The calls and texts started coming in around midnight. This isn’t something abnormal. It is almost expected by now. It is part of my life. If your close loved one is an addict, you know the drill. I’m the one in charge so they call me. I get in my car and drive.
The phone is ringing. Someone else with an opinion or advice. Everyone wants to help. No one knows how to. I don’t know how to. We just keep trying.
After a few hours of driving, the interstate has come to a standstill. I need to know what to do but no one can help me. None of us know what to do. We have literally tried everything from rehab to rock bottom, time and time again. No one wants to help anymore. Everyone else is done with it. I am the only one left. Why am I even doing it? Because it is my mother.
I pulled off at the next exit and sat in the parking lot of a gas station. Why don’t I just bail her out?
If you have lived with an addict, you understand this is the thing you can not do. You can not enable and continue to support the addiction. Leave them in there to dry out. Leave them in there so they can’t hurt themselves or others. That is what I have done in the past. Now she is 67 years old. She isn’t going to change. I have learned to accept this and love her for who she is. It hasn’t been an easy road. Nothing about loving an addict is easy. It is full of pain, sorrow, fear, and disappointment. Loving her for who she is, the addict she is, has at least removed the disappointment. I’ve come to terms with it.
Turn the car around
I make my decision, call the bail bondsman, and turn my car around. This decision was not about her this time. It was a selfish decision. I made it for myself.
Life with an addict is a life of chaos. It constantly pulls you out of your own life and into their pandemonium. You can not escape no matter how far away you move.
Changing courses
It’s easy to talk ourselves into something because we believe that’s what others want or need from us
Colin O’Brady
It is hard to make choices for ourselves when others expect something from us. I was doing what was expected by my family. I wasn’t doing any of this for my mother. Her desires were not part of the equation. Then again, when dealing with an addict, you are dealing with an equation that doesn’t have a solution.
So much in life has become automated and outsourced. We rely on Google Maps to show us our route, social media as our social life, and autocorrect to spell properly. From food delivery to clothing choices, we’ve abandoned our internal voice and creativity. When we have a question, we simply pick up our phones and ask Google. Unfortunately, this was not a question Google could answer.
The comfort zone is sometimes the ‘harder way’
Why was I on a journey to drive 10 hours? What would I accomplish? I didn’t know but it was what I had done in the past. I told myself I was doing it for my grandmother. I was doing it to care for my mother’s dogs. I was doing it to “handle the situation” like I had always done. But why? Nothing was going to change.
Sometimes the hard call is the easy choice.
Reflecting on my day and reading through this post, I am unsure what I learned. I am not sure if there is a lesson for you to take away. I know we have to do what is right for ourselves on occasion. We must learn to listen to our intuition and allow it to guide us down the best road for ourselves. All of the outside noise causes us to become paralyzed and second-guess our decisions. We get stuck in our “comfortable complacency” not wanting to disappoint others so we sacrifice our own desires.
Today I will practice listening to my own intuition. I hope you will do the same.
With love and gratitude,
Rachel
PS – obviously this is a very personal topic. Sharing this opens the door for criticism and judgement. Screw it! This is my life and hopefully these words will benefit others.
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