LIVE LIFE RESPONSIBLY

When I was 11 years old, I was taken away from my mother. I was in the hands of Child Protective Services and assigned a caseworker. They took me and told me that I wasn’t going to be in contact with my mom until further investigation. Then, I was further proccessed in a grouphome with about nine other girls who live there and told I was going to live here now. When I was told this news, I got instant anxiety. How could they do this to me? My mom is the only person I’ve ever known to stick with me all this time. Well at the time, I was only seeing what my mind fixated on happening with my presence. I couldn’t see the bigger picture.

The bigger picture was that we were homeless, we were living in her car or other friends’ houses. We would shower like once or twice a week, eat what we could, and or be where we could. At the time, my mother was a drug addict. She always had to spend her money on drugs first and then use the rest to scrape up whatever else we needed to, to survive. I ended up being in Child Protective Services custody until I was almost 16. Eventually, my grandparents got custody of me and I lived with them until I graduated high school. Now I am going to Saddleback College in Mission Viejo, California; I tried living with my mother in San Clemente, California. However, she still acts on addict-like behavior so it’s hard to establish a relationship living with her.  My Mom has been clean from drugs for 46 months now, (almost 4 years in November). She has a place of her own which was a one bed one bath apartment and I claimed the living room as my room. Furthermore, I can say we both have come a long way and that we are still working hard towards both of our futures. When a parent chooses drugs over their own child, it’s hard for them to go back to relationship they had with them. When I was younger, I could feel more of a bond and connection with my mom. Since, her drug abuse increased and we became homeless, she became really anit-social and rude. I tried living with her after I turned 18 years old and still nothing feels the same. She doesn’t want to hang out and talk like she used to, she doesn’t want to do fun things with me other than order food. She doesn’t look at her future, and she changed the way I looked at my future as a child. That’s why I am so motivated and influenced by the days to live my life and do things the way I want to. Even though I was doing great with school full time and two part time jobs, she still guilted me into money for things she should spend her own money on. For example, she would claim she needed some money to help pay some bills, (I would of course given her money for that) then I see her take the actual cash bills I handed her, to purchase wine and ciggarettes. It still hurts me that I will never have a normal Mother-to-Daughter relationship with her ever again. She ended up using me for my money as her personal spending and my grandfather warned me she would do it to me. She was a drug addict for so long, that even though she is clean, she still needs time to recover, and work on herself and people skills because her mind was twsited for taking drugs off and on again for about 20 years.

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If I could say anything to our generation and future voices of today, I would say “Please live your life responsibly.” There are so many kids like me where their parent(s) (Both of mine were addicts and my uncle was an alcoholic) are addicted to alcohol or drugs and they let it take advantage of their life and it become influenced on us as children growing up and firguring out the world. Drugs are not the path to turn to because it only makes things worse in the long run, especially with denial and rejecting that you have an addict problem. I know being an addict runs in my genes and DNA so I’m not tempted to try anything wild or extreme. Yes, I know my limits and how to have fun but I always keep that in the back of my head when I drink alcohol, that I could become addicted, so I watch myself. You have to take care of yourself because you were given this life to live, not to become addicted to substances or liquid and to let it control you for majority of your life. Be smart and live your life responsibily and wisely. Just remember what you are going through is temporary and it’s not forever unless you want it to be.