I say bullshit!!!! Some may say that those people should get help for their sickness…..again, I say bullshit!!!! If this is how that person is hardwired to act then that’s how that person is hardwired to be. We don’t waste time trying to retrain dogs not to bite. I don’t really understand why the topic is even up for debate. They should have been doing away with these monsters a long time ago. I mean really, how many times has the system released assholes like that only to watch them do it again and again and again.

                  I say stop it in its tracks. No releases from prison after a lengthy sentence. Definitely no rehabilitation because then we would be allowing hope that they may have somehow changed. They do something like devour the innocence of a child and then think they deserve a second chance at their own life??? Nope! No second chances! No third or fourth or fifth. I believe someone does something like that, destroys an innocent child’s life, and their life deserves to be over. Plain and simple.

Love Abuser (the best title for an 80's rock song if I ever heard one)

Throughout life I have somehow ended up with the worst boyfriends a parent could ever imagine their daughter having. How did this happen? I really thought I was going to end up with the Ryan Gosling kind of guy that would make my momma proud. Instead, I ended up with “that guy” my mother couldn’t stand to even look at. It’s comical when I look back on it now. I fell madly deeply in love with every boyfriend I ever had. I was loyal to a fault while they were the exact opposite, cheaters extroidinaire. I don’t even know why I found them so completely irresistible. Not a single one had ever graduated high school nor held a job for more than six months. And yet I loved them with all my heart and soul. Aaaaah, young love. It is the best and the worst all wrapped up in one jacked up box of hormones. I remember writing on my folders and journals that I, Angalee, will love so and so FOREVER AND EVER! At the time I believed that loving that guy forever and ever was really this thing that I would do.

 Yet, it was always me who ended these romantic adventures filled with lust, love, friendship, and cheating, jealousy, low self-esteem….you get the picture. It usually only took somewhere between four and nine years to figure out that this wasn’t going to be the guy I’d spend the rest of eternity with. Actually, when I look back on these “love abusers” of my past, I knew right away that they weren’t “the one.” To be quite honest, I am just now starting to get a decent picture of what “the one” might look like, act like, think like and treat me like. But at that time when I was at my most giving with my love, I chose those egomaniacs to waste it on.

Which brings me back to, How did this happen? Why did I waste so much of my sweet, sexy, youthful love on these males that I knew from the beginning were not going to return the same affections? Unfortunately, I think the answer lies somewhere in co-dependency and low self-esteem mixed with a huge hope for what you wish someone will turn out to be. On a brighter note, I think it also lies in the midst of something like forever and ever actually existing. My grandparents were married at the age of eighteen and nineteen and they stayed together their entire lives. It does actually happen sometimes.  I guess when we find that one person we truly can see ourselves spending our entire lives with from start to finish, through thick and thin, we just know it. That must be why people say “you will just know.”

 I have yet for that knowing to hit me like a truck out of nowhere, but I am optimistically waiting. I know what the great “love abuser” looks like when I see him and I can say I am finally no longer attracted to him, it only took about twenty-five years but I did get there.

Why did the squirrel cross the road?

So here's the thing, I have a small forest outside my house. There is a tree fort of sorts right outside my bedroom window that my kids love to play in. That used to not be a problem until about a month ago when someone crashed into those bushes and the driver actually died. People have come since then and set up a small memorial with balloons and ribbons and other nice things. I think it goes without saying that my kids are not allowed to play over there anymore.

The other day a man came with a chainsaw and cut down what was left of the trees and bushes. But not all of it, so really it’s just this ugly, bare patch of half broken branches and pieces of wood scattered all over the place. Its looks much worse now than it did even after being mowed down by an out of control automobile.

The real issue that is nagging me are these squirrels we have. They are living out there in our little forest by what seems to be the hundreds. Since the unfortunate destruction of the tree fort, they have migrated to the side of the house. This poses a problem because this is also where the kids have chosen to play. These squirrels constantly munch on the unripe acorns and they drop out of the trees like a hail storm. If you know what I’m talking about then you also know that those green balls are like rocks. You have to dodge them because if you get hit, it’s going to hurt.

