“‘I don’t look the same as when you last saw me. I’m not doing too well,’ I said. My face was a mess. I had cuts and blood in my nostrils. In that coffee shop, I sat across from him crying. I was scared of telling anyone.”
‘I bumped into an old childhood friend. ‘What have you been up to?’ ‘I’m in rehab.’ I laughed, thinking it was a joke. Soon after, I asked him to meet me. I warned him about my appearance.’
‘If my mom wouldn’t have called the cops on my brother, I would have, without thinking twice. He is on a $10,000 unsecured bond. The person pressing charges—our mom.’
“He made the decision to uproot his life and move 1,200 miles to become our full-time ‘manny.’ Sadly, today, I wouldn’t DARE leave her in his care.”
‘My son has until this Tuesday to turn himself in. I love you, Josh. But the DEVIL returned this year. I made the decision to send my son to jail.’
“Yesterday he called. He wanted to come home. He even gave me the address where he was staying. I made the most difficult decision; I called the police to let them know where he was.”
‘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.’
“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.”
‘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.”
‘Everything went dark, and when I came to, I had no idea if I had been out for 5 minutes or 5 hours. There was no one left to call, and no one was coming.’
“I started drinking at what felt like a normal age – 12 or 13 years old. I was in 7th grade. I had no idea pretty, little girls from affluent East Coast towns could wind up alcoholic.”
‘I drove high with my kids in the car. They would hear me lie through my teeth about pain I’d made up, just to get a script. My husband threatened to leave me, but I was so good at lying to him.’
“I wasn’t pregnant anymore technically, and those pills stopped more than just my physical pain – they numbed my emotions as well. I would hide pills around the house – on shelves behind clothes, in drawers, even in my kids’ rooms – anywhere.”
‘I was ejected and thrown 50 feet from my car. I died that day. I knew I couldn’t feel my legs, but I didn’t know why. I was told I would never walk again.’
“I think every girl dreams of walking down the aisle to her husband. I had pictured it in my head since I was a little girl. I didn’t want that picture to play out differently just because of my accident. So I chased my dream.”
‘To some, Maddie was just a junkie — when they saw her addiction, they stopped seeing her. And what a loss for them.’
“Though we would have paid any ransom to have her back, any price in the world, this disease would not let her go until she was gone.”
‘I’d flip the TV off, say goodnight to my parents, head to the bathroom, grab my sunglasses case, opening it up to my spoon, baggies, and needle. Into my veins the heroin would go.’
“‘I can do this, and I will,’ I thought, ‘just not today.’ I was now using in secret. All day, every day.”
