My Moms Addiction Story

This was a bad time in my life....but I hope you're not alone...even if the experiences vary with each case.

Could you imagine loosing a parent to addiction? I didn't either until the first time I lost my mom. My mom was a kind, gentle, beautiful soul until the first wave came..the pills. Once the first wave started, I started watching my best friend, my mom, slowly start to turn into someone else. It started as sometimes taking the pills then went to always buying or stealing pills. I slowly started to become a different person, the person me and my sisters needed because without the pills our mom wasn't able to function. Seeing my mom like that was hard and unbearable so then I started begging the people who would provide her supply for them or stealing them so that she would be able to function and be her again. Once the pills stopped helping her, the next wave hit...the pills in injection form..the start of no return. Once the injections started, she started becoming a person I couldn't recognize, someone who would do things my mom wouldn't ever do to her children...like injecting me with medicine to help with my pains. My mom before her addictions would have never done the things that had been done during her addiction. She sold our electronics, jewelry, stole money etc., once the third wave began. As the third wave began...the wave of injecting the harder drugs like heroin and fentanyl, I couldn't recognize the person that was my mom at one point. This is when It hit me like a brick to the face that my mom was dead. That the person standing in front of me was no longer my mom but something else entirely. This woman had nothing but hate in her heart, no care in the world. During those years of the third and final wave were the cruelest, darkest days imaginable. I became my sisters parent, their sole caretaker until the point I had to leave to get help. It wasn't until 2018, when I thought or even felt like my mom was returning to me again when I had her grand-son. After seeing her with him, for a short time I felt like my mom was coming back slowly fighting through this looming darkness in her. But as time went on my hope quickly dissipated and then another brick hit me in the face in 2019 when what looked like my mother, sounded like my mother started to decline fast.. she didn't know who I was, my sisters were, she couldn't remember she had a grandson, things continued to spiral as months dragged on until September 2019, when I got woke up by my friend barging in, telling me I needed to call home NOW. I remember jumping up to grab my phone, and having to turn it on, and as it turned on I had voicemails telling me to call home, to come home asap..I was confused and scared because the voicemails were my grandpa, my sister and my grandpa's girlfriend and their voices were shakey, and sad...I immediately called my grandpa's girlfriend and she tried to let me down easy that my mom was gone...as those words left her mouth I felt my body drop, my phone fell from my face, and out came a blood curling scream and then tears followed. My friend picked me up and put me on the back of his moped and got me home as quick as possible from the west side to the east side, blowing lights and going around cars and people just to get me home to be with my sisters. The whole time I said nothing on the way to the house. Once I arrived she was gone and I felt empty, dead, alone, cold, and more. I started calling family, lettig them know my mom was gone...that I needed help planning her funeral and what I was gonna do. With my mom being gone now I was forced to step up and make decisions about her since I was the oldest of her children. I had her funeral a few days later. I didn't want to go but I had to..it was an all day affair..when I went to the funeral home all I felt was rage and sadness..I was forced to stay the whole time listening to all these people who turned their backs on her and me and my sisters say how they loved her and us claiming their sorry etc,. and it enraged me more. 

As time has went on, I feel less rage and more sadness and guilt because I miss her and wish I could have been there that night to have saved her like all the times before. I just hope and pray my Mamaw, her mom, and her grandpa, my great-grandpa were there as she was leaving this world to be in theirs with love and welcoming arms.

R.I.P. MOMMA (01/1982-09/2019)