Voices – Page 8 – Marilea C. Rabasa

The Ache In Their Souls

July 25, 2016July 25, 2016 Marilea C. RabasaLeave a comment

Memoir Excerpt:

“While Angie was in Fredericksburg, I really stepped up my attempts to reach her. For one thing, I had an address to mail things to. For another, I thought she might be reachable while she was in Doc’s care. But I see in so many of my communications a dreadful tendency to condescend to her. I still clung to the illusion of control and I wanted her to do things my way.

‘Honor them, Angie, honor them.’ I know what I meant when I said those words to her, reminding her of the moral code I had raised her with. But how she would react to them was a different matter.

Many of my letters to Angie throughout her addiction were pages of barely veiled anger and disappointment. Since she was so sick I didn’t have the heart or the courage to be more honest with her. She saw through the mask anyway. My letters demonstrate how deeply entrenched I still was in needing to fix and control her. I needed to back off and let her find her own way. I kept hearing my mother’s old (imaginary) voice in me: “You can’t let go of her, Maggie. That’s not love. You can’t just stand by and let her self-destruct!”

It’s no surprise that she never answered these letters. Angie was well into her twenties by now and I should have known better anyway. I really needed to do more of what the Program was telling me to do. Even in my own journey of self-discovery, no one could have told me that I was OK. I had to believe it myself. I’ve had a lot of therapy over the years, but none of them worked as well as the Twelve Steps to bring about change in me. And I so wished that Angie could find something in life to give her faith in her own worth—go back to the first twenty-one years of her life—and remember all the things she excelled in and how much ambition she once had for herself. I too wished she could access the love of her whole family. It was such an impotent thing now, I realized, though I once naively thought that my love could pull her away from all this. But there was a masonry wall between Angie and recovery: rough, forbidding, high and difficult to scale. Addiction crippled her with destructive ‘solutions’ to the ache in her soul.” (From A Mother’s Story: Angie Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, by Maggie C. Romero)

Looking Within

July 18, 2016 Marilea C. RabasaLeave a comment

Memoir Excerpt:

“That summer (2009) I wanted her to come visit and see our farm in the Southwest. In she flew from sunny Palm Springs to sunny New Mexico, and it was a joy to have her with us for a few days. Angie is, among other things, a very talented artist, and I asked her to paint a little sign naming our farmhouse Casita del Mar, so named because of my huge shell collection. It still hangs on the post in my front courtyard, though in the years since her visit it has sustained a lot of weather damage.

We had fun, tooling around Santa Fe, and visiting the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum. I knew she would appreciate seeing this artist’s work. Angie had a gift for expression, both in the spoken word and in her renderings. As a child she wrote a lot of poetry. She also could capture on paper a face or expression with great accuracy. In art school I was good at drawing elevations and brick walls, but I couldn’t begin to draw someone’s face. Angie had a great gift.

We continued north up the slow mountain road to the Taos Pueblo, where we visited a potter we knew and bought some more of her pieces. The next day we took Angie up the tram on Sandia Crest, where you can see for miles in three directions. Looking out for hundreds of miles—and looking within. I knew I was doing a lot of that in my own recovery, but Angie never shared her recovery work with me. On our last day together we celebrated her birthday at dinner in Corrales. Of course, she had to get back to work. We hugged at the airport and said goodbye. Again, there were so many goodbyes—so much uncertainty. I will never allow complacency into my life again. I will never, ever, take a moment of happiness for granted.”

Punching It Out

June 27, 2016June 28, 2016 Marilea C. RabasaLeave a comment

There are many stages to grief and loss. I’m grateful to be at a place of acceptance and peace now. But I didn’t always feel this way. Four years ago I was very, very angry, as is clear in this scene from my memoir (A Mother’s Story: Angie Doesn’t Live Here Anymore):

“’I hate you, Addiction! You are the curse of this century and I despise you. You’ve stolen my daughter and this is what I think of you: Kapow! Boom! Left jab to the right eye. Bleed, you b—– Angie may not have the strength to fight you, but I do. Here’s a right hook to your left eye. Keep bleeding, you s-o-b. This one’s for my dad. Ever since I can remember, you snatched him from my life. This one’s for Angie, you piece of sh–. Is this how you get off? Turning a beautiful, bright young woman into a vegetable? And this one’s for me, you giant succubus. Me, I won’t let you destroy. Me, I’m gonna save. So that my children and grandchildren will see that there is hope when struggling with Addiction. It doesn’t always have to win.’”

