This post kind of hit me hard. This is going to be long-winded because it really provoked thought in me and frankly, I need to let this shit out sometimes. My mom was disabled after having a stroke, then we found out a year later that she had stage 4 metastatic cancer, and it had spread through her lungs/the sac around her heart/her pancreas/etc. I was her caretaker through this entire time. I was 20 years old when she had the stroke, and I’m her youngest child, but was the only one to step up and help her. My two older siblings lived through her being an addict longer than I did. I was born with meth in my system and so was one of my siblings. She did meth and cocaine for like… 25 years or so, stopped when I was probably 6/7 years old. I was kind of, idk, resentful towards her for having the stroke, because it was a direct result of her being an addict for so long. She wasn’t obese and she ate a decent diet, but she smoked cigarettes and did narcotics and wore her body out for several decades, and didn’t consider that it would eventually fuck me and my siblings out of having a mom. Drugs are why I grew up poor and sometimes homeless. Drugs are why my mom got so sick when she was only in her 50’s. Drugs are why my siblings distanced themselves from mom so bad, and by effect, from me as well. Drugs are why she ended up dying when I was 22. But you know what I did about all the hurt? I did fucking meth for like a year and destroyed so many parts of my life. I was tweaked out so bad I hardly spoke to her for the last few months of her life when she was on hospice because I couldn’t bear to think of losing her, so I just got high and blocked out reality. The last 10 months of her life and 2 months after she died I was high every day. I blew my chance to truly say goodbye. To talk to her and love her more before she died. Because I was angry and sad and addicted. Her addiction fucked me up, and fucked me over YEARS after she got clean, and my active addiction did the same to her. Were we both victims? Did either of us deserve an apology, or was it karmic justice? I don’t know. It’s complicated and hard to think about and extremely painful. I miss her all the time.
I’ll be 2 years sober on June 3rd. I got clean when I found out I was pregnant with my daughter. Something my mom, unfortunately, couldn’t (or wouldn’t) do for me. I’m sorry you dealt with an addicted parent too. As a former/recovering addict life panned out the way it did because of my own choices, I didn’t need to start doing drugs. I chose to, because I felt like I had no other option at the time. When I was sober I was suicidal and it was the only way to keep my mind off of it, or at least that’s how I felt. I wonder if I had any predisposition to addiction because I was born addicted. It wouldn’t excuse it, but it might help me cope with why I felt so normal for the only time in my life when I was high. I’ll never go back to drugs, mainly because I’ll be damned if my daughter ever has to deal with what I had to deal with. But I’ll always wonder if there’s any way I can ever feel normal or okay without drugs.