I do not want to be writing this today. I do not want to feel the pain, share the sadness, or tell the story. Addiction sucks, and it is declaring war on this mother. While I may be a bit out of touch on how this works, I am learning fast. I come at you from the side of the mom who has tried in desperate effort to help her child. I carry the failure of those efforts on a daily basis lately.
Today is Thursday, and Sunday feels like it was ages ago. Time has both sped by and completely stopped in the span of four days. I have slept very little, and my thoughts are out of control. Sunday was the worst day. I had gone to church so my phone was on silent. When I remembered this and turned it back on a couple hours later I found a bone chilling message,
“I just found your daughter trying to hang herself.”
I will be honest here and say those words still feel like a fairy tale to me. This is something that cannot be; a scenario that my mind cannot wrap around. Found shortly after blacking out, still breathing, her husband was able to wake her up. I went to pick up the kids, and she was off to the ER. It would be 24 hours before she was sober enough to communicate with the staff. She now sits in a mental health facility for an undetermined length of stay.
Here I sit, numb but angry. I returned from a fabulous vacation with my five-year-old granddaughter two days prior. We enjoyed a week-long extravaganza of fun in Disney World and on the beach. While I was able to enjoy our time, I was busy running away from thoughts of what my daughter was doing back home. I was across the country, and if she couldn’t hold it together, I knew I would go insane. Because now nothing in my life seems to belong to me, not even my private thoughts.
I have no time to fret over this, or even process, because I now have responsibility of two precious children. They need me. Their momma is not well right now, and they are my priority. They are forced into a storm that they do not deserve. I have to stay strong for them. I am doing things I have not done for years such as baseball practice after work and games twice a week. I am helping kids get ready for school, and dropping them off on time. We have been helping with homework. Dinner must be ready before baseball, and then bath time before bed. We play card games, watch TV shows, read books, and laugh. Our life consists of doing what so many other grandparents out there do- take care of their grandchildren until mom and dad can.
I am struggling to understand the mind of someone addicted. How do they stop caring about everything? When living with mental illness, the only thing that kept me alive was my children. Through my worst days of depression, I was there for them. So, this lifestyle of completely being absent to children has me baffled. Their pain breaks my heart into a million pieces. Why does alcohol or drugs become the most important thing, the only thing that matters? Where is hope and faith supposed to come from when we are stuck on repeat year after year?
Though I ask these things, I get it. This world draws people in like candy to a child. The will to fight takes something more than anything here can offer. How do people do it without Jesus? I have no idea, and I have yet to see a success story of someone doing it on his or her own.
1 John 2:16 –For all that is in the world–the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride in possessions–is not from the Father but is from the world.
Authentic Truths 