This time last year my daughter had just come home from
rehab. We were going on walks every night and as we would walk through the
neighborhoods fully decked out with Christmas lights we debated over how to
properly decorate a Hanukkah house.
I remember how normal it felt, how peaceful – and how much I
felt like I finally had my baby back. It was really the first time since her
addiction took over her life (and ours) that I started to feel hopeful that
everything would be OK.
Tonight, as I drove by all of the fully decked out houses
and parked in my bare driveway, I felt so sad. Even after everything we had
already been through I think back on those nights and think of how naive I was.
Hopeful is a better word, but tonight I find myself thinking that hopeful is
just naive dressed up.
It’s hard not to feel robbed and ripped off and angry. My
daughters struggle is over, and oddly I sometimes feel grateful for that – for all
of the things that she didn't get reduced to, for the fact that she doesn't have to fight her own demons anymore. But
even though she is now at peace, I can’t seem to find any.
I can practically hear people thinking “it’s been six
months, when is she going to get her shit together?” I honestly don’t know. Every
few weeks I manage to moderately pull myself together, start responding to
phone calls and emails and text messages, start to manage my calendar and my
bills, and then everything falls apart again and I’m trying to pull everything together
at the last minute because my mind won’t manage the finer details anymore. Six
months doesn't feel like all that long any more. Time is dragging, but it’s
also speeding by – so that occasionally I am shocked that she’s been gone so
long.
I keep trying to figure out how she felt, why she made the
choices that she made. I can’t get my mind around the lack of caution that
causes someone to try those kinds of drugs and the chemical or emotional
reaction that makes them keep going back. It’s so confusing and devastating to
know that nothing we did mattered in the end and that I can never truly understand.
It doesn't matter how many times I comb through her notebooks or talk to her
friends or to any expert. I am lost and even though I am traveling through this
awful time with my amazing and supportive family, I am somewhat alone.
I imagine what people think about my girl, what I have thought about addicts at various times and I think of who she was - all of the "hers" that existed over the course of her life. She was someone perfect and precious and I am trying so hard to focus on those things that I did understand about her.
I want it to be last December, and to be able to find some way to save her. I want to understand what I did wrong so that I can protect and guide my remaining children. I want to stop having to explain that I had three children, and now I have two. I want to be hopeful again, I want to have faith. I have a feeling it will take awhile.
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| My baby girl |