But that is just a minor issue. The real issue here is that some of these furry little creatures are aggressive. By aggressive, I mean that I have literally ran from them. It was going to attack me I’m certain. It was blocking the sidewalk I needed to cross to get into my house. It just stood there staring at me. Every time I stepped towards my house, it stepped towards me. I went to the left, it went to the left. It wasn’t letting me cross and I became nervous. Like, what was this squirrel’s deal??? I tried yelling at it and shooing it away and all it did was keep a firm stance. Finally I just made a run for it. And so did it. The freakin thing chased me all the way to my door. Thank God, it was summer and people were home and had the front door open, all I had to do was make it through the screen door.

Everyone was laughing at me but I didn’t think it was very funny. What if I would have had to mingle with keys to get in?? The thought of getting attacked by a 2 pound squirrel is terrifying. So, what do I do about these things now? Do I shoot them with a be-be gun? Maybe poison them? Or maybe take a less violent approach and build a nut factory across the street and hope they all head there (possibly getting ran over by cars along the way). Unfortunately, I am not a millionaire and there is no real estate available across the street. I’d throw their “rocks” back at them if I didn’t think they would attack me in large groups. Besides, I really do love animals.

I don’t want these things attacking my kids. So, in searching for a solution to the on-going squirrel epidemic, I constantly have to ask myself this question…..In exercising my right to protect my family, would what I am thinking of doing be considered “pest control” or “animal abuse”????

Any thoughts?????

Stop doing that to yourself

 When we think of abuse we already assume that someone is the “abuser” and someone is the “abused.”  However, it’s hard to get to the heart of people abusing themselves. Nobody wants to talk about themselves being their own abuser. You have the cutters, the drug abusers, the co-dependents who don’t feel loved unless they are being abused, the people who don’t feel good unless they feel bad, and then there are the people who are terminally ill and do not take care of themselves. At least not the way society says they should.  This is my mother.

She was diagnosed HIV positive in 1996. Her physically abusive boyfriend at the time already knew he had it and knowingly passed it to my mother, along with Hepatitis C. She has seen a doctor for it, at most, 5 times in the last 19 years. She insists that doctors are villains and that they are positively out to make us sicker so they can all continue to have jobs. Over the years she has tried all sorts of natural cures and become quite the health fanatic. She really gets crazy at times, trying to convince me that if my children use fluoride toothpaste that the government will be able to apply mind control on them in the future. And let’s not forget that if they eat cereal they will get cancer. She goes on the internet and researches things that only convince her that the government is out to kill us all…..except the rich, who can afford the treatments to survive. But that is just another scam to get money out of the rich, not because they want to help them. There was one time when she got scared and attempted to take the medications the doctors prescribed to her. They made the veins in her legs bulge out, tore her stomach to pieces and made her hair fall out. She threw them in the garbage and that was the last time she looked to doctors for help.

I have to admit, maybe she’s on to something. I mean, really, 19 years? That’s pretty damn good. She is about to turn 61 and even though I say she is a health nut she has also been an alcoholic and meth-head over the years. When she first found out she turned into some kind of suicidal teenager. She acted like she didn’t care about anything and lived for the moment. She did not care about tomorrow. As far as she was concerned tomorrow might not come with the freedom to do as she pleased. The whole time she acted this way it made me angry and sad and all kinds of other emotions like “grow up, act like a parent” and so on. But then it occurred to me that she probably didn’t know how to act herself. How does one accept something like that?

Eventually she began to care about living and started taking better care of herself. These days she still does her weird remedies but her biggest killer is stress and wearing herself out physically. She was able to visit my brother in prison for the first time in six years and had to drive 13 hours to get there. When I spoke to her on the phone she sounded terrible. She had gotten a urinary tract infection and was trying to rest up for the trip. Instead of going to a doctor she headed down to California with a friend to see my brother. She got pulled over, not once but twice, for people calling in a disoriented driver on the highway. She was told to pull over and rest. She didn’t listen and when she got to the prison not only did they not let her visit, they detained her for four hours, insisting that she sleep before they would let her leave.

