Dear Daughter...Goodbye for now

I have to tell you my goodbye. I have decided to step out of your life. It took me six years, but I am finished now.

I know I was a good mother ... I refuse to accept the blame for a path you have chosen. I had tough choices to make as a woman, a daughter, a mother, a wife.

I had overwhelming decisions to make every day of my adult life. There were times when I could have taken the easy way out, thrown a pity party and make a decision that I too, hate to conform to the rules of society ... I had many opportunities to check out and into the drug/alcohol den.

I no longer care about your reasons, I have heard them all. What I do care about is having peace in my life. I love life and always have. I love my children and grandchildren, letting them paint and put hand-prints on the wall in the garage, marking their height as the years go by ...

Having 50's music playing as the children dance, watching my kids and now my grandkids put on an entire play for us in the living room, I love the flowers in the spring, a rainy day where I can read a book without guilt, I love so much about my simple life ... and you make me feel like I shouldn't.

And I have stood by you - my youngest child, and tried to desperately stop your train from running off its tracks.

I have loved you, I have not nagged you, I have supported you, I have prayed for you, I have not enabled you by giving you money when your addiction became obvious.

I never belittled you, yelled at you or called you nasty names. You were my angel, my sweet pea, my little doodle bug. I rarely called you by any other name ... and you hate me.

It blows my mind! There is no real support for parents who know that there is NO excuse. People want to encourage parents to accept that they are in denial if they believe a child's addiction isn't as a result of a faulty childhood ... there must have been something going on someonewhere, anyone is to blame BUT the addict.

The life you live is a result of being too lazy to make responsible choices. You don't want, or feel the need to make sacrifices now that you are a mother.

You tell me you love a man who has never worked a single day in his life ... his mother still supports him at age 25, you love him more then the precious child you have abandoned at three years of age.

I don't care what society gives you to use for excuses ... but we were there for you and your son, no questions asked. You and your boyfriend planned this boy for almost two years, and left him like he was garbage. "Can you babysit for me tonight?" To never come back again.

Knowing that your father and I both worked the next day. It has been two years now. And I haven't seen you in over a year, but I have heard from you ...

Oh yes, I have heard from you many times. I don't play the guilt trip at all - never have! But I would be lying if I didn't tell you how painful it was when I almost had both my legs amputated in order to save my life and you not only didn't come to help with your son, but never called for fear that someone would ask you to give up drug time, boyfriend time ... to watch him until I could - six months later you began to call.

Because I was well then, only to lower yourself to ask for money. When I said no, you threw a tantrum and cussed me out and said things to me that I could never imagine you saying to anyone - let alone your mother!

Did I yell at you? Did I return the hatred? No - I sat and listened to you vent on the phone ... forcing myself not to give in just so I could see you. I cried all week, I mourned you for many years, there is the huge hole in my heart that I cannot fill.

So, just last week after many episodes and daily drama, you and your abusive boyfriend, and his drug addicted mother went camping. Well, all of you must have been pretty messed up because his mother (who I have never seen or spoken to) called me to tell me she and her son have been in a fight with you, that you are hurt but now cannot be found.

I was in shock, I thought I was prepared for a moment like this, but I wasn't. Because they continued to tell me 'why' they had hurt you and it was a stupid reason because someone had punched your car and you told them you would rather them hit you - I am dying inside.

I am seeing my child laying in the woods beaten ... possibly dead, and when this woman spoke she never took a breath. She spoke fast and said many sentences.

When I asked where you are camping at ... where they last saw you ... she turned on me immediately and told me she didn't have to tell me anything. Like day and night, she turned. I tried to contact you for the next 5 hours, I couldn't think, stop pacing, just remember praying.

Finally I call the police and they lied to the police, said they didn't know where you were, they had dropped you off close to a friends home.
The police called me back and said she is an adult - she doesn't HAVE to call you.

But you did call, only to call me a crack-head whore (I don't do drugs or drink), tell me to go hang myself and many other things that I could not even absorb. You screamed these things at me - and as if that weren't enough I hang up the phone and your boyfriend, you, and his mother are texting me and saying things that would make only satan proud of you.

So I can no longer try with you. My plate is full and if anyone had an excuse to bury themselves in an addiction ... it sure isn't you.