“I made a phone call that no mom ever wants to get. Within an hour, my mom was at my apartment and I will never forget the look of absolute terror on her face.”
‘I woke up handcuffed to a hospital bed covered in my own vomit, dirt and mud caked in my ears and under my perfectly manicured acrylic nails.’
‘Years after meeting my now husband, I got a call from my father’s new wife. ‘Mommy, are you crying?’ I think she’s on to me.’
“I didn’t need him in my life. ‘We can make it on our own,’ she would say. And I did, for so many years. Then, in early July, he called.”
‘I found out I was pregnant. My ex-boyfriend refused to believe the baby was his. We tried to come to a resolution, but within a month, he was found dead in his bed.’
“I had my first serious boyfriend. He was older. That is the night my destiny changed. I became very ill the next week. I had a severe fever, so physically exhausted I couldn’t even get out of bed.”
‘Molly, I am sick again. I promise I’m going to get better this time.’ I hang up, but she is all I can think about. How can I love her so much, and be such a constant source of disappointment?’
“I don’t want to catch a glimpse of her beautiful face in my mind. It hurts too much. She is so perfect. How can she still utter the words, ‘It’s okay mom, I love you’? I don’t deserve her love or her forgiveness.”
‘I called my dad and he didn’t answer, which was weird. I drove over to his house. His car was there, but he wasn’t. I started panicking. I knew something had to be horribly wrong.’
“He laughed and said, ‘Don’t worry honey, I have no plans to die today.’ He tried to convince me to come watch a movie with him, but I declined. I told him I was tired and would talk to him in the morning.”
‘My mom drank. A lot. We were placed in separate foster homes. It was difficult to prove a mother unfit. She showed up to court intoxicated. The judge granted Dad custody.’
“Dad was diagnosed with lung cancer. It’s unbearable to think about. It has always been the 3 of us that make sure the other is okay.”
‘We had just been to Disney celebrating her birthday. She got a magical princess makeover. Little did we know she was practicing to be a Princess in Heaven a few days later.’
“She threw up and had a fever. I took her to her doctor. She was so lethargic. We were told it is just a stomach virus – 20 hours later she was dead.”
‘I swallowed a bottle of pills. This was the beginning of not wanting to exist anymore. I ended up in the psych ward.’
“All through high school I was the good kid. I was in Student Council, soccer, and a cheerleader. Teachers trusted me. I was a fake.”
“I fell down the stairs while carrying my son to bed. He had to be life-flighted to Children’s Hospital with a fractured skull. That was the beginning of my rock bottom.”
“I was doing great, two weeks away from having full custody granted to me, and then I relapsed. I drank for the next 20 days.”
‘I couldn’t do it anymore. I didn’t want to die. My son needed me.’ Single mom ‘didn’t choose to be an alcoholic’
“One glass of wine after work turned into three. Then turned into taking shots of vodka before work, going to get vodka on my lunch break, and driving home at night to have more alcohol.”