On the way home she had to let her friend drive because she could no longer handle the pain and had started becoming disoriented again. They pulled over in San Francisco so she could run in and use the restroom at a hotel and she never came back out. When her friend found her, she was down the street sitting on a sidewalk moaning and talking to herself. They got back on the highway to head home and she only got worse, until he was so scared he took her to the closest hospital he could find. They ended up life flighting her to Eugene, Oregon where they put her in ICU. She is trying to fight the bacteria that has spread through her internal organs. They ended up having to sedate her because she would not relax, constantly trying to leave.

At what point does a person just let go and allow someone to help them? At what point do you stop hurting yourself and allow others to help you heal? When do you stop abusing yourself and realize that you need to ask for help? I guess these are the questions I will ask her when I can.

WHAT A JERK!!!!

 I was ten years old when my mother and stepfather, who I will refer to as dad from here on out because he was the only dad I ever had, split up. I had seen it coming. One night when my mother was gone, there was a knock at the door. My dad and I were watching TV and when I answered there was a guy with a long beard and a beer gut asking if my mother was home. He looked like some ugly ZZ Top fan and I knew then that I did not like him. I told him to hold on and closed the door. It felt good when I went and told my dad that there was a strange guy at the door asking for mom. Within two seconds my dad was up and chasing the ugly guy to his car. He was beating on the windows and  I thought he was going to break one of them. The guy peeled off looking scared out of his mind. I felt satisfied. The next time I seen him was when I walked in on him nailing my mom at the end of her bed in our new house. I hated that guy.

We moved into this cool red house after my parents split was final. I remember that house well because so many crazy things happened there. My mom wasn’t single long. The next boyfriend I hated right away. His name was Helmute (hell moot) which made me hate him even more. He drank all the time and was obnoxious. I couldn’t stand him. One night my mom decided to play a prank on him and lock him out of the house. I liked that idea. He, not so much. He freaked out. Like, broke out the window on the house, crying and screaming to the point it scared me and my mom. I was running to my room upstairs when he called me a little b*#!$, so I turned around and spit the best loogie I could muster right in his face. That made my night.

I came home from playing outside the next day and there he was, holding a pair of pearly pink jelly shoes. Back in the 80’s I was obsessed with parachute pants and jelly shoes. They were the intro of the plastic sandal and they came in any color you could dream up. I thought he had gotten them as some sort of peace offering. That was the furthest thing from the truth. I stood there staring, waiting for him to say something but he just stared back at me. Then he walked into the other room where he had built a nice little fire in the fireplace and tossed them in. Just like that.

What kind of jerk off does that? Literally goes out of their way to hurt a child. Unfortunately, the world is full of them. Was he trying to teach me something? If so, it was an epic failure. He intentionally tried to hurt my feelings. All it did was make me mad and dislike him even more. It also made me want revenge. After that, I made it my mission to ruin that dudes life in any way I could. When I look back if I could have just blown it off and not let it bother me it would have been so much better. I wouldn’t have given him the response he wanted and he wouldn’t have got the satisfaction of getting to me. I wouldn’t have wasted endless amounts of energy on trying to destroy him. All the dedication I gave to that was very self-defeating. As a kid, it worked out just as he had hoped for. Not to mention, it paved the way for many other instances like that one. Every time someone hurt me, I became vindictive. And the cycle went on and on. It’s strange how these little blips in time create the person that we become. Had I turned around and not given it any more thought, would I have still become that “tit for tat” kind of gal?

Come here, let me show you.

