The bad days are all we have now

Photo: Morguefile.com

The visual of two arms clutching each other at the wrists is impactful.

And the visual of those hands slipping down the arms, away from the core of the body, away from the protection of the mind and the love of the heart…
slipping
slipping
slipping

Until it’s just fingertips on palms, and then fingertips brushing past fingertips, and then…nothing is touching.

It’s two hands reaching out for each other as they move farther and father away from each other.
reaching
reaching

reaching

Then, with nothing left, down the waterfall.

I fear, with every breath, that we’ve finally gotten there.

Her good days are getting less and less and further between and the days and moods themselves are less “good.” Less positive and resolved and hopeful. Days and days of black depression, where she can’t get out of bed, even with no TV to watch or smartphone to use. She can’t move without drugs.

It’s almost like the bad days are all we have now.

I see other families at the movies, in the diner, on TV. I want to scream, “Do you know how lucky you are that you know where all your kids are at this very minute?” I forget that it’s the norm to know where your family is. To have them together. To not have a kid killing herself with drugs.

I have not heard from Cassie in more than a day. Before this, I went 48 hours before she texted me back.

“Alive?” I text, trying to be cool and not too mom-ish. Nothing. I restrain myself from what I want to text: “ARE YOU FUCKING ALIVE???? ANSWER ME!!!! ANSWER ME GODDAMMIT!!!!!!!!!

I check her cellphone usage on my computer. She hasn’t made or received a call since last night at 11:16 and it’s almost that time now; her phone is either off or dead. The calls and texts she made are to names I don’t recognize from places that “we” don’t know people. Well, I guess “she” does.

She’s living in Paterson, I suppose on the streets or in a crackhouse with another addict she met in detox. Ethan, this time. She walked out the door with him after being in the facility six days.

The last time, I brought her clothes to her in the hospital in shopping bags. This time, she packed herself–with a suitcase. In the back of my mind, I expected this, but was powerless; it’s the third time she has walked out of detox with a strange guy in five months. I so admire the people who work in mental health treatment facilities. I mean, this has to get to you.

Her car is gone; she totaled it last week in her second DWI. And to not my surprise, it turns out she DIDN’T have insurance. So there’s another charge, and another family who is going through hell because of her disease and her recklessness and her thoughtlessness.

Two kids in town died this week: 23 and 26 years old and my kids knew them both.

Their wakes were horrible events and I had no choice but to picture my beautiful girl in those coffins. One was her best friend a couple of years ago. She didn’t attend. Too busy getting high.

I am not a worrier by nature. But this…this. There are so many things to worry about. Overdosing. Getting bad drugs and dying. Prostituting for drugs. Diseased. Being raped. Being beaten or killed. Being kidnapped. Stumbling into traffic, high. Being held against her will.

Being lonely and scared, waiting for me to come save her. But I don’t because I can’t hear her.

I am lonely and scared. Come save me.

Last night I had a dream that I picked up the phone and a cop said, “We lost her.” I speed-prayed about 15 Hail Marys and then remembered I don’t actually believe that prayer goes anywhere but to one’s own hearts.

I stay busy. I am preparing a presentation, creating an online directory, an infographic, “Guide for Parents of Addicts.” Cleaning floors, pruning flowers, doing laundry.

I never believed people when they said that certain loved ones were on their minds constantly.

She is on my mind constantly.

Almost Heaven

After four years of IV heroin and crack use, after endless nights filled with fear and prayer, we had our miracle.

Cassie was arrested February 28, 2016 with a stolen car. At the time she was arrested, her arms were so abscessed from shooting that she couldn’t lift them. The arresting officer took her to the hospital, where she stayed until her arms were healed.

During her four months in Passaic County Jail, she she finally started taking her anti-depressant and anxiety meds, and she decided to get clean. She completed an in-jail rehab program and had the good luck of having a fabulous, caring PD and a great judge, who let her off with probation and excused the felony charge.

She came home and miraculously stayed clean. Another miracle–she found a job as an administrative assistant/receptionist (not a waitress, a job that is too tempting for her) and she makes a good salary.

She celebrated six months a few weeks ago. She has been using so long…since she was 15 (she’s now 25) that she is a person I never knew as an adult. And I love this version of her like I can’t believe.

Before the stolen car incident, in early February, Vince found her lifeless on the bathroom floor. He called 911, and our EMTs and Police saved her life with three doses of Narcan. They told us that she was so far gone, they almost couldn’t have saved her.

This new (true) her. If we had lost her in February, not only would we not have had this time, but I would never have known this amazing person she has become.

I drive her to work every day, Vince drives her home. She’s living at home until she can save enough to move out. For now, the three of us watch Jeopardy every night.

I couldn’t be richer.

