A note for my mother
From what I remember, my mother was a kind and happy person. I remember when I was young telling her I never wanted to leave the house EVER because I couldn’t imagine living without her and my dad. Unfortunately, my mom and I formed a terrible relationship over the years, and she formed a very close, highly dependent relationship with pain pills. When you’re a kid, you have no idea why mommy is so sleepy all the time. You wouldn’t know why mom fell asleep in the car with the engine running and the garage door closed. As a kid, you wouldn’t know that would’ve killed you and your brother who’s 5 years younger. You just ask mom, “are we gonna go inside?” And thank god you did, because your father would’ve lost his wife and both of his children. As a kid, you don’t know why mom leaves you at home to take care of your kid brother and doesn’t come back for several hours when your dad’s traveling for work. You never know if she’s going to come back, because after five hours at “the grocery store” you begin to wonder. When your mom screams at you at 13 years old because you cut yourself and tells you it’s going to make her look bad, most likely because she didn’t want to be investigated by social workers and they’d find out somehow she’s been hooked on opiates. It’s getting ready for school everyday, and being late everyday just to get yelled at by school faculty when it’s in no way your fault. It’s when you’re 10 years old and drowning in the ocean with her embracing you and you notice she’s pushing your head below water. It’s holding your mother up and treading water until your legs are numb and you think “this is it” and no one will save you. But thank god someone does, because YOUR life has barely begun yet. It’s constantly blocking your gentle mind from all the traumatic moments with your mother. It’s struggling to not hold anger in your heart when all you want is love, and to be loved properly. It’s not realizing how bad things are for her and that it’s a disease, but it becomes a huge realization that the woman who was supposed to raise you, and lift you up, had not healed from her own trauma to begin with. It is telling yourself that “one day you’ll find the strength to be better.” And you’ll fix that cycle. There comes a point that the pain needs to stop, and realizing you can one day find solace and peace by doing so. It’s not that you don’t love her, but you regret all the times you didn’t, and were unable to understand. It’s the times when her health issues finally caught up to her and all you wish is for it to go away. Maturing is realizing that no loved one means to inflict this type of pain on you, but the pain they hold within themselves trumps everything else in life. As difficult as forgiveness can be even if you can’t do it for them, you need to do it for yourself in order to find peace. I will always remember the sweet pictures of her, happy and healthy before the pills became the thing she loved most. I’ll remember the early childhood memories before she changed and I was loved and taken care of. Before I took care of her, she took care of me. My birth mother and the mother who raised me both have struggled with addiction, but I choose peace and solace over anger and I will continue life in the way I wish they would’ve have the strength and power to do.