Since this is my very first blog, I will try and make a long story short. I was born and raised in Portland, Oregon. I was raised mostly by my grandparents but there were times woven throughout where I was with my mother. I never knew my biological father. He was a heroin addict who ran the streets of downtown and wanted nothing to do with my mother when she got pregnant. I have two younger brothers and my stepfather left when I was nine. I learned early that men were not to be depended on.
My grandmother was an alcoholic and it was known but never talked about. I never seen my grandfather so much as drink a beer my entire life. As for my mother, she was a hippie and according to my grandparents a "wild child". To this very day, I don't think my mother will ever grow up.
As far back as I can remember, I would see my parents partying but it wasn't until I was nine that I got to experience it first hand.
I will never forget that morning. My parents woke me and my brother Adam up and brought us into the kitchen. Adam is three years younger than me which would have made him six. It was dark and my stepfather wasn't wearing a shirt. There were many times I had seen him without his shirt on but I remember feeling uncomfortable and wondering if we were in trouble. They set us up on the counter so that we would be eye level. I was groggy but I was also very nervous because knowing my parents, something crazy was about to happen.
My parents, like many it seemed back then, had a marijuana plant growing in our garden. As if that was just normal. Our neighbor, who was a friend of my parents, had one too. The things were huge. It was like a gigantic bush and we were told to leave it alone. I remember every time my babysitter came over she would fill a brown paper bag up with all the leaves and send it away with her boyfriend.
So, when my father pulled out his smoking pipe and asked us if we knew what it was, we were already quite familiar. At that point I just remember feeling like I wanted out of that kitchen NOW! My parents then proceeded to have us smoke it with them while explaining that it was ok to do this if it was with them. Only them they said. I did not like the way it made me feel. I looked at my brother to see how he was handling all of this. As if  as long as he was okay then I was okay too. Then came the really scary stuff.
Being the daughter of a hippie, my hair was down past my behind. My mother used to braid it for me and tell me to never cut it, just let it grow. My hair made me feel pretty. My stepfather then told me that if I ever did this with anyone else he would cut off all my hair and shave my head bald. I was terrified. I didn't even want to do this with my parents so why would I do it with anyone else? I was not enjoying any of what was going on. I really can't remember much after that because all I could think about was my head being bald.
As I mentioned earlier, I was going to make this story as short as possible. Often, stories concerning any type of abuse are anything but short. I have three children who are ages twelve, eight, and two. I cannot fathom introducing them to anything that might harm them. Just the thought of them doing any drug sends me into a "heartastroke". I know some people would say that times have changed, things were different back then, but I'm not buying it. Parenting and the natural instinct to protect our children has not changed. But sadly enough, parents are still introducing their children to all sorts of things that aren't good for them.
That morning, the morning when they were showing me and my brother that it was okay to do drugs, paved the way for me and my brother to becoming full blown drug addicts. But what gets me is that my family has always taken the approach towards addiction that "it's okay, we still love you and accept you just the way you are". I get it, we are family, but to enable it and even encourage it, that is just unhealthy no matter how you slice it. In short, my family is all jacked up. My mother is in Oregon doing whatever illegal thing it is she has gotten into, my stepfather passed away this year due to all sorts of health problems, my brother Adam is in prison where he has spent most of his life, and my youngest brother Ben is now a diagnosed schizophrenic due to some crystal meth he tried at a friends house but he never came back down from. He used to be the family member we all had hope in to accomplish big things. He was 17. Now he is as crazy as the homeless guy you see running around talking to himself.
I partied through my school years but nothing major. Drinking, smoking pot, and dropping LSD. It wasn't until I graduated high school and was enrolled into college that I took my major left turn. I was working two jobs and enjoying the summer before school was to begin when I met a boy. It always seems to start with "I met a boy". He wanted to show me how to use heroin like him so bad he actually paid me to do it. I wasn't interested knowing that my father was a heroin addict so I refused until I got money to do it. My life was destroyed over $60. That relationship changed who I was for the rest of my life. Along with the substance abuse, I experienced verbal, emotional, mental and sometimes physical abuse. Becoming a full blown heroin/crack addict was not something I ever set out to be but it was what I became with ease.
Having grown up with addiction all around me no one in my family thought there was anything wrong with what I had become. It was almost like I had become one of the family now. There was no one to confront my behavior or make me feel bad for the choices I was making. Inside I always knew that this was not how I wanted to spend the rest of my life. It wasn't until almost four years ago that I got clean and changed the way I looked at life. I spent almost two years in a residential treatment program specifically set up for women with children who are struggling with addiction. It was there that I learned about myself, my family and friends, as well as all the others who passed through the program.
I have seen and heard it all from here to Timbucktoo.....so these next thirteen weeks will be filled with stories, advice, inspiration and information that I hope will help anyone to overcome the hurdles that life sometimes throws in our way. Recovering from abuse is possible.... you gotta kick it where it counts!