My mother was constantly using drugs throughout my entire childhood. So much that I can’t even remember the first time I realized she was high. I can still remember the nauseating feeling residing in my twelve year old stomach as I sat in my seventh grade classroom. I never wanted to go home because I knew the odds were that she was using. I loved my mother, but when she was high she wasn't there anymore. Almost like she was trapped beneath the waters of drug abuse. Vaguely looking up from the bottom, staring at me. Beckoning me to help her. Soundlessly screaming for me. I'd splash the surface and remove the image from my head. Ignoring the pain.
When my mother is sober she’s lovely. She’d ask me how my day was and actually cared for the answer, she’d make me cereal when I wanted it (which goes a long way in my world), and she would always tell me she loved me. My mom is over-affectionate; smothering me with kisses, drowning me in hugs, and resuscitating me with “I love you.” Yet when she was high there were no more I-love-you. No more affection. No more mom.
I remember the one day my aunt picked me up from school, which meant my mom was high and unable to. She dropped me off at my house. I walked up to the door, stopped at the entrance, and prayed that my mom was okay. I pleaded for help from an entity that I hoped was looking down at me. "Just please help my sick mother," I'd beg Him. My hands started to tremble as I drew the prayer to a close. Wishing, hoping, and dreaming she was sober. Imagining a perfect world where my mother was okay. A world where the worries fled from my mind. A world where the painful memories of drug abuse were erased, forgotten, gone.
I pushed the door open and walked inside. Instantly, I saw that she wasn’t alright. Scattered items from the drawers, cleaning supplies strewn about, and music booming from the TV. She walked out of the kitchen and I knew I needed to say something to her, anything.

“Look at me,” I demanded.

“How was school?” she asked, avoiding what was coming.

“Look me in the eye right now!” I pleaded. She picked her head up the way a dog does when it knows it does something wrong. I could see that she wasn’t right almost instantly.


“Why would you do this to me? Why? I don’t do anything to you! I’m a good kid! I don’t deserve this," I said as my bottom lip began to quiver. My fingernails dug into my palms to the point where I thought I felt blood. I collapsed and started sobbing.

“What’s wrong, Bri? What did I do? I’m okay, I swear!” she promised.

“You’re high! Look at yourself! You’re high and you know it! You promise you’d stop. You promised me Mom! Other kids don’t have to do this every week. You’re hurting me,” I screamed at her without regret. She turned away from me and started to cry.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I swear on you and your brothers that I’ll never do this again!” she exclaimed.
I scowled at her and hissed, “Don’t you swear on us. You don’t mean it! I hate you! Don’t even look at me, you make me sick,”

A cycle of her getting high, cleaning up, and relapsing was normal in my life. When she was high, my mother was gone and a stranger was left in her place. I don’t know what drug she was on but her reaction to it was peculiar. All she’d do was clean and reorganize everything. Time and time again I’d lie on my bed and cry for her to get better. Whenever I thought she was cleaning up for good she’d betray me again. Every day that I went to school, I would try to pretend everything was okay. Nothing was okay; my life was crumbling without a sound. Nobody was there to hear a thing.
This carried all the way into my eighth grade year. I'd lie in my room praying the demon in her away. I felt this emptiness, as if my insides were hollowed out. In its place was the starvation of my mother's attention.

Leading into April, her addiction was reaching a point that was frightening. Her eyes were hollowed out, her limbs were frail, and all of her movements were sluggish. She wasn't responding to me as fast, she began She was dying. We were living with my grandmother at the time. She knew just as well as I did that my mother was on drugs. My grandmother faced her with two options; go to rehab and clean up or leave for good. My mother chose to abandon us for a life of drugs and disgrace.
Once she was left without a place to go, she moved in with my father. My father was abusive and I was there to witness every smack, scream, and police siren. My brothers were too young to remember any of it, I remember all of it. He is also a drug addict. Her moving in with him had to be the worst thing she could have possibly done. I felt like Alice except this wasn’t Wonderland, this was life and I had to deal with it. I would’ve loved to meet a talking rabbit, a smoking caterpillar, and a Cheshire cat--but no, I had a junkie for a mother and a woman-abuser as a father. This must be the good life.
My grandmother was out drying up every bar in the neighborhood, so I took on the responsibility of watching my brothers. I felt like I was being pinned under my problems and responsibilities. Suffocating, writhing, and screaming under the pain the weight caused me. Holding on to that one last breath before the world fades away to nothing.
When May came around, my mom ripped my brothers away from me to move in with her and my father. She didn't even attempt to take me because she knew I wouldn't leave. I knew better than to leave with her. She would just hurt me like she had before and I wasn't ready to give myself up like that. I stayed alone at my grandmother's empty shell of a home.
After my brothers were gone, I decided to call my friend Nicole who had always given me advice when I was in tough situations. Nicole is that one friend you can rely on to be there for you when the world falls out from under you. After explaining what happened, all she had to say was, “You need to talk to your mother again. What would you do if she happened to overdose?” I hung up the phone and took in what she said. I knew that if she died I would kill myself because I wouldn’t be able to live anymore if she wasn’t here on Earth. Then I realized the truth about her addiction.
I know that it wasn't her fault she was addicted to drugs. She'd been struggling with her addiction long before I realized what was happening. I started talking to her again; she has been clean for about two months, which is a record for her. Yet, now when she says, “I love you,” I can’t truthfully say it back without feeling a twinge of anger in my chest. I realize that I can never fully forgive her. Our relationship will never be the same; the best we can do is try.