Wednesday evening, I called my Dad to chat just like I do everyday. Most times, these calls are fairly light-hearted and last all of one or two minutes, sometimes less if I catch him “in the middle of it.” This particular call was different. After I cheerily told him I was headed to a Beatles presentation at a local coffee shop, he said, "I probably don't tell you enough but I love you and I'm proud of you." Dad doesn’t usually get sentimental and say those things on a whim. But the tinge of sadness I could hear in his voice got me a little worried. So, I asked him what brought him to say that. His reply: "Well, you know, we're all just lucky you guys turned out like you did, even with everything we've been through."

I didn't give much thought to what he'd said or why or that there may even be something wrong. But when I got a text from my sister the next morning asking about a similar phone call she had gotten from Dad the same night, it made my Thomas family “Nervous Nelly” gene kick into overdrive. Before my class started, I sent a text to our step-mom asking if she knew what was wrong. I don’t know why but in the short window of time it took her to reply, my mind jumped to the worst conclusions. Thankfully, all is good at home, everyone is healthy, and none of us are in any kind of any immediate danger.

However, the event her text informed me of is indeed incredibly tragic; one of Dad’s close friends lost his 21-year-old daughter to a drug overdose. The last sentence of my step-mom’s text was, “sometimes you just need to hear your children’s voices.”

Suddenly, it all just made sense. I understood what Dad was feeling and why he had called my sister, brother, and me just to say he cared. As someone who grew up in the days where experimenting with different substances was the norm and knowing his fair share of people who couldn’t control their desire for those things, it makes complete sense Dad would be a little worried about his own kids meeting a similar fate; he knows that one wrong decision, one night hanging around the wrong people, one night of feeling down in the dumps, or one too many consecutive nights of drinking or partying could have taken any of the three of us down a similar path. I think his concern was even greater given the fact my sister and I grew up with an alcoholic mother who wound up becoming another victim of the disease.

After Mom passed and I got a little older, I wondered if Dad’s overprotective nature and his constant reminders to be safe and make smart decisions had anything to do with what happened to Mom. Now, I believe it definitely did, especially when coupled with knowing so many people who have lost loved ones to addiction, watching his own friends suffer through it, seeing story after story of similar nature on the news, and realizing how easy it is to get wrapped up in it.

However, as the social outcast I was in high school, my opportunities to experiment with drugs and alcohol were next to none. Honestly, that was fine with me. I had little desire for or knowledge of any of it until I got to college when I began encountering people who were into all the things your typical college kid is. I never had the desire to try any of it or get caught up in it until my days as a freshman. Even then, I’d occasionally have one or two beers and that was it. As surprising as it may be to some, I have yet to smoke a cigarette, take a hit on a joint, or accept an offer for any kind of illegal substance. That’s not to say I haven’t been tempted to. But every time I think about it, I don’t.

In the back of my mind, I always hear my Dad and my aunts telling me to make smart choices and be careful. The major deciding factor is my fear. Why am I scared? Well, for one, because it’s something new and I don’t know how I’d react or what would happen. But the scariest part of it is knowing that this decision could be the gateway to that dark place everyone talks about. This then leads to the thought, “What if you don’t have the control to make it a one-time thing? What if you end up like Mom?” Almost instantly, I’m reminded of the pain I felt as a ten-year-old kid suddenly without a mother; as a daughter who watched her father grieve for years; as a sister who watched her precious, bubbly little sister miss her mother, knowing there was nothing she could do or say to make it better.
Twelve years later, while a little faded, that pain still follows us. Only those who grew up watching their parents drink themselves to death or choose a fleeting feeling over their own children time and again will understand what it’s like to be haunted by these things, to grow up in their shadow, knowing the old adage, “the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree” carries a much more foreboding tone.

My sister and I lived that; we grew up in an addict’s shadow. All these years later, that shadow still follows us everywhere we go and in every decision we make, it probably always will. We know good and well we’re our own people that are fully capable of making our own decisions. But we are equally aware one moment of weakness, one night of trying to be cool, or one moment you let your guard down could be one real step in the wrong direction. We know how easy it is to have someone you love disappear, to watch them fight their inner demons with everything they have and still come out the underdog. We know that for years to come, you’ll still feel there was more you could have done to help them survive. You’ll wonder what was so alluring about a substance that made it seem to come before their love for you. Most of all, you’ll wonder what it feels like to have a normal life or if there is such a thing.

Besides that, growing up with an addict as a parent affects your life in ways most people don’t realize. People who know look at and talk to you differently; if I had a dime for every time someone I went to high school with talked to me like a toddler or stared at me like they’d never seen me before, I’d have enough money to buy a good cup of coffee or two; kids my age hardly talked to me. Now that I think about it, a bunch of that lies in not understanding what I went through and not knowing how to talk to me. The fact that I was just a very different person from everyone else probably had something to do with it, too. It likely affected how I made friends; what kind of decent parent wants their kid associating with the child of an addict, spending time in their home, possibly around said addict?

People who end up learning your story offer apologetic sentiments that mean very little, especially when coming from someone who doesn’t fully understand what you went through; they often don’t know what to say or how to put themselves in your shoes so all they have to offer is, “I’m sorry.” In addition, your family constantly hides the truth as if you have no clue what’s going on. In reality, the kids are usually the first to sense something is wrong. To this day, I’m still putting pieces of my parents’ lives together.

Then, you meet those along the way who choose to dismiss you as another “degenerate-to-be” without ever giving you the chance to prove them wrong; the kids born into "broken homes," where their parents do time, can’t say clean for more than a month, lose custody, and make empty promises about a life as a normal family get the very worst of it. They’re often the kids people see as weird and different. Most times, they live their lives feeling unwanted and unloved because their parents chose a high, a substance, over loving and taking care of them. That takes a toll on a young mind. Without the right guidance and support, it’s incredibly easy for children from these families to fall in with the wrong crowd and wander down a slippery slope. However, when these same youngsters grow up with at least one loving parent and the support of their extended family, it makes all the difference. There are plenty of us who come through our challenges and loss to be fine human beings. Just look at my sister and me.

When I heard Dad say we were lucky to have turned out the way we did, it made me start thinking about how easy it would have been and still is for our lives to do a 180. Dad knows that, too. All it really would have taken was one wrong choice, it could still be that one moment of weakness that takes us down. Imagining the pain Dad would feel if any of us ever wandered down that path only makes me more determined to keep making good choices; I would never, ever want to cause my family, the people I love most in this world, any kind of heartache.

It almost makes me wonder if luck is the right way to talk about how we turned out. I’ve thought about this several times in the past and I don’t think I ever fully attributed it to luck. Instead, somehow, our lives just kept carrying on with very little upset; I almost feel like, as hard as it was to move forward, we never thought about letting things drag us down; my sister, father, and me all made the choice to keep living our lives. We’re fortunate to have an amazing family that supported us and helped give us the love and care we needed; knowing someone cares and will be there for you means the entire world.

The moral of this story is, growing up in an addict’s shadow is something you always struggle with. You’re constantly reminded that shadow could easily suck you in. But you also realize your experiences give you the ability to help others see addiction for the beast it is; you know first- hand it tears families apart, causes innumerable tragedies, and leaves a looming shadow over everyone it touches. Those who make it to where the grass is a little greener know how fortunate they are to be there and how easily it could all slip away.