 

 

 

 

the semicolon project

This is the first tattoo I will pay for Cassie to get. She’s in our regional psychiatric hospital at the moment. Can’t wait to tell her.
Thank you!

hpwritesblogs

Today I went to a tattoo artist, and for $60 I let a man with a giant Jesus-tattoo on his head ink a semi-colon onto my wrist where it will stay until the day I die. By now, enough people have started asking questions that it made sense for me to start talking, and talking about things that aren’t particularly easy.

We’ll start here: a semi-colon is a place in a sentence where the author has the decision to stop with a period, but chooses not to. A semi-colon is a reminder to pause and then keep going. 

In April I was diagnosed with depression and anxiety. By the beginning of May I was popping anti-depressents every morning with a breakfast I could barely stomach. In June, I had to leave a job I’d wanted since I first set foot on this campus as an incoming freshmen because of my mental…

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How come now that I’m where I wanted to be, I don’t want to be here?

If, when the doctor placed Cassie in my arms 23 years ago, he would have said, “You know, this child will end up in a long term psychiatric facility,” I don’t know what I would have done. But I know what I would not have done: I would not for one second have given her back.

Cassie is now beginning what I hope will be a six-to-nine month journey that begins in a psychiatric hospital, and then continues in a long-term dual diagnosis rehab about a half hour away from our house. We are blessed that such facilities exist and that they are state-funded, but cursed because she needs them.

After driving her to check herself into the psych hospital Monday afternoon and telling her “Make sure you tell them you have no place to go when you leave, you cannot come back home,” I was relieved to have her out of the house. No more locking up wallets and keys. Mascara always where I left it. One less bell to answer, one less egg to fry.

And as the song goes, “I should be happy, but all I do is cry.”

I miss her so much but I know she is the best place for her. And I must be okay with that.

11 days in the life of an addict and her family

credit: MorgueFile

My daughter is a heroin addict. She’s 23, beautiful, smart. We are a normal, suburban family.Two parents, nice neighborhood. not a ton of money.  No history of mental health or addiction on either side. Teflon, right? Wrong

Addiction does not discriminate!

Here, randomly, are our 11 most recent days–very typical in our her/our life.

1. Friday

Now that we paid another $1,000 to get her 2001 beat up Mitsubishi repaired (again), she announces she is leaving our house to live with some people in Paterson (our local heroin capital).

Oddly enough, that doesn’t bother me (she’s survived a month in subzero temperatures living in an unheated car; at least it’s warm out now and she’ll have a roof over her head).

I clean out her room top to bottom, discard needles, crack pipes, empty bags of heroin. When she packs, I don’t want her to make another mess. All laundry is washed, sorted and folded. Take what you need and leave the rest–neatly.

She leaves the house with no backpack, doesn’t want to take her phone (I don’t need it) and doesn’t say good-bye.

In her room, I find a suicide note under a small pile of papers. I don’t know when it was written or if it was intended to be seen.  She apologizes to me and blames her father. I don’t want him to see it so I can’t tell him it’s even there.

Next to it is a note from her grandmother who died a year ago; a note I have never seen. My beloved mother’s always optimistic, encouraging–innocent–message makes me cry.

2. Saturday
I check her local haunts (the open garage of a local business hotel is a favorite spot for her to live in her car) and don’t find her. I am more terrified than usual because of the note.I’m convinced she will try to OD.

I come home, my husband is pissed off (as usual), I tell him that if something really happens to her do you want your last memory of her to be pissed off? He leaves for Paterson to try to find her.

I speak with Matt, the brother who lives at home and hasn’t spoken to her in three months. I tell him how difficult it is when he won’t understand she has a disease and also ask him to think of her funeral and how he’ll feel if he was angry with her when she died. He decides to forgive her if we find her.

Vince finds her in Paterson, she comes home and calls a 6-month program and registers. But she says there is a 30-day wait and she has to check in every day.

3. Sunday
While we are at a family communion, she claims to have gone to a local hospital for the abscess on her hand. She leaves against medical advice because they want to keep her there with IV antibiotics. She leaves with no prescription for any antibiotics…which leads me to believe she just walked out when no one was looking.

4. Monday
The abscess on her hand (from where she shoots) is so painful she can’t touch it.

We go to the ER at hospital #3 (she blows through hospitals–a few months ago, she and a boyfriend were thrown out by security at another one. So that’s two down, three to go. Luckily we are in a heavily populated county with five hospitals nearby) and after four hours, she is admitted (thank you Medicaid).

5. Tuesday
She’s in this community hospital, with a staff who seems to have never been with an addict before. An RN pulls me aside and asks sweetly, “Isn’t there anything you can do to stop her from using heroin?”

