Three generations of women in 1980: my mother, Angie, and me. I love them, and miss them both.
Guilt and Redemption
The Birth Of A Memoir
I’m the mother of a heroin addict, still in active addiction, and I want to share how I’ve learned to live with a parent’s worst nightmare. My book’s first draft started out as an account of my daughter’s addiction and all the horrors, her loss of self, her loss of soul, that accompany it. But as I got to the end, I realized that her story really began with me, and my story began with my father, etc. It became a story of the generational nature of addiction. And so I rewrote it with an Introduction, where I share my childhood and Angie’s with the reader so that you will know us; you get to know Angie before she was corrupted by addiction and, in my case, perhaps understand why I behaved as I did throughout Angie’s addiction. And as I paralleled her roller coaster ride with my own recovery, it ceased to be a simple story about drug addiction and took on the shape of a memoir, as I show how this tragic life event has changed and transformed me.
I begin with a question in the Prologue:
“Where might my daughter be now if fate, or genes, had been kinder to her? Now, several years into her illness, I am coming to terms with the terrible legacy that began generations ago in my own family and which I have unwittingly passed on to my daughter. All these years I’ve diligently searched for answers, clarity, and solace in the face of terrible pain. Like a gift from the universe, it has come to me slowly, and it is with me now. But it’s been a hard won victory.”
Angie’s illness was the catalyst, as I say at the end of the book “that catapulted me into a cave of my own discoveries…” I found myself at the end of this tunnel, “and I would always—still— reckon with the survivor guilt that has challenged my right to be happy while my daughter still struggles with addiction.”
Reckoning
Memoir Excerpt:
“I felt as though parts of my life were raining down on me in these woods. This reckoning was long overdue. I was once again the little girl who longed to be close to her big sister and missed her big brother, the little girl who needed attention from her father, and the young woman who needed to be free of her domineering mother. Losing Angie again felt like a death to me even though it wasn’t. There was no real closure, like the day I put Oscar down, Mahler’s Ninth Symphony pounding in my head. I was back in the woods of my childhood where I could scream my frustration and no one would hear me This was not my whole life—just the parts I needed to purge, the parts that held me back, and the ones that told me I deserved to lose my child.
‘You had this coming to you!’ the voice of Guilt shouted.
‘NO I DIDN’T!’ I screamed back, ‘No, I don’t.’
I felt that day in December, with my temples pounding and hearing nothing but the train racing in my head, that I was powerful. I was reclaiming what was left of my life. I’d been in recovery for years and was happier because of it—no question. But often when Angie relapsed I’d felt myself start to crumble like a week-old cookie. I’d want to scramble to help her fight off the Monster. I’d start to cling, listen for her footsteps, and anticipate her movements, her moods, utterly lose myself in my codependency, allow myself to be controlled by the uncontrollable, and panic at the ensuing chaos.
‘Can I drive you to a meeting? There’s one in the same church as mine. Same time,’ I implored, as if going to a meeting would bring some order to the chaos.
‘Mom, stop. You know I hate meetings.’
When she said that I used to feel enraged, and impotent in my rage, with nowhere to go with it. Addiction had a life of its own. I had spent so much energy fighting a useless battle and worse, not allowing my daughter the dignity of fighting it herself.
But not this time—not this day—nearly a decade into her illness. For the moment, anyway, I was done. This struggle with Angie had worn me out, over and over again, and I wanted to put an end to it. All the hurt and pain from my childhood, all the agony of watching my daughter commit slow suicide, were racing through my head at breakneck speed.
I made my way to a clearing in the woods. I was, for a while anyway, transported back to Massachusetts. But I didn’t go back there that day to revisit the judgments of my childhood. I went back to the same place where I had grown up to try to end the battle inside me—and the battle to save Angie—for so long seemingly one in the same—and now, forever separate.”
