A Lifetime of Missing You

I don’t remember much of being a small child. There are only flashes from before. Before dad and I moved so far away, before we began our forever family, before I was able to retain my memories. Some have said the lack of memory protected me, shielded me from things I didn’t need to see, and still, I always remember loving you. You loved me too. Yours was a love that was palpable, it wasn’t something I ever questioned. Yet I didn’t ever understand why you were just gone. I was simply a little girl who wanted her mom.

Addiction is a pretty controversial topic; in every direction you can find someone with a different opinion about it. The “it’s a choice versus disease” debate is always in full swing. Both arguments ultimately fueled by pain. I can’t say I believe one side of this argument over the other, but I do know this, never having any desire to touch drugs due to the suffering I faced losing someone to them. In my darkest most broken state, desperate only to numb the pain, I made a choice and was forever changed.

I was addicted.

It happened in an instant and it’s something I believe was always inside of me, I had simply never touched hard drugs or given myself the opportunity. Yes, that first time is a choice but for an addict, it’s as if addiction grabs ahold of you and takes complete control. No matter how much you scream for your life or beg to be set free. It will never let its victim go even after you find a way to break free. You’re always just one poor decision away from destroying your entire life. If you’re an addict in recovery desperate for someone to understand how hard each day is.

I see you.
Standing in awe of how far you have come.
I am you.
In many ways, it broke me too.

People often take it upon themselves to spew hatred for the homeless and those in active addiction. “Anyone who could choose drugs over their children is despicable.” Or so they say. I’m convinced people with such strong opinions have likely never experienced the hold of addiction. Never needed something more than their God-given instinct to breathe. Never sobbed begging for someone, anyone, to help them. To save them from themselves. Knowing as much as they didn’t want to, they were going to take that next hit. All the while praying they’d survive. Every ounce of self-control crippled by the “choice” that was coursing through their veins. In a way resembling an ailment or debilitating disease.

I’m not saying I fully stand on one side of this debate or the other. I don’t think it can be defined as merely a choice or a disease. Yet, in some ways, I think it’s both. I do know that it is an evil that will bring you to your knees. Furthermore, if you think someone in their right mind, who has control of themself as a person, would choose to throw everything away. To abandon the one person, they love most in this world only to suffer alone out in the cold, well, either your closemindedness has caused you to become blind or you just haven’t been listening.

I always wonder what in this life could’ve hurt them so badly, leaving them too broken for anything but the streets.

My young life was spent missing my mom. An intense pain that came in waves but still lingered in the back of my mind each day. I was able to see her a handful of times over the years. Every time we went back home to visit my dad would do everything in his power to find her for me. Even now that means the world to me. It’s everything, the fact that he never kept her from me. The last time I saw her I was fourteen, it was a little awkward, but that’s to be expected, I suppose. To love someone so entirely and still feel as though a stranger is sitting there across the way… How would you react? What does one even say?

Dad told me you were sick, but I had no way of knowing it would be the last time I’d ever see you.

I’m not exactly sure when but at some point, the way I missed you inevitably changed. You see, missing you now went hand in hand with this gut-wrenching dread. My dad voiced his fears that one day he would get a call and be forced to tell me you were gone. I remember having nightmares that you had died, waking only to frantically search for my baby blanket and the handful of photos I have of you. Praying and begging God to keep you safe. You needed to meet your grandbabies, Aubree looks just like me, I knew that would make you smile. More than anything I just wanted to see you one more time.

Eight years ago, that devastating call came. I sat there utterly broken as my daddy held me. He cried too. No one wanted this life for you. It was too soon; in my mind, she was still supposed to have time. As a child, there was always part of me holding on to the hope that she would recover and when she did, she would come find me so she could live near me and be close to me. In all honesty, I that a part of me holding on to hope until the very end. My dad recovered from addiction, why couldn’t she recover too? I wasn’t ready for her to die. I didn’t even get to say goodbye.

Sometime in February of 2014, she checked herself into a hospice facility in northern California, originally being from San Bernardino, how she got so far from home no one knows. Over the next month addiction slowly drained her of life, the medical diagnosis is known as cirrhosis of the liver. The facility was unable to contact her family until after she was gone, so she died in that place completely alone. Had I known I would have gone in an instant to be there with her, to hold her hand at the end. To tell her how much I loved her and that I knew it wasn’t her fault.

I spoke to a nurse whose kindness I’ll never forget. She told me that my mom talked about me, let each of them know that she had a daughter named Samantha who lived in Colorado. This stranger on the phone said that if she could call every Samantha in the state of Colorado she would have. Wanting only to let me to know that my mother never stopped loving me. It was a love that kept until her dying breath.

I was her next of kin, so they mailed her ashes to me. In a plastic bag, placed in a brown, plastic, box. That was it; I was told she had no other belongings with her. Everything that made up this person I loved so much fit inside this small plastic bag.

We drove her home to the place where my entire story began. The place where her story was supposed come to an end. We placed her ashes in the sea, there at the beach, my mom will always be.

I’m not telling you this story because I expect any kind of pity or sympathy. I just think it’s important for people to be aware of what drugs can do, the extent of damage they can bring. Addiction stole my mom, and it tried to get its claws in me. I’m fighting every day because I know more than anyone how much my kids need me. It’s an everyday battle that gets easier with time but doesn’t ever truly end. If you are fighting this fight, please don’t ever stop. Active addiction brings nothing but misery, and it only ends with you in a box.