When you think of family, you typically think of a mother and a father and their kids living in a house together supporting one another and being a close group of people.

For some families, that is exactly what it is. For others, however, that's not the case.

My vision of family is my older sister taking on the role of both mother and sister, and my grandparents taking me in as their own child and giving me the life I deserved. The typical mother-daughter relationship that everyone knows of was something that I never got to experience, but I'm okay with that. My mother cared more about what could get her high and make her feel good over what to make for dinner to feed her children so they wouldn't starve.

When I was younger, I believed my mom cared about my sister and I more than anything in the world.

We believed she would sacrifice everything to make sure we had what we needed to live a good life. We believed we could rely on her for everything. We believed that she was the person we could come to with any problem we had and would listen with no judgment. We believed she was our best friend.

Everything that we believed had turned out to be a total lie.

We found out she cared more about what was on the inside of a pill bottle than us going to school and getting an education. She cared more about getting the high she desired than our safety by almost burning the house down around us when she passed out in the middle of making dinner. She was a selfish woman who lost not only herself to addiction, but the only people that ever cared about her; her family. To the mom who I believed to be the best person in my life, I am doing so much better without you.

It took me years to realize everything my mom did was to benefit only herself and could put me in harms way.

The best decision that could've been made for my future was getting away from her. If I were to continue to live with her during her addiction, I may have never graduated high school. I may have never went to college. I may have never had the opportunities I have now to make something of myself and not follow in her footsteps. I will say that seeing the relationship between my friends and their moms is tough on me sometimes because I had always wanted that.

As I get older, I realize that not having a mother is one of the greatest things that could've happen to shape me into the successful young woman I am today. So if you ever see this mom, just know that I am and will continue to do amazing things without you in my life.