I still remember my aunt Jenn coming to my house in tears telling my friends they had to leave. That was the moment my life fell apart. My aunt Jenn sat me down to tell me the worst news of my life. My mom was on drugs, and not just any drugs: my mom was a heroin addict.
I was 15- lost and confused- not knowing how I felt. All of my family member’s tears falling to the floor as we confront my mom and that was the worst day of my life. We start the intervention by reading the letters to my mom from my younger brother and sister. My mom begins to bawl just saying she is so sorry she didn’t mean for any of this to happen. We all run to hug my mom as she cries, and tell her that her only option is a detoxification program. She agrees to get the help she needs as we pack up some things. I remain strong: the only one who hasn’t cried yet. When we arrive at the Detox, I hugged my mom goodbye and burst into tears as she walks away. I cried all night that night and that was the start of a long journey that I had no clue was in front of me. Five days later my mom is home: clean and ready to live her life with us as a family again. But my mom was hooked.
A week went by and we noticed something still wasn’t right. My mom still had bruises and was just not herself. My mom-mom bought her a home drug test and my mom refused. After an argument and a realization my mom agreed to take the test. The results… she failed. Another detox was headed our way but they didn’t have a bed, so my mom couldn’t stay. Addicted and strung out she walked out of the house getting picked up at the corner with no other words. I wasn’t home, but at a party when I heard of the news. I couldn’t tell anybody. The secrets were hard but having no one was worse I walked away and cried by myself. I went home that night and still no word. My mom could be anywhere perhaps with no roof over her head. The next day comes and my mom calls to tell us she is safe and that a bed is ready for her. She goes in that night for another five days, but when she comes out she still doesn’t stay.
My mom moved in with her new man just to find out he needed more help than she did. She went weeks and months with only one phone call. My mom drifted herself so far from our family all she turned into was a distant phone call that I got once in a while. Months had passed with just phone calls and texts and that seemed like the usual now. Well a week went by and we heard nothing from her so I called her boyfriend to discover she never came home that day. She had gone back with her ex who started her addiction, staying in a motel. That was who my mom was at that point: nothing but a trashy addict in a motel room with her fat lazy boyfriend.
My sweet 16 is today praying and hoping my mom would show. Just as I suspected she didn’t show up to busy sitting on a bed shooting up. My real birthday comes around and there’s still no word from my mom. I was heartbroken, the most exciting day of a teen girl’s life her sixteenth birthday: and without a mom. What hurt the most was knowing that she did know and she just didn’t care. Ignoring me was all she knew. I cried all night on my birthday but nobody knew I was sixteen, the time you need your mom the most and I was without mine not because she had passed or left when I was little but because she decided her drugs were more important than her kids.
It was the hardest time of my life my dad fought with me every day and my grades were slipping. I didn’t care about anything I just wanted my mom. As hard as it was I had to convince myself I was stronger than this. I had to know that she couldn’t affect me. I was on my own with no one to talk to I went from having my mom my best friend to my mom the woman I barely knew and that changed my whole life because I knew the pain and I knew I never wanted someone to feel the pain I did.