Tag: toxic

It is never just a quesadilla

After a long day at work I stood in the kitchen flipping cheese quesadillas. Tired, achy, and irritable. From the other room I can hear the kids arguing back and forth over a doll. The time to intervene comes. I raise my voice calling the name of the child I know is responsible for the chaos. That is when I hear the words “I am going to tell mom!” In a squeaky tattle tale of a voice. Every time I see my youngest play with dolls I can’t help but wonder how she plays make believe when nobody is watching. Is she kind, loving and nurturing? Is she patient and understanding? Or is she mean and yells a lot? Looking back I struggle with mom guilt on the way my baby dolls were treated. It’s no mystery that children will mimic the personalities of the major influencers in their life. The influencers I had in my early years were DARE program drop outs.

In 1991 my bio dad was murdered. Not just murdered but brutally murdered. The headlines read ‘CONVICTED RAPIST BEATS FELLOW INMATE TO DEATH WITH EXCERSICE BAR’. All the memories I have of my bio dad came from pictures. The first time I ever heard his voice was by accident when watching some old videos. The first memory I can recall ever having was his funeral. I remember my grandmother not letting go of his casket. Screaming at God for taking her baby boy. I had no idea at the time, but I was witnessing a part of my grandmother being taken that day. A part of her that she would never gain back. There would always be just a touch of sadness in her eyes. A sadness that would remain until he came back to get her in 2011. I was 4 years old when he died.

Bio mom’s blood type was heroin. I am sure just with that info you could paint a fairly accurate portrait of my childhood. Clean urine in the fridge was always a guarantee since she was always on some form of supervision. CPS, parole, probation, etc. Spoons were for cooking heroin and never for cereal. I remember one time living in a house so infested with fleas that when I put my feet on the ground my legs turned black from the knee cap down. No room for exaggeration. This comes straight from the diary of that one kid in class that your mom would curse for continuing to start the school lice epidemic.

It should come as no surprise that my baby dolls weren’t taken care of in the same way that other little girls took care of their babies. There was some yelling. There was some pretend cigarettes to the skin. There were some hotter than normal bathes given. Pretend of course. Until this day it has never dawned on me just how NOT normal that behavior is.

I hope my daughter forgives herself if she ever loses patience. I hope she knows that mistakes happen but we carry forward. I hope she knows that when it comes to being a mom, tomorrow is always the day to be better than the day before. If you aren’t happy with who you are then you have the ability to change.

I will never forget the car ride to the airport when I made the first real big attempt at getting clean. I was about to board a plane to Arizona. I looked over at my daughter, “Do you know why mommy has to go away for a little while?” She looked at me with the most grace filled eyes and said, “Yes mommy. You’re sick”. Before that day I am sure that I never realized the pain that I was causing my girls . Right then and there did something spark within me that said FIGHT. A 7 year old little girl had just explained addiction to me in words I could understand. I was sick. I made the decision right there to fight. Regardless of how many times I would stumble my daughter would never have to question her worth due to the fact of me not trying. Addiction is a beast. It changes every part of your being. It puts value on things that will destroy your soul. Reducing the value in things that should have been placed on a pedestal and never taken down.

That day hearing my children argue and threaten to pull their mom card gave me gratitude. No longer was I sheltered in the bathroom trying to find a vein with tears rolling down my cheeks while my child was babysat by the tv. Just for today that wasn’t me. I never have to feel that way again….if I choose not to.

God finds the strangest ways to remind you of where you came from. On this day I can find gratitude in that burnt quesadilla.

Shackles

“The chains of habit are generally too small to be felt until they are too strong to be broken”.

Samuel Johnson

I have never found a more relatable quote. My childhood could have served as a bill board for social services. Bio-mom was arrested when I was born due to me being addicted to heroin. While I was detoxing in the hospital she was forced to detox in a jail cell and sit for the next six months. Growing up I was always told that I would be at high risk of addiction and that I would have a very “addictive personality”. This was drilled into my head from very early on. People may have said that I should never do drugs but what I took away from it was just don’t ever be like her. As long as I kept my “never would I evers” then I would be just fine.

NEVER would I ever use a needle. NEVER would I ever use heroin.

Looking back at my younger self, if I was able to give myself some advice with hopes of possibly altering the path of pain that was before me, what would it be? When I say that question out loud so many moments during my active addiction begin to scroll through my mind on loop. Would I offer up some hard knock truths about what is to come if I continued to abuse those opiates? Would I tell myself that true love shouldn’t be painful and leave bruises and broken self worth in its wake? Would I take that time with my younger self to explain the disease that had a hold on my bio-mother and that despite how it felt it was never because she didn’t love me. Just that advice right there would have held the power to shift so much in my life. Possibly I could have saved myself from having to walk in her exact shoes to find out that it was never about lack of love. It was about a demon that once attached it will forever either be walking with you in active addiction or lurking behind you with your every attempt to get your life back and the second you let your guard down your soul is snatched up like a $100 dollar bill in the wind.

“Hurt people hurt people. You will bleed on many people that will have never cut you if you hold on too long. So ponder it, pray on it, then get over it. You will miss out on many relationships that could have been mended had you just invested a fraction of the time spent being resentful into healing. Know your self worth. Not knowing your value will keep you in toxic relationships that will leave you more broken than when you started. Oh yea, rock bottom really does come as soon as you stop fucking digging. Go figure right!?! One last thing….there is no such thing as will power in addiction. So when they say you are at high risk for becoming addicted…..take that shit to the bank. Life isn’t going to be easy but regardless of if you take my advice or not….you will come out on top. Addiction means that you will live in constant confrontation with a side of you that wants you dead. So always respect it.”

A recovering older version of you

Its hard to avoid the chains of addiction…especially when you were born wearing them.