Being a Mother after Active Addiction

I love Anne Lamott but have never read this passage before. I needed to read it today because there have been many days in the past and now where I’ve felt the inadequacy of being a shitty mother. Of never being good enough because of years of active addiction where I not only aliented myself but also my children, husband, family and friends.

Through years of cumulative sobriety, an awesome sponsor/sponsee, active recovery work with a terrific support system, an outstanding therapist that I actually don’t lie to, I’ve learned to love myself again. I’m empathetic not only to those I’ve hurt, but to the fact that I was hurt child trying to cover up pain from a past that could no longer hurt me,but I still hadn’t dealt with.

Children and parents estranged from one another need to remember, we were individuals before we had titles, and even with those titles, we’re still individuals. We feel pain, we hurt others. We feel elation, and we allow others to shine. We grow and change, but some of us remain stagnant and fear the future. Some of us get lucky and start to move forward again.

We’ll never be perfect, nor would we want to be. Yet we are good people and hopefully, when the sun sets upon our lives those we’ve hurt will come back to us again.

A Train Whistled in the Distance

“Accidents are not accidents but precise arrivals at the wrong right time.”
― Dejan Stojanovic

Tonight, I turned off my television. There was no music emanating from my radio or computer. No videos played to distract me. Instead, I read a book by Chuck Palahniuk on how to write. My a/c clicked on from time to time, but for the most part my world was silent. As I read an essay, I was bombarded by the sound of a train whistle in the distance. From my second story apartment, I swear I could feel the vibration of the train cars as they glided across the tracks.

Instantly, the hair stood up on the nape of my neck, and I became acutely aware that the train whistle I heard was crossing the tracks where my accident took place on March 12, 2014. I could feel the cold from that night, and when I exhaled I swore I could see my breath. My heart raced and I could feel everything from that night. The impact of the crash and my body being thrown all over the car. My foot slipping off the brake that I’d jammed to the floor to keep from running into the back of a bus. The delicate skin around my ankle bone sliced open and laid bare to the bone. How helpless I felt, and broken.

The blood trickled down my face from the cut on my forehead. The skin on my left arm burned because of the powder from the deployed airbags. I was bruised and my right hand was laid open with a cut that required stitches. My head hit the windshield and I blacked out. I was almost dizzy with excitement when I came to, and then slid into the welcoming abyss of shock.

I screamed to anyone that could hear, ‘GET ME OUT!’

I was acutely aware of my surroundings as I touched the windshield where a hank of my hair had been pulled out. I think I even told one of the rescue workers to look at it. I’m sure they thought I was crazy. I remembered asking the bus driver if he and the passengers were all right. I don’t even think I was wearing a coat.  I smelled blood, powder, burning rubber, and adrenaline. My vision went yellow and green, but I had no idea why.

In one coherent moment, I texted Roger that I’d been in an accident. I was so damn cold. The ambulance drivers had to pull me out of my car. Or maybe it was the fire department, I’m not sure. I begged for pain meds and for someone to miraculously fix my foot. I thought for sure I’d torn the damn thing off. The pain was so bad, and recovery so slow that I sometimes wished I had.

Train whistles used to make me smile. They reminded me of when Mom would send Sis and me on the Amtrak to go visit our grandparents in Battle Creek every summer. I hope I find serenity again, from that train whistle in the distance, and  the clack, clack, clack of the metal wheels on polished tracks.