And it hasn’t. One day at a time, I’m learning to save myself from addiction and all the devastation it has caused in my life…and for this I am very grateful. Life does go on, and the world still turns.

The Voice Of An Angel

June 6, 2016 Marilea C. RabasaLeave a comment

From “My Daughter/Myself” (taken from A Mother’s Story: Angie Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, by Maggie C. Romero)

Sometimes my words pale before Angie’s, and I’m very glad of that. Her voice should be loud and clear in this memoir: the voice of the child, the voice of the poet, and later, sadly, the voice of the young woman corrupted by addiction. I sprinkle the story with examples of her writing, little snapshots of my daughter, at different points in her life. When she was 8, she wrote this note at school.

Of course the great poignancy of the story is that Angie and I mirror each other. We share the same addictions. My child is a worse version of myself. And so much of my work in my life now has been coming to terms with that legacy and learning how to transcend it. I am deeply grateful for all the education and support I’ve received in the 12-Step fellowships over the years. It is in those rooms that I’ve taken back my life and learned how to be happy and at peace. Hugs and prayers to all of my friends as we share our strength and hope on this journey!

We Are Both Changed By Addiction

May 29, 2016May 31, 2016 Marilea C. RabasaLeave a comment

Memoir Excerpt:

“My daughter’s choices: none of my business. If she were an ax murderer, would it be none of my business? Let it go, Maggie; you are separate people, remember? I told myself. My Twelve-Step recovery, so far, has brought me a great deal of gratitude and serenity, mostly when I remember that voice from God telling me to let go of control and resistance. Yet there’s another part of me that hurts terribly when I witness the destruction of my daughter at the hands of Addiction. How can I be well while Angie is so sick? I’ve spent all these years searching for an answer.

Meghan O’Rourke, author of The Long Goodbye, in an interview discussing her own grief about losing her mother, says this: ‘I’m changed by it, the way a tree is changed by having to grow around an obstacle.’

It’s the subliminal mother force in me. Grief and loss—they change us. I keep getting beamed onto Planet X, then back again, my molecules getting rearranged every time. Just as Angie has changed, so have I. I’ve loved my daughter as best I could for half of my life. How can losing her to this living death not change me?”

Other Voices Are Calling Me

May 26, 2016 Marilea C. RabasaLeave a comment

Most of us have experienced the pain of substance abuse, either directly or indirectly. It’s everywhere in our society, and addiction in all its forms has the power to take away our happiness and wellbeing. My daughter Angie has scrambled in and out of the rabbit hole for over fifteen years, and much of the time I was in it with her. But I’ve learned to let go of a disease and its ensuing consequences that I have no control over. Yes, let go.

Once the tears have dried and we can open our eyes, maybe we can look around us and see what’s left from all the chaos and devastation: a job we like, flowers that are blooming, other family members, good health, enough money to be comfortable, friends who care and don’t judge us. The list goes on. These little girls are my great joy lately, and if I didn’t have them I hope I could find the courage to celebrate something else—anything else—in my life. Because time passes too quickly, and before we know it, ours is up. Life is too precious to waste.

Voices In The Night

May 2, 2016 Marilea C. RabasaLeave a comment

We all have fears from time to time that distract us. Angie was only fourteen when she wrote this, but she had her own fears that spoke to her. Hug your children—often—and tell them that you love them. I don’t know if she’s listening, but I tell Angie that I love her— no matter what. I can’t remove the wolf from her dreams, but I can be the voice of love to her.

Living In The Solution

April 14, 2016 Marilea C. RabasaLeave a comment

I messaged a friend on Facebook: “Oh, God Bless, Maryann, my heart goes out to you and all of us mothers. I often say in my book and on these sites that I’m grieving a living death because Angie, my daughter, is not the person who’s walking in her shoes. She’s split right down the middle. Anyway, we all have different stories, but some parts are so familiar. My memoir was all about finding solutions for myself, and I hope it helps you too. One thing I’ve learned on this difficult journey is to live in the solution, not in the problem. That’s how I’ve learned to be happy. Hugs to you!