Guilt And Redemption
Memoir Excerpt:
“This journey of mine, this parenting journey, would involve going two steps forward sometimes and then three steps backward. It was not vertical progress I was making, but it was progress. And strangely, the more I kept the focus on myself and striving to be happy, the easier it was to let go of my child. I knew I had paid my dues, and I feared no one’s judgment, least of all God’s.
I’ve railed at God many, many times during these dozen years of joy and pain, this God they speak of at Twelve-Step meetings. How many times had I sinned in my life? Many, more than I want to remember. And so the child in me had been sure, earlier on, that I was being punished for all of them. It was my karmic payback. “What goes around comes around,” etc. Indeed, for all of my life, before my breakdown, I had no faith in any thing or any one other than myself. I grew up very lonely and isolated, and if there was a god, he wasn’t paying any attention to me. So I learned to be very independent and self-reliant.
But when I finally found myself on my knees, I felt broken and whole at the same time: broken because my MO for dealing with my problems hadn’t been working; and whole because I finally let myself believe in something outside of myself to strengthen me, to fill in the gaps that were missing in me, and to help me cope. I was starting to develop and cling to a faith that assured me that I was not being punished and that I would be OK in the end, no matter what happened to my daughter. And I realized that fighting Angie’s battles for her was not only a waste of time; it was also useless and of questionable value.
My energies, spent though they were, would be better directed toward reclaiming my own life, which had been sorely compromised in the fight to save my daughter. And in reclaiming my own life, I was bidding for my redemption, long overdue, but just within my reach. This was my journey now, I knew it; I sadly accepted it. I wanted us to be connected but we weren’t. I wanted her struggle to be our struggle, but it wasn’t. I wanted to save her life but I couldn’t. I could only save my own. And I’d keep working at it—or this relentless disease would claim two more victims instead of one.”
I Was Addicted To My Addict
Memoir Excerpt:
“I was on such a fast moving train that I was dizzy with the drama of it all, and very much caught up in it as well. I was addicted to my addict; I felt important because I was needed (translate: used, like an ATM machine). When she got pregnant, why did I make it my problem? When she broke the law, why didn’t I let her face the consequences?
When my kids were young, I used to pride myself on my parenting. I took Parent Effectiveness Training classes, and joined preschool coops so I could participate in what was going on from a very young age. Oh boy, did I think I had my mother beat! I was going to do it right this time! And for all those years even after the divorce, they were really good kids. I thought, because they seemed OK, that I was a good parent. I measured myself against them. I think many parents do that. So now, when my skills were sorely tested, I was falling apart. It was as if I thought that if I let her fall down that rabbit hole, without trying to stop her, that I deserved to go with her too. And I did, a bit later on, when my heart and my nerves gave out, and I was finally, at long last, on my knees.”
More…Letting Go
Hello friends and family! I’m back East in northern Virginia right now packing up my belongings and preparing to sell the condo where I lived with Angie at the start of her illness. Some of you know that guilt was a constant thread in the story I wrote, and thanks to my recovery in the 12-Step fellowships I’ve been able to free myself of that destructive emotion and get on with my life. I’ve been sharing excerpts sequentially, but this one is from the very end of the book because I’m here now doing what I said I would do:
“While talking to my son recently, he inadvertently reminded me that I still have some unfinished business to take care of. He didn’t recognize how difficult that would be. So… I went back to my condo in Virginia, where it all began.
Carlos had been chiding me, ‘Mom, when are you gonna get tired of burning hundred dollar bills?’ I felt jolted by that question and have spent some time reflecting on it. I moved to New Mexico five years ago. Why have I been sitting on the fence all this time? It’s a luxury I don’t need. Why has it been hard to let go of my condo?
It is true that it’s an extravagance I don’t need. But letting go of it had been unthinkable—until now. Letting go—the learning of it, the doing of it—is a curious exercise. We cling for dear life to things we cherish, afraid that we’ll never have something so fine again. But I’ve learned these past few years that we can also cling to memories of pain and loss. For me, the condo had been the stage for my most recent connection with my daughter—a sad, bittersweet place of remembrance.
