Still NUMB, after all these years...

Reading my blogrolls yesterday, A Mom's Serious Blunder, a mom talks about how she is now “Numb”. I totally get that.

In the past 13 years, I too have become numb. You sort of have to. To survive. If you don't, you just start shutting down. The pain becomes unbearable.

You can't spend every day crying. And, you do, right at first. Before enabling happens, before anything else, comes emotion. And oh my GOD, it hurts so very much.

Madyson talks about how it is just easier to be numb, not react, not care. You go to your “safe” place that allows you to make hard decisions, allows you to say NO YOU CANNOT BE HERE.

It is a pretty horrible place to be. The bad part is, you have to be there eventually, unless your addict stops using (rare). And the REALLY bad thing is, after you have managed to get to NUMB, you don't know how to get back to what you used to be.

I'm there. I see it every day. Like Madyson, I too have other kids to take care of. Like her, I too mourn the person I used to be, before drugs hit our loving and close family and almost destroyed it. Like her, I have little ones who deserve the same kind of Mom that the addict had, the Mom who put notes in their lunches, the Mom who took them out of school occasionally for “hooky” days filled with fun and doing things together. The Mom who wasn't always tired. The Mom who still knew how to smile.

My grand babies don't get that Mom, because I can't recover from numb. Oh, I fake it. I try really hard. I make myself laugh. I force myself to sit and watch a stupid TV show with them. But it's not the same. They don't realize it, but I do. I remember the Mom I used to be. And, I miss her.

Calamity has been in Methadone Maintenance Treatment for 6 ½ years now, and I STILL have not recovered. It is quite unfair. Not whining. Just stating fact.

Again, there is no 'free state funded' treatment out there for the victims of addiction. Just for the addict. We get nothing except a 12 step program where we have to go and admit that WE have a problem. Well, that didn't work. I didn't have one.. My effn Junkie daughter did. And they said, WELL, YOU ARE THE ONE WHO HAS A JUNKIE DAUGHTER, so you must also have a problem that you are powerless over? Really? Then talk to my OTHER four kids, because they are pretty certain I don't.

Frustration. Oh yeah. Anger? Still there. Fallout from Calamity using? Still paying THAT price as well.

It just never stops.

Can't have appropriate relationships even with my DH (21 years of marriage) who fortunately loves me enough to understand and be supportive. Numb. Can't laugh with my grandkids whom I have the raising of. Numb. Can't make new friends. Numb. Don't have energy to start new things. Numb. Don't have the $ to do new things because we never have recovered financially from all the money poured into Calamity which didn't work. Broke and NUMB.

Still have to be Numb, because Pint, now 13 and in 9^th grade has

S T A R T E D TO R E M E M B E R...

And I am the one who gets to hold her when she cries. I am the one who has to listen to her tell me how when she was Four, and her Sister was only 1 ½ and I let Mom have them back during a clean period, how she had to figure out how to get the baby out of the crib cause Mom was passed out with a needle in her arm. How she and her little sister had to walk to a 'store' with a stranger one day while Mommy “talked to a man”,and it was cold, and they were scared, and they didn't even have coats on. And the store was far away (to a 4 year old). How Mom wasn't there to get her off the kindergarten bus.

And THAT was only a two week period! Of course, I quickly found out and went and got them back. And went to court that time and got custody.

But the scars still remain. Poor little Pint. That she should have to remember. She is not numb. She still hurts, and hurts badly. Everyone says what a great job I am doing. How wonderful the girls are. How they are grade advanced, good students, will graduate High School and College at age 16.

Yah. All true. But they don't know the times when my baby Pint is falling apart. When she remembers. And even with extensive counseling through the years, and continuing to this day, SHE FUCKING HURTS.

That is what drugs do to little kids. They hurt them emotionally forever. The kids don't really ever recover.

And the parents, ME, Madyson, we are the ones who have to go NUMB, just to deal with all the crap the addict puts our families through, to be able to keep our family together, in some warped vision of functionality.

Yes, I still think it would have been easier on us if our addict had died. And yes, I know some of you have lost your child. And, I am sorry. But, you see, our pain just continues and continues and continues, no matter how hard we try to overcome it, no matter what we do, no matter how many counselors we see, and the only reason we have this pain, is …

We are the Mother of an Addict.