JUST A LITTLE THANK YOU

I am quite new to the "online world". I'll admit my first time was June 25, 2007. Since then I've discovered online dating, ASK.com, and found out you can Google any and every crazy thing you can think of, which is really pretty cool!

Another thing I was turned on to by my amazing sister is this.....blogging. I love it. I have very little idea to what the lingo is, what half these buttons do, and how to navigate through things, but I do love it.

I never know if anyone really reads my blog. The comments are an indicator. I do have two people reading. So, Luxe Travel, thank you. Thank you for making me feel heard. Thank you for offering assistance. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

ADSENSE

I'm completely lost! Can someone "add" some "sense" to this for me?? I'm not the sharpest tool in the shed, I know. But I'm feeling more stupid than usual. How do I paste the code into my HTML. And which HTML?

I have apparently made some error being that, uhhh, there are no ads. Hmmmmm......computers can sure make you crazy! LOL

CANCER

CANCER, CANCER, CANCER, CANCER, CANCER, CANCER, CANCER. One word, many changes. Once this hits home,life is never the same. Never. That's all I can say right now.

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

NOT KNOWING WHAT YOU WANT CAN BE THE DRIVING FORCE BEHIND FINDING IT!

MY MOTHER, MY FAULT

As Mother's Day approaches I find myself longing for my mother. I miss her every single day but Mother's Day is just gut-wrenching. I can't help but to think that I wouldn't even exist if it weren't for her. I know Dad had a big part in my creation, but it's Mom that gave birth. And it's Mom that is no longer here.

I also can't help but to think I played a part in her death. It's as if I killed her myself. I can't escape the fact that I was with her everyday up until the month prior to her death! I was not a daughter of which she should have been proud, but somehow she managed to utter those words to me when we weren't getting high.

Yes, that's the ugly truth: we were partners in addiction. We got high almost everyday. My mother spent all her time in pain from a back surgery. Throughout the years she found herself on pain prescriptions including morphine patches, Lortabs and Percocets. It didn't take long for this need to lead to an opiate addiction.

Upon losing her beauty-shop business due to pain related issues, her finances took a great plummet. Unable to continue medical treatment and the cost of prescriptions, the surgeon recommended the Methadone Clinic. See, much to my surprise, Methadone is the strongest and cheapest pain killer on our planet. Not only are Methadone Clinics used for recovering heroin addicts, but they are used as pain management for the poor.

The Methadone Clinic's policy is to raise the dosage on a daily basis. My mother went from 80 milligrams daily to 270 milligrams daily. She'd come home from the clinic and nod off to sleep within minutes.

Not only did mom take methadone, but she was on 2 milligrams of Xanax three times daily. She did get drug tested at the clinic, as this was their policy for every patient. It was done randomly. Unfortunately, legally prescribed drugs were not my mother's only crutch. And they definitely weren't my only demon.

After Mom got kicked out of the Methadone Clinic detox was imminent.....unless I intervened.

I had been living with her in the mother-in-law apartment. She had another roommate that was, in my opinion, the equivalent to the Anti-Christ. This guy was a world-class loser and used my mother so obviously that I was always stunned how she couldn't see it. However she was becoming less and less aware of the obvious and the rational, as her addiction seemed to swallow her mind, body, and soul.

Phil, the Anti-Christ, supplied her with Morphine, Oxycontins, heroin, and later crack. He always charged quite a lot even when she paid hundreds of dollars a week for drugs that she shared willingly with him on a constant basis.

I was no better a friend than that sorry excuse of human being named Phil. I used drugs with my mother as well. Even though I knew it was so terribly wrong. I would contribute money to, what ultimately, became the cause of her death.

I had an epiphany. It was one night after I had finished work at the Cheetah. I had made enough money to pay Mom my rent and score enough heroin to last me four days. When I got home Mom called me to her room. She was at the point where she rarely left her bed. She asked if I had anything that she could use. I told her I had heroin.

We were getting out needles and a spoon. I always had a hard time hitting my own vein, so she offered to shoot me up. Suddenly I had a flashback to when I was nine years old and I became a Brownie. My mother was our Brownie Troop Leader. I remember thinking it was so cool to have her as my Brownie Leader and I knew I wanted to grow up and be just like her.

Well, tears were streaming down my cheeks and my mother asked, "am I hurting you?" That's when I said the words that haunt me today: "Mom, when you were my brownie leader, did you ever think you'd one day be shooting me up with heroin?"

Well, that was it. That was a taste of the bitter reality that neither of us were prepared to bite into at that moment. I plopped down three bags for her and said "I think I should move. Me and Shana (my pit bull) have no where to go, but if I stay here I'm afraid I'll die here...in this very house, Mom." Her reply was " You're strong like I was. You'll be okay. I love you and I think you should go too."

You know, typing this out and seeing it all in print brings back more pain and sorrow than I know how to handle. It was within weeks that I got the phone call form my sister that mom had died....in her very own bed.

There are simply no words in any language, that adequately describe losing a parent. Death is a part of life, I know. But I just know how to live without my mother. I cry like a baby when even the thought of losing my Dad enters my mind. How am I ever going to live through that? Hopefully I die first.

It feels like I was looking at my mom just yesterday. I haven't really moved forward in life. I got clean but I have no real joy for life. I simply exist since her death. Maybe if I had stayed. Maybe if I had gotten off the drugs. Maybe if I had gone to visit her that week. Maybe, maybe, maybe.

I could have saved her. I could have done something. All I did was leave.

Happy Mother's Day, Mom. I hope you finally have all the peace and joy you always deserved.

And Mom, I am so sorry.