She seems to scare everyone. Everyone on the staff seems to run in and run out of her room.

6. Wednesday
She insists on leaving the hospital against medical advice.  I tell her I won’t drive her home unless she at least waits to speak with the doctor. He agrees that she’ll probably be okay on an oral antibiotic but he’s worried it could be MRSA (and that’s what they’re testing for).

I drive her home, she walks in the door, finds her car keys and drives off..

She texts me later that she’s going to come home, then ignores a few other “where are you” texts and finally around 11 pm tells me she’s “staying with these people” tonight.

7. Thursday
“These people” are a trap house (crack house) and she later claims to have given sex for drugs to stay there. She wants to come home.

Except…the car needs to be towed from the highway.

8. Friday
She opens the mail and sees there is a warrant for her arrest for unpaid court fines. She’s too depressed to get out of bed and stays there all day.
She finally gets up and agrees to go with me to a SMART Recovery meeting (this is literally years in the works) because she hates 12-step meetings.

We drive two hours into the city (on Friday evening of Memorial Day weekend), spend $40 on tolls, parking and tips and get to the meeting. We sit down, she turns to me and says, “I gotta get out of here.” She’s now starting to hate groups, and is becoming paranoid. yay.

9. Saturday
She throws up all day and finally screams that the trap house guys give you drugs that make you vomit so you’ll stay there so you’ll keep sleeping with them. Vince blurts out, “So you’re a whore, too.”

And…she hasn’t been there in two days…today the “vomit drugs” kick in?

10. Sunday 
We meet Matt’s girlfriend’s parents with our other son, Rick. Cassie is too sick to go and doesn’t feel comfortable in a group of people.

Matt confides that he’s okay either way–if she comes, he doesn’t want to have to tell them to lock up their wallets and clean out their medicine cabinets before we arrive.

She’s a little better and is able to spend the day alone, which usually freaks her out.

We get home and my car door is wide open and the seats are pulled all the way up, as if someone was searching under them for something.

If I didn’t know better, I would say that she was scraping up whatever remnants she could find, saw us drive up the street and ran in the house and left the car door open.

But nope, she doesn’t know anything about it. So I guess it must have been a random stranger.

11. Monday 
We’re going to take her car back to the station but she has to clean it out first. It’s disgusting and has drug paraphenalia strewn all over the place (is this really my life?)
Tomorrow, after an appointment I have with unemployment to get a grant to get a miniMBA I’m dying to take, we’re going to go to the local psych hospital together and get a pscyhiatrist and psychologist, and then to Social Services to figure out why she still hasn’t gotten food stamps 6 weeks after she supposedly applied.

I give her the keys to pull it up on the driveway to vacuum it and not to my surprise, she’s gone.

She texts that the car broke down in Paterson. She has $40 in her room. should she have it towed back home?

I get up all my courage and tell her I can see she has not been calling the long term rehab place after all (I can tell from her phone records–a necessity when you live with an addict). She cannot come home without doing that, so she might not want to have the car towed to the mechanics (near our home). She may need it to live in it and if that’s the case, best to stay in Paterson. Yes I really said that.

She texts back that she’ll go to our psych hospital (she asked to do this last night but said she had to be high to go).

Now collecting clothes, make up, etc. We’ve done this so many times I don’t even include little holy cards or notes anymore.

I just can’t say “You can do it!” even one more time….

This is too hard

image: Unsplash.com

Living with someone who struggles with an addiction to heroin and crack has to be the universe’s ultimate punishment (I’m sorry, parents of handicapped children and people living in slavery and those in countries affected by war, and desperate poverty…okay, let’s all join hands and look up to the heavens and scream out “WTF???????”)

After three days in the hospital for an abscess that she contracted from shooting heroin, she decided to leave against medical advice (AMA).

Besides being medically dangerous, that decision is logistically very unwise.

We are lucky enough to have five hospitals within a half hour’s drive (New York Metropolitan Area). She’s already left one AMA, and was thrown out of another by security when she and her boyfriend started fighting because he stole her heroin while she went downstairs for a cup of coffee.

We can’t afford to lose another one (the remaining two are the farthest). I’m not sure how many families deal with this particular issue. I’m guessing not too many.

The doctor finally let her go with a script for an oral antibiotic, which she insisted on dropping off herself. We couldn’t stop on the way home from the hospital (so as to pick it up later) because she desperately wanted to get home and take a shower.

I’ll take it while you’re in the shower, I say.

NO, I want to do it. I want to drive my FUCKING car alone.

She is anxious and angry.

You’re in bad shape, I say. I know you’re going to go to Paterson and use.

She doesn’t disagree.

We come home and she gets the keys to her car.

