Our brain is a very powerful thing. There are not many happy things I remember from my childhood. It’s a strange thing how I remember events that took place when I was young. Sometimes there are huge blocks of time that I don’t remember and my memories are very sporadic. It’s fascinating to me that the brain has the ability to block painful memories to protect a person from the emotional pain. There are times I wish I remembered more from my childhood, but I also fear what I would remember. I believe the things I do remember are memories for a reason. I have always felt that my journey should have a purpose. I am by no means an expert on trauma or addiction or any of the other topics I plan to discuss on my blog, but I have experienced those things, and I want to share what I learned in hopes it may help someone else. Here are a few of the lessons I have learned along the way.
Lesson 1– You Really Can’t Change Someone
This was a tough pill for me to swallow. As a child I watched my mom become wrapped up in a world of prostitution and drugs. She did a lot of hurtful things to me and many others. As a child I use to think if I could do something different maybe she would change. I tried to throw away all of her needles in hopes she would stop shooting heroin, but she always found more. I stayed by her bedside during withdrawls. I tried to be her cheerleader, and caretaker, but she always went back to the drugs. I quickly learned that no matter what I did she wasn’t going to stop using drugs. The person you are trying to change has to want to change.
Lesson 2- Sometimes You Have To Let Someone Hit Rock Bottom, And It’s Not Pretty
I remember thinking to myself on many occasions “How can her life get any worse? What else could possibly happen before she realizes what she has become?” I remember two things they made me wonder how she could continue living the life she was living. The first was one of the nights she came home really late. I was sleeping, but I heard her come into the apartment, and I heard her crying. I got up to see what was happening, and was shocked when I saw her. She looked like she had just been beat almost to death. Her clothes were torn, she had cuts and bruises on her face and body, and black mascara running down each cheek. I will never forget the way she looked that night. When I asked her what happened she told me that she was raped by some guy with a knife. She somehow escaped and made it home.Now for me this would be the turning point in my life, but for her it wasn’t.
The second thing that should have persuaded her to make a major change in her life happened a few years later. This was the time one of her drug friends died of an overdose in our apartment. At first it might not seem like a big deal, but what makes this incident so crazy to me is that the night he died he had done heroin in our apartment. For some reason that night my mom decided she wasn’t going to use heroin. It was that decision that saved her from being the dead person I found when I woke up that morning. Apparently they had gotten a bad batch of heroin, and it killed her friend. I thought for sure the fear of dying would have changed her, but I was wrong. What I didn’t understand at that time was that she still had a lot to loose before she was at rock bottom.
The thing about an addict is that the addiction is stronger than anything else in their life. They will hang on until they literally have nothing left to hang on to. We lived in low income housing, I slept on the floor because I did not have a bed. We were on food stamps, but they were never used for food. We did not own a car, and the money my mom received from the government never went to provide anything except drugs to feed her addiction. I really thought that was the lowest of low, but she kept going, she kept finding thing to sell to buy her drugs.
Rock bottom did not come for my mom until we lost our apartment. She was several months behind on rent, and we were being evicted. At this point we had no where to live so I was forced to move away to California to live with family members. She was now on her own with no where to go and no way to get there. She had literally lost everything. In loosing everything she was forced to try to make a change in her lifestyle. It was the first time she wold try, but not the last.
I have shared just a few lessons I have learned along this journey called life. There are many more to share in my future post. I hope something I have shared has touched you in some small way, and that my journey will be an inspiration to someone.
You are so strong and brave.