hi all, i am still reeling from reading a comment that i just got that really made me feel better, connected. still though, today was a tough one. i know i have blogged before about my work related angst and it is probably a little boring so i am sorry. but bc this is about my work with people active in addiction i think that it is still on topic or loosely on topic. today was hard-- as somedays are. today i got to see first hand what addiction does to young children and young mothers. i have seen this before and it never never becomes easier or less painful.
i realize as i drive away that all i really want to do is be the catcher in the rye to these mothers and children. to stop them from falling off this cliff that i know is there. rationally, i understand that i likely will not be able to effect much change with a person active in addiction and yet--i try anyway. why i am not totally sure, but i think i try because it hurts even more to not try.
anyhow, i really enjoy most of the people i get to work with. find them honest, real, painfully lost sometimes, but well intentioned usually. i also, as rule, come to learn that most of these young people have grown up with either addiction, violence, or loss and sometimes all three. i think daily about cycles and how hard it is to break them even when we want to.
i think about mothers and fathers struggling themselves and too sick to think about what their disease means to their children. i think about children struggling to make there parents be ok. i think about kids who are five years old and already can clean the house, wash dishes, make dinner, put younger kids to sleep. i wonder about those kids. what their experience will be w/ alcohol or drugs. i think about how much stress at five, six, or seven they already experience. i think about how much more they will need, enjoy, respond to, a substance that makes them feel ok. i think at five they are already vulnerable to addiction.
i think about my own family, my mom, my husband, and their experiences as children. i feel like crying for all of these kids and all the adults who were those kids. i feel deeply sad. true and honest sadness. i want to hate the world. i want to blame someone for the systems that dont work, the workers who dont care, the people who fall thru the cracks, fly below the radar, and end up somewhere where no one can save them but themselves.
i cant hate the world though, cant give up hope, because the real truth is that people do save themselves. everyday brokendown, haggard, confused, lonely, unsure people save themselves. not just from addiction but from all sort of other vices, dysfunctions, bad habits and destruction. each day someone or many someones out there make tiny decisions that are different. make a right not a left. each day there are people who get honest. who tell themselves and then someone, anyone, their first truth. these are the people i need to remember. the people who have the courage to change and the people who havent yet found it but one day might. these are my people. all of them. all of us. connected. we are the same more then we are different. giving up on their ability to change could mean giving up, on some level, on my own--and if there is one thing that i am sure of is that i am not giving up on that.
so here i am. another day i end typing. i look around the house. smell the peach applesauce bread me and hazel made. think about how i was trying to explain to her why we had to use a measuring cup and could not use the tinkerbell cup and how funny that was. under my bed there are clothes not empty beer bottles. in my freezer there is icecream and frozen bread not vodka or gin. there are no cigarettes or smoke or lighters. tomorrow i wil wake up and begin the day remembering every word i just typed. change is real. amen.
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