Within a year after I bought it, Angie was a methamphetamine addict spiraling out of control. For the next five years she would live with me, crash with me, and torment me on and off. She always slept on a sofa in the basement even though there was a bedroom and her own bath upstairs on my floor. But that was too close to me. She needed her separate space. And still she needed me—for her own reasons.
Digging deep, I see the real reason why I’ve been clinging to that property. Crossing the threshold on my visit last month, I started facing the ghosts that were holding me hostage. Why have I been holding onto to a place that has outlived its usefulness?
This is why: Angie was there with me. I loved Angie there, I lost Angie there, and I began my own reckoning with a lifetime of struggle that ended in the woods a few miles from there. Angie’s illness catapulted me into a cave of my own discoveries. And though I began this journey to save my child, it was myself I saved in the end.
The condo will soon be on the market. There is so much those four walls hold inside the beams and drywall. I went from room to room looking for memories, the sad evidence of Angie’s presence. There it is, the cigarette hole in my sheets, the burn marks on the porcelain sink where she carelessly left her butts. The black dye she spilled on my new wood floors that I tried to sand away. The bottle of muriatic acid in the laundry room I had no clue about at the time. Why didn’t I throw it away years ago? I remembered the night she had free-based and lost her eyelashes, noticed the knife mark on the door she had locked and couldn’t open. I walked around and felt the walls she had brushed against, sat in her favorite chair, ate from her Asian bowls, smelled her perfume on the jacket she’d left hanging in the closet. They were everywhere, the reminders of Angie’s presence, of the cruel illness that had claimed her, of her loss of self. Why haven’t I walked away from all that sooner? Many would have. What does that say about me?
But Angie, my daughter, was there too. I left them around, remnants of her lost innocence: the hand-painted ceramic heart for “The Greatest Mom in the World” on Mother’s Day in 1988; the picture of wild geese she bought me at the flea market in Greece; the dried coral roses she gave me for my birthday one year; the Scrabble game we played together on her weekend visits in 2010; pictures of her on holidays there with family while she was in recovery. How could I have known then how fleeting it would be?
I have felt that by truly letting go of the place that witnessed our time together I would be, yet again, abandoning Angie, something I didn’t have the heart to do. But I find myself now at a point where I can let go of the memories that chill and sadden me. And it’s not an abandonment of my daughter. Just as I have done with my mother, I can carry the best of Angie with me wherever I go. I can let go of the condo now, that proving ground for the redemption I’ve been seeking all my life. I no longer need to feel the lash on my back.”
Down The Yellow Brick Road
As Angie deteriorates I need some kind of program more than ever to help me cope, and it’s at this point in the memoir that I introduce my 12-Step recovery program. Throughout the book I point to how this program and its teachings have helped me to meet the challenges in my life and grow spiritually. But recovery has not been a straight or easy path for me.
From “Life Had Become Unmanageable:”
“Years later in one of my support groups in New Mexico, a friend shared how she had to lock everything up in her house. She’d lock the jewelry here, the silver there. She had a different key for every place, and one time she was so flummoxed by her son that she lost all the keys! We laughed together at that one, grateful that we still could laugh. This is what it comes to for many of us parents. We erect walls to protect ourselves, keeping the addicts out. And then, of course, we feel guilty about doing that.
They will work us, manipulate us, and use every tool in their arsenal to get what they want if they’re still using. Parents are so vulnerable, and they’re walking a fine line between helping their child recover, and enabling them to continue using. We learn eventually to sit frozen in inaction, to do nothing. We learn to let our addicts be accountable for their own actions, and hopefully learn from the consequences (eviction, jail, death). But it’s that last consequence that holds us hostage, keeps us doing for our addict all that he should be doing for himself. We say to ourselves, “As long as he’s alive, he can recover.” True, but when will we ever get rid of our God-like parental power, thinking that his recovery is all up to us?”
