A MILLION MOMENTS THAT MAKE ME CRY

MY BEAUTIFUL, BEAUTIFUL BOY.

With my new box of kleenex almost gone, my gut wrenching, guttural cries continue.

Don't begin to THINK you understand unless YOU have been the mother of an addict. If you have been an addict...it doesn't count. If you have a dear friend with an addicted child...it doesn't count. Even if you are the beloved auntie or grandmother....it still doesn't count.

MY child. That I love more than ANYONE else in the world. Is lost right now. Is enslaved. And I cannot help him. I cannot save him. Although MORE than willing, there is NOTHING that I can sacrifice that will do it.

"I am beside myself - uncomprehending, terrified. Nothing in my life has prepared me for the incapacitating worry when I don't know where he is. I imagine [him on the streets] like a wild animal, wounded and desperate...."

"I am awake at four a.m. along with parents of other drug addicted children, children who are - we don't know where."

"Even after everything we have been through, I am stunned. [He] is injecting drugs - shooting them into his arms - arms that not that long ago threw baseballs and built Lego castles, arms that wrapped around my neck when I carried his sleepy body from the car at night." 

Hands that so deftly played the guitar, now reach for the poison that holds him captive.

"...anxiety has taken up permanent residence in my body."

"It's not that [I] am not thinking about him. His addiction and its twin, the specter of his death, permeate the air [I] breathe."

"[He] is still gone. Life does not stop."

There are a million moments that make me cry for my son. This is just one....

Yet I will FOREVER have hope. 

[Above quotations are from, "Beautiful Boy" by David Sheff]