I decide instead of my normal Polyanna begging, pleading, positive, coddling ways I’ll yell. If you won’t do this for yourself, how can you do this to me? I’m the only one who always believes in you, who has hope in you.  You have no respect for me. You shit on me.

She leaves.

There isn’t much gas in the car, Vince doesn’t think she can more than five miles.

I feel like there isn’t much gas in me anymore. I just can’t do this anymore.

Not done

I feel like I’m in a dream.

Cassie left last night, no clothes, nothing but her license (which is how you are able to buy clean needles here), and $60 that I gave her from her tax return.

She didn’t say goodbye. On her dresser, under a small pile of papers, was a suicide note, telling me that this is not my fault. I’ve seen that note before, tucked into one of her sock drawers, so I didn’t know what to do. So I did what any mother would do. I cried and cried and cried.

She finally texted back last night that her phone wouldn’t hold a charge. That was the last I heard from her.

This morning, I drove around our neighborhoods looking for her and didn’t find her. I was convinced she had taken her life.

Matt and I had a long talk about him not accepting her efforts, about stealing not being something a “bad” person does, but a bad thing that a desperate person does. How she is different and always has been. And how she seeks to be the same as everyone else.

She could never say “I”m sorry” genuinely, even as the smallest child. I would model it for her, tell her why she should say it (because you hurt someone and you won’t do it again, not because you got caught and punished).  We’d practice over and over but it always came out as an annoyance with the person she had harmed rather than an honest act of apology.

How she nobody wants to be alone and sad and an addict. How she wants to be friends with his girlfriend. How she always wanted a sister. How there is no rule book, nobody can say how to manage this. But we do our best.

I got home from a failed attempt at the unemployment office (no parking–10 minutes is not nearly long enough to find a space anywhere) and ranted at Vince for his (albeit occasional) poor choice of words with her. Things she doesn’t forget, like “There are bad people in this world and maybe you’re just one of them.”
He immediately went out to Paterson to look for her.

About an hour later, while Matt and I were talking, Vince called me. He found her–safe. She agreed to a 6 month program.
I cannot begin to count my blessings. There are so many parents who get a different phone call–or greet police officers at their door, knowing disaster is about to be conveyed (I kept looking for patrol car lights on the ceiling of my bedroom last night).

Thank you, Higher Power, stars in heaven, God, Mom. Whoever you are, we not done. No we are not done.

Gone.

She left.

I made her take her phone but she said she didn’t need it.

She didn’t pack a suitcase.

Didn’t say goodbye.

I have no idea where she is.

There is a suicide note in her room. I’ve seen it before. It was in a drawer and now it was out on her dresser, under a pile of papers. This isn’t the first time. But she also left a note that my mother, now dead, had written to her while she was in rehab. I never saw that before. It sent chills when I saw it.

I’ve been finding evidence of crack in her room (that’s a new one). She was using it while she in a methadone program. I have no idea how she didn’t get caught. Maybe she did, because she stopped going to the clinic at least a couple of days ago.

And then I went into her room and found the dreaded empty heroin bags and these days, bloody alcohol pads and needles. Hello Square One. Did you miss us?

She cried to me the other day that the only reason she stays alive is because of me, and why can’t I just let her go? Then Vic’s uncle, a retired NYC detective, lectured me for an hour the other day about her manipulations and how enabling is what kills addicts. If she really wanted to kill herself, she would have.

If anything happens to her now, I don’t if I’ll ever be able to speak to him. .

When she told us a couple of days ago that she was leaving to go live with some guy in Paterson (our urban drug capital), I told her if she was going to sell drugs, I would not speak to her, but I expected her to contact me every day to let me know she was okay.

I am praying she recalls that conversation and plans to do that tomorrrow. In the meantime I’m beside myself.

This is a job for superwoman and I am not superwoman.

Nasty Skeletons Out of the Closet

It takes one to know one…I feel your pain, sweetie. The same thing over and over and over again.
And even the death of a grandparent doesn’t change the core of your tornado.
Sorry about the loss of your FIL, the impending divorce..and the over and over and over againness of it. ❤
Stay strong.

ittybittysliceoflife

My daughter, Kylie, called three days ago.  She was driving in from Asheville, where she had been living in her car.  I have no idea how she got the gas money to get here, but she wanted us to buy her a couple of cartons of cigarettes and a tank of gas.  She said she and her boyfriend were on their way to a new detox facility that’s within a 30 minute drive of us and that it will be completely covered under insurance.  That’s good because we’re still paying off her bill from the detox stint in November.  I guess that means she’s been using(heroin) enough to where going straight to a sober living facility wouldn’t likely be successful.  I’m trying to be supportive emotionally without getting my hopes up too much.

I blew up at her last week.  My husband’s, Will’s, mother died.  He had been taking turns…

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