2 Year Update

   It has been a year and a half since I have posted anything on this blog.  Now, I am breaking my silence just a few months after the two year mark.  My mother is doing well, she has a full time job cleaning and assisting a family in their everyday needs.  She got her a small travel trailer, a car, and some fish. She has had weak moments, but hasn't relapsed.  She has had temptations, but she stayed strong.  I am very proud of her, her faith in God has guided her and strengthened her.

    I am doing well also, I feel like I am in a content spot.  We do not have a mother/daughter relationship that most do.  I can't really explain our relationship, we don't talk daily or even weekly at times.  I still feel like she can be selfish and think the world owes her something.  (not sure if I explained that emotion before, but I will try to now)

Even though she has changed so much some of those less desirable personality traits are still there.  I still see them and I don't really care for them.  I am trying my best to pray about it and not let it get to me. I can not control the way someone acts, speaks, or thinks.  I can only stay strong with who I am as a person.  Everyone is human.

I feel like I am in a better place than I was before, but I'm not sure if I have completely forgiven her or if I have just accepted things for the way that they are.  Perhaps it isn't fair that I haven't just completely let go and forgiven, but I don't know how to do that yet.  I am trying.  I am learning and growing, but even with how wise and old I feel I am still a twenty-four year old young lady.  Even with all the responsibility and joy I have in my life there is a piece of that abused neglected child that lives in my heart and feels like she doesn't have a voice. 

No one has a perfect life, but the side of me that is so deeply in love with my husband and children is darn near perfect.  I truly couldn't love my life more and be more blessed or thankful.  There is the daughter part though that still hasn't found her place.  I don't care who you are everyone needs a parent, a mother, a father, or even a grandparent to guide them.  My grandparents passed a long time ago, my father a couple years ago, but I still have my mother.  I still need to find some sort of relationship with her, but I still struggle.  I just don't know how we fit in each others lives still. 

I guess this update has hope because two years is a long time for an addict to stay clean on the outside, counting the inside she has been clean for seven.  That is no small feat.  However, our relationship is still struggling and I am not sure if that will ever change.  It's a work in progress, but our story isn't over yet.  There is always a shred of hope that God will guide us to where we are supposed to be.

God Bless
-Daughter of a Recovering Addict

Coming Out from under my rock...

So, I know I haven't updated this thing in forever, but thought I would stop by and make a post.

Things with my mom are still awkward, I am starting to trust that her old life is behind her and I have been letting her spend time with the kids, but as far as our relationship it is iffy at best.  I just don't see how we will ever have a mother/daughter relationship.

I figure I am going to just let it go and let her have a relationship with her grandkids as long as she is doing good.

I have to remind myself often that she isn't my responsibility and since I have been doing that I have been doing better.

My husband has been more supportive, but in a way that I don't know how to explain.

It is a silent support, it is in the way that he sees things she says that eat at me and he calls it out.  It is nice to know I am not alone and not the only one that sees it.

My relationship with my husband and my daughters seems stronger, better.  I don't feel so down and I feel happy, I feel a little carefree sometimes.

I am doing good, moving on and just reminding myself a few important things:

• My family is the most important thing
• I have to take care of myself
• I can't always do everything
• I can't control everything
• My mother is not my responsibility

and the biggest one

 I deserve to be happy and loved, I have that and I need to make sure I give that happiness and love back to my family 100%.  There are only four people that matter, my husband, my two beautiful children, and myself.

 I hope if someone is reading this and they need guidance or just someone to relate then they will feel free to comment or follow.

I don't know how much more I will write, because today I feel good, but I will keep you updated on her recovery and my feelings/thoughts/emotions.

Long Way Around

We have fought and we have battled, we have taken the long way around and as I sit here I realize I have done it wrong.  I have to forgive before we can move forward, I have to take it one step, one day at a time and that is hard for me.

I am a fast paced person, I just want to get through it, over it, and past it, but you can't just sweep it under the rug and call this done.  IT is a slow and steady process, it takes one day at a time to get to where we need to be and even though I am a little lost some days, I now know the most important thing: Take a breath and take it one day at a time.

Resentment

Resentment
noun

the feeling of displeasure or indignation at some act, remark, person, etc., regarded as causing injury or insult.

It took some time, but I have come to define this emotion that I am feeling.  It has been creeping and hiding within me waiting to come out and yesterday as I tittered on edge I was able to grasp it.  Yesterday was a hard day, it was full of pain, anger, and annoyance.  My mother and I were at each others throats on everything.  I know she has changed, I know she is doing well, and I am proud of her for that.  However, our relationship seems to be at an impasse of sorts.  We can't find a medium between before and now.  We can't find our way and neither of us kow what to say.  

The tension can be felt in the air between us.  It bares down like the weight of the world and you feel the need to break it, but there is no breaking free.  No end in sight and as the pressure builds you are sure you will implode.  Neither of us know what to do, she says things, I say things, and we both are left feeling a void. 

She tries, I try, but is it better to just cut ties?  Any relationship that takes work is suppose to be stronger, so we stick with it, but still the pressure remains.

Most days I feel like I am walking a tight rope in a bad circus act, my feet are unstable, and I am not confident at all.  I am waiting for the wire to slip out from under me and for me to fall to the depths below in a world of pain.  I am waiting for the rope to snap, bend, or break;  I am just waiting.

As I break across a divide where all kinds of emotions and feelings reside, I find what I have been looking for, the one emotion that explains it all.  Resentment.  I resent her, I resent my childhood, I resent my life before my family, and I blame her;  It is all on her in my head, my heart and truthfully she is the source, but still I feel like I have to find the fault in myself also.  I don't understand it all and this may make no sense to anyone (because I know it doesn't make sense to me). 

