Mundane Details

When I thought of writing about my life, I was concerned about what to put in print. First of all, I don't want to harm anyone with the truth. I think the truth is much more disarming than fiction. The truth also varies from day to day. Today, I may be deliriously happy being clean and sober. Tomorrow I may want to jump in front of the train rather than face all my responsibilities. Sometimes I like to hide in the bathtub. Not that I can't hear children fighting during snack time or feel my water slowly getting cold because I have to share my bath with a toddler. For a moment, I can slip into the water and be where ever my imagination takes me.

Another issue is the weight of my past. It carries a heavy burden like stones on my chest sucking the air out of me. My daughter wanted to be a junior Girl Scout. Explaining to total strangers past felony convictions and arrests for prostitution isn't a pleasant conversation. Something as simple as watching a character get shunned on PBS because they were a woman of ill virtue and desperate means.

The redemption carries it's own challenges. After the track marks fade, the abscess scars lessen, the cravings subside I am still left with a thread of commonality that doesn't exist. Six years of my life were one long day that ran together. I never saw that movie, didn't hear that song. No points of reference that didn't involve narcotics.

I am overcoming. I am coping. I am thriving. I am surviving. These are all versions of the truth.

Comments

  1. SallyFebruary 12, 2013 at 6:34 PM

    I wish I had something more to say than Wow, but that post left me speechless. All i can think is that I am glad I know you.

    ReplyDelete
  2. UnknownSeptember 2, 2013 at 8:13 AM

    I know that feeling. When people all talk about going to uni, or travelling overseas, going backpacking, all the partying they did when they graduated from school...I just have a big black void of smack and streets and spoons...no stories to tell anyone in the 'real world'

    ReplyDelete
  3. AnonymousJune 24, 2014 at 3:13 PM

    As a steady home mommy of four, i get it. I'm also a recovering addict. Mine was pills, all pills. Looking back I've been an addict since i was a pre teen and got my first script of vicodin. I went to detox a couple times but always went back, PAWS. Is Hell with four babies who need you to get up. I do have a sub doctor now and other than that, I'm almost twelve months clean. Don't have much of a support system, only hubby, so i don't have help, couldn't go to rehab, can't even go to meetings because there's no one to watch my kids. As i write this, i am in the tub. It is my break. I take a bath every day and that's MY time. My only time. I'm sorry, i watched BTH when it first came out. I was seventeen. I already had issues and i really felt for all of you. Many of us, we watch that doc, its so gritty and real, we feel we know you all. I'm sorry some of your friends are gone and I'm so happy for the rest of you. I don't know how you did it. As the end i had been flirting with heroin (I'd been told its just a cheaper pain med). I believe I'll be a slave to subs till i did. Or at the very least another16 years when the baby is grow up enough... I don't know what I'm getting as. God bless you, Tracey, you're my hero.

    ReplyDelete

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