In just over two weeks my daughter, my youngest child, will have her 29th birthday. She will spend it, as she has spent so many important occasions (in her life, and in that of our family) during the last 16 years, incarcerated.
Addictions of an almost uncounted variety are the facile explanation. She drinks and she uses and sells a whole range of illegal drugs. It has been the truth since she was just twelve or thirteen years old.
Before that, from the time she was a very small child, an infant, she was different... always. I took her from doctor to doctor, from test to test. No one could explain what was going on with my child.
She hurts. She self-medicates. She refuses all help. She has been destroying herself for years and years, and I have, despite every effort, been unable to stop her or help her or save her. I've always thought, that I was one of the few people who could have parented her well... she was so difficult; such a challenge and such an enigma -- but I failed her in very real and very critical ways.
I sometimes think that I've learned to live with the reality of it; come to some kind of peace with it. I haven't. There are days (weeks of them strung together even) when I walk through my life
without shrieking my grief, but it always comes back to wash over me afresh. I want to make it better. I want to make her well and whole and strong. I can't, and it breaks my heart.
swan
oh god swan.. who can understand such pain but a mother!? i too have one that has walked a very fine line between here and there. She has broken my heart many times...
ReplyDeleteSir and i spent a good part of the day on the 25th talking about her.. about my fears the old monsters are coming back to haunt all of us... and my fear of having to handle those monsters again..
i try very hard to say i did the best job i could.. i did everything i could.. but it is cold comfort.
know i am thinking of you... and though i don't walk the exact same path as you.. i am walking one right beside you...
morningstar (owned by Warren)
swan, this is a topic I know much about, but as the daughter in the equation. My mother and I were soulmates. I believe this with my whole heart. About 15 years ago I was addicted to speed. Mom and I worked together, and we lived two doors apart. We were very close. But even with that closeness, she could do nothing to cushion my fall. It almost killed her to watch me spiral down that slippery slope of addiction...and that's all she COULD do, was watch. I wasn't going to stop for anyone or anything but myself. And it took awhile to get there. I firmly believe, after having been clean all this time, that addiction is much harder on loved ones than it is the user.
ReplyDeleteKnow that as a mom who obviously loves her daughter, HER issues are not YOURS. HER failures, the same. This is no consolation for you, but may it numb the pain a bit.
~magpie
There's not much I can say but I think you know I understand. My only comfort has always been the knowledge that I did the best I could by my daughter. Who can do better than their best? What happened from there, how she changed, devolved, became such a stranger bent on her own destruction.. that is not my fault, but that doesn't stop the sadness or the WISH to alter her reality either.
ReplyDelete*tight hugs*
Dearest swan;
ReplyDeletei have never read such pain in your words before and despite the long distance in which we share and lack of personal knowledge, i can still hear it and feel it. It could be because i have been there before (on the daughters end) but have picked myself back up and brushed myself off before i got to the extent of your daughter. My reasoning to start such destructive behavior was "to loose weight" but you know, weather or not my destructive behaviour has been with drugs, alcohol and suicide attempts, i have not overcome the behavior problem. i am still self-destructive, it's just harder to heal and harder for outsiders to see. If anything at this point Swan, you have a very positive way to see this in that nothing that you did wrong or didn't do drove your daughter to her destructive behavior. Her decision to do so only took her own heart and thoughts took her where she has gone and all you did was bring her into a world that sometimes rears it's ugly head to twist and turn the lives of innocence. Something we, as adults can protect them from, only for a short time.
i must say that i have a bit of envy for you on two levels. i do envy the idea that you are a parent and that you have had the relished memory of the time as a child that you have had with her. i wish i could get that feeling from people as well, but unforunately, most empaths only get what's there now, or what is to come in the very near future.
On the other level, you have the experience of a parent that can pass and offer support to others who are going through it or who are people like me. i am childless and will be fore the rest of my life, so hearing stories like this, i know why i am now. The fates have known for years that i couldn't be nearly as strong as you have been through something that requires every drop of it.
Either way dearest Swan, i sense that over the yeas, your pain and sense of responsibility on this has dwindled a bit. Just don't let it kreep back up on you, as morningstar so eloquently put it... it is HER issues that she needs to work through. You can only be there when/if she should need you unconditionally.
This may not help any, but i wanted you to know that i feel with you and for you as one of the most beautiful woman i know.
Swan.... I understand everything that you go through, guilt, sadness, emotion, anger, hurt, betrayal... I lost my sister just over a year ago. She self medicated, it was a long continuous journey of lies, deceit, sadness and anger, all I know is that I did the best I could, my family, dad, mother, sister did all that we could to help her, so I have no guilt, other than the guilt that arises when I wish she could be with us, as the sister I knew 15 years ago, not the sister that passed away...
ReplyDeleteMy sincere thoughts and hugs to you.
rosebud3cc