My mother had me legally estranged and out on my arse at fifteen.
I didn’t go out and realise the first night or even the first year ‘Hell, I need to sort myself out.’ I won’t lie. I experienced horrors and tragedies I’m still can’t face, and I started out a drug user and drunk and became a heroin addict...but we all have to reach our own rock bottom.
Now twenty-two years old, I’ve my own place, pay my bills, am a post graduate student, clean, sober and working my arse off to keep it that way.
And my relationship with my mother? She came to visit last year and we’re, for the first time, working on our relationship. It means more to me than I know how to articulate; I love her...and I respect her, despite her vices, for giving me a chance to stand on my own two feet....for being a force that taught me, addict or otherwise, my life is my responsibility.
She still won’t do the same for my brother. He’s thirty and still living with her. She says he ain’t as strong as me. Maybe, but he’ll never get the chance to prove her wrong or get tough as long as she keeps bailing him out. Ok, he’ll never fail, but he’ll never get the opportunity to see if he can succeed either.
I won’t have him living with me –or even visiting- because I wont enable him. I have too much faith in him, even if he doesn’t. Like my mum did with me, I practice tough love to one day be able to face my big bro and say ‘I told you so’. The alternative is a funeral...in two years or ten, he ain’t living and he ain’t happy. I support him, but I’ll never enable him...I’d rather my brother died trying than lived failing, because I love him.
I know how simple that sounds and how hard that is...
I’m not a mother (I won’t pretend I know what it is to be a mother), but I know what it is to be an addict and to lose the people you love most.... I know what it’s like to practice tough love.
It is a huge risk. I won’t lie, but what chance did they have of making anything of themselves without at least being given that opportunity?
I live with that choice everyday...and with the grief of those I love who didn’t succeed.
All the best, Hope. Keep faith and –whatever you decide- stand by it. You ain't alone.