You stole my mom, you suckered in my brothers, enticed my sister. You took away my family memories, and when I try to tell my mom moments I remember that she doesn’t recall, it’s because of you. Because of you, my brother ran into the wall when he thought you would take away the pain of his girlfriend cheating on him. A false lover, a needy lover, you are the unhealthiest of relationships one can enter into. Moments I’ve lost with my mother, my brother's high school graduation lacking her attendance, constant fear that every time the phone rang it would be “the one” about their OD. You stole my family from me.
Or, at least, you tried to.
Because now they fight against choosing you or choosing the life of sobriety. They wake up with a desire to go back to you again, and instead, they look up to God and beg for the strength to do this without you. You brought them to a rock bottom that they didn’t even know existed until they were brought even lower. My family, like dominoes, were each being knocked down by this disease until finally they said, “Enough.”
Every day, addicts are fighting against the pressure to give into their disease, their “dark passenger” as Dexter would call it. My mother is living proof that you can beat it, but it's not simple. Upon getting sober, she went through the toughest tribulations of her life, and she wouldn’t be here today if it weren’t for her dedication to a program. Recovered addicts are not weak; they are not wounded. They are warriors fighting demons that are not visible to you or me but are all too familiar to them. In my eyes, an addict successfully recovering and staying sober is equivalent to someone winning the Nobel prize.
So for that, I thank you, Mom. Thank you for choosing sobriety. Thank you for allowing me the gift of hearing your cackle of a laugh, for 4 a.m. runs to Las Palapas when we’ve stayed up too late on a summer's night, for the advice only a mother could give, the arms only a mother could hold just right and above all, I'm thankful I have my best friend back. Through overcoming your addiction, you’ve taught me strength I only hope to have one day. I leave you with this quote from "Mulan," the story of a woman overcoming the odds when everything was against her.
And you, my mother, are a very rare flower.