From a Nar-Anon handout: “People like myself whose problems have brought them to the point of despair have come to Nar-Anon to seek advice and find solutions. As soon as they attend the first meeting they feel like they have come home and feel like they are among people who really understand. And fortunate is the newcomer who finds a group that permits such expression. It gives those who have gone before them a way to give encouragement and hope. The newcomer discovers that it is by giving and receiving in our sharing that we are able to heal ourselves, and slowly we are able to regain control of our lives again.

But still more fortunate is the newcomer who finds a group that does not allow such unburdening to continue meeting after meeting. There is work to be done; Nar-Anon is not a sounding board for continually reviewing our miseries, but a way to learn how to detach ourselves from them.

A Recovery reminder:

I will learn by listening, by reading all the Nar-Anon literature as well as all good books on the subject of addiction, by working and trying to live the 12 Steps. The more I read and study the more knowledge I receive. Knowledge is power, and I will be able to help myself as well as others.”

The Terrifying Reality Of Our Lost Children

March 21, 2016 Marilea C. RabasaLeave a comment

Memoir Excerpt:

“Meth addicts can go for days without sleep sometimes, and then they need to crash, recoup their energy and start the cycle all over again. I went back upstairs, tiptoeing around the house, a minefield waiting to be activated by just the wrong look or comment. Most of the time I felt like a scared rabbit.

Angie came and went like a phantom between the holidays. She was a body, yes, but nothing else resembled my daughter. Her face was still healing from the burns she had gotten from freebasing crack cocaine back in October. She lost all her beautiful eyelashes then and had been wearing false ones ever since. How bizarre: false eyelashes at age twenty-two. And the eye drops—always the eye drops. She ate not at all as far as I could see, nothing from my refrigerator anyway. She was painfully thin. But, of course, meth took away your appetite. That was the point, one of them, anyway. All those years ago when I took amphetamines, I delighted in the same side effect. Life was repeating itself and I was in a time warp observing myself at the very same age. God, it was so painful.

We barely spoke. Sometimes she mumbled “Hello,” but mostly she just needed a place to crash and get her clothes. Why wasn’t she living with that creep, her pusher? I was glad she wasn’t and at the same time I’d wished she were. Every day was a surreal pageant, dancing around with this stranger. The terror was so disorienting that I lapsed into denial sometimes and pretended it wasn’t happening. But that was easier to do when I was working. I was on a break from school now and I couldn’t escape from it. It was right in front of me.

As New Year’s approached, I couldn’t bear it anymore. Did I snap? I hadn’t even joined Al-Anon yet, but years later I would hear a saying at meetings: “In Al-Anon we learn to trade a wishbone in for a backbone.” Amazing! I was ready to cross these frightening waters before I even had the support of the group. But I would flee, in subsequent years, to higher ground all too often, unable to navigate effectively. This was going to be a journey as much for me as for Angie, I soon found out. And like most journeys there would be many bumps in the road.”

Alice In Wonderland

March 14, 2016March 14, 2016 Marilea C. RabasaLeave a comment

Memoir Excerpt:

“’Alice: Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?’

The Cheshire Cat: ‘That depends a good deal on where you want to get to.’

Alice: ‘I don’t much care where.’

The Cheshire Cat: ‘Then it doesn’t matter which way you go.’

Alice: …’So long as I get somewhere.’

The Cheshire Cat: ‘Oh, you’re sure to do that, if only you walk long enough.’

It’s worth noting here that of the four rehabs Angie has been to this one, the one she herself wanted produced the best results in her. Why? Because she wanted it—as plain and simple as that sounds. She wanted it because for the first time in her disease she felt her life was in danger—not from drugs—but from the life and the people that accompany them. A few years down the road, no longer a stranger to the danger that went with this way of life, three more rehabs would be placed in front of her, like roadblocks: ‘Choose, Angie, do this or die.‘ And to her credit, I suppose, she chose to go where we wanted to send her. ‘Where we wanted to send her.’ That’s why they didn’t work. She wasn’t ready to make that commitment again. She was just Alice tripping from one place to another, when all of a sudden this bulldozer broke through the ceiling and screeched, ‘Angie, come with me. I want to save you!’ And ‘curiouser and curiouser’ she cracked, ‘Oh, what the hell, I need a vacation from all this anyway.’”