However, I feel like I have at least accomplished one thing, I found the emotion that has been baring me down.  Now, if only I could find a way to work through it?

Lonely & Sad

It seems like no one understands me and no one is listening to me.  This sounds extremely selfish, but it is the way I felt the first sixteen years of my life and it is suddenly the way I feel today.  I know my  husband loves me and is there for me, but every time I am at my breaking point he is unaware of it and I put up a piece of my wall because I feel like at that moment he isn't accessible to me. 

Right now I just want to be alone and I know that is just so I can hide, if I hide it isn't real right?
However, when you have two kids, a husband, and your recovering addict mother living with you, you can't really be alone.  Oh yea, I guess I haven't updated since she has been home.  Yep, a week now.

The first few days seemed easy, like we could do it, and we can, but it isn't easy.  Everything she says, everything she does I have a mini flash back to something she said or did in the past.  I take her advice like a grain of salt and I can't balance the way my emotions are washing around.  I don't know, I don't understand any of it and I just feel like I am drowning.  Like I just need to be alone for an hour or a year to deal with it all.  My mom wants me to talk to her, but I can't.  I have here and there, but I don't know.  She is weak and I don't want to push her with my hurtful emotions, I don't want to be the reason she relapses.

I just wish I could understand and deal...

Emotions

I am feeling so many emotions that are from the past and being brought to the surface.  I never dealt with them because I didn't have to.  I was just suddenly free from my mother and my every day life, but now she is back in my life and I am having to deal.

However, I don't even know where to start dealing at and I don't know where each of these impulsive emotions derive from, so I am going to sit down every time one hits me and just start writing.  Hopefully in this attempt the source of the emotion will show itself and I can get it out of me and I can be happy and whole again.

With these old emotions boiling under the surface I can't even fully enjoy the small gifts my life has given me. 

Like kisses from my one year old are the sweetest thing, but can be tainted by the bubbling emotions under the surface.

I can feel the depression and the anxiety there and I just want to deal with it and get rid of it. 

I will not let it control me.

About the Addict and the Daughter

My mother has been an addict for longer than I have been alive, she grew up in a world where drugs and alcohol were a part of everyday life.  Some would say she never stood a chance, I would say she didn't fight hard enough.  However, all that doesn't really matter because she fell into the drugs and the alcohol. 

She became an addict and whatever the reasons are lost upon me and most likely to her also.  It was just a way of life for her and even as years went on she couldn't find a reason or a life that didn't involve them. 

At 27 she had her first child, a boy, my brother, and she was on her second marriage.  The first marriage ending when her and her husband spent some time in prison.  Having a child didn't slow down her ways much and then her husband died only a year after their son was born, this throwing her into the drugs and alcohol more, just so she could find an end to the pain.  When she was 29, two years and one day after her son was born, she gave birth to me.  My father and her had a falling out a month before I was born.  My mother was doing cocaine while she was pregnant with me and things didn't workout.  When he came to the hospital some stuff went down (I am not sure which is the real story) one says one thing and the other says another. 

However, it ended with him not having anything to do with me.  He was an alcoholic and most likely a drug user too. 

There was an accident a year later that left my brother mentally challenged and with a few physical disadvantages also.  My mother couldn't deal, she ran away with me in tow, but eventually came back when my brother pulled through. Having kids did not change my mother, having a special needs child didn't change her, all we did is put a damper on her party life.  She left us with her mother as much as possible and she snuck around as much as she could.  I am sure having us was only negative things for her. 

As we got older, she took a lot of her guilt, frustration, and other things out on us, me more than anything. I was blamed for stuff that I now know is stupid, but then I truly believed it was my fault.  Every action she had, caused me pain in some way.  Every time she drove and drank it ate away at me with worry.  Every time she didn't get her fix and she would hit me for reasons I didn't know, I felt like I was to blame.  I blamed myself for everything as much as she blamed me.
She had a hard life, there is no doubt about that, but she didn't make our life easy that is for sure.

When all a person can think about is their next fix, having a job isn't really a part of life, they want.  So, in order to make extra money, she started dealing the drugs she was using, it didn't take long for this to catch up with her and when I was sixteen she was sent to prison.  At first she was withdrawing and everything was my fault.  It was my fault I, her sixteen year old daughter, couldn't get her out of jail, it was my fault she was in there, everything was my fault.

After some time in prison, she started to change, she started to realize her mistakes.  She started admitting them and after five years, she was finally in a place that she could realize I wasn't to blame.  She had no one to blame, but herself. 

She is now at this moment in a halfway house, until some time in February2011 and I am taking her phone calls, driving over a hour to get her on the weekends and all those emotions are coming back.

When she went to prison she was a addict, abuser, and user.  I was 16 living under her roof, and a submissive, naive child.  Now, she is on the road to recovery, 30 days sober on the outside, 5 years sober on the inside, and admitting her mistakes.  I am 22 year old woman, a mother of two little girls and a wife to an amazing husband.  My life is nothing like hers ever was and I have worked hard to be the complete opposite of her. I married someone that didn't know that world, someone I love more than anything, and we made our family.

Now, after 5 years, I have to find a way to introduce her into my family, my life, and hope like hell she doesn't relapse.  I am so scared, but I am hoping for the best.

This gives you some insight, I don't know how much more about the past that will come up in this blog, but that is enough for you for now. 
I just want a place to log my journey, so maybe I can read over it and learn from it. 
~ A recovering addicts daughter