Is this picture tough to see? How does it make you feel? Sad? Mad? Indifferent? It has rattled my world since I came across it 2 days ago. So much so, I haven’t been able to make sense of the whirlwind swirling around in my mind – it’s felt chaotic, restless … insane. I’ve felt sad at times, with tears, very angry, with tears, and confused. I’ve, once again, second guessed my ability to “love” my son. My absence at such a horrible time for him – the fact that he woke up in a hospital room, looking like this, with other pretty major medical issues from exposure (he had been knocked out and left in the sun for hours), dehydration, infection … I mean God must have a plan for him, right? I keep telling myself that but as I type this, those pitiful eyes are staring at me screaming “help”. How is there nothing I can do? Should I be bringing him home and caring for him as if he were disabled? Should I be giving up my life to make his as comfortable as possible until he eventually kills himself? At least he’d be doing it here, with me, right? At least he’d KNOW he was loved.
This is all it takes for us mama’s to seemingly lose everything we’ve worked years to gain. A picture. A phone call from a hospital or jail. Why? Because we too are addicts. Just like our children; only our drug of choice? …. Them.
There was a time I would have allowed my marriage, my job, my relationships, my finances, even my health be destroyed to try and save my son. Nothing could stop my effort. I was so obsessed about saving him, so one-track minded about keeping him sober that I couldn’t see what was right in front of me … an addict using my love to continue using. The very definition of insanity because I continued to repeat the same toxic behaviors over and over, knowing they wouldn’t work.
That’s the picture to me – to us – that’s our “trigger”. Once that seed is planted, it grows quickly. It’s our job to either keep watering it or pull it out by the roots. It’s been 2 days of wrestling with my mind – 2 days of insanity – 2 days of watering the seed and allowing it to grow. 2 days of this situation affecting every other aspect of my life. The beauty in all this? The more you work on you, the stronger you become when you need to pull the growing thought out by the roots. There was a time it seemed impossible. Now, it seems inevitable.
So what are you waiting for? Get to gardening girl!
Mama in Pain 