Disappointed...again.

I'm sorry I used the word dick-head in my last post. My husband said it was "raunchy". It was just the first word that came to mind and I didn't feel like censoring. One of the rules (are they rules? no, more like tenets, I think) of recovery is honesty and I'm embracing that right now. So if I feel like saying dick-head, I'm just going to say it.

But, once again, I'm getting ahead of myself. This is part 2 of the story I started yesterday about my daughter.

After she called to say she wasn't going to rehab, we had no choice but to continue as usual. No enabling, which means no offer of a shower or a bed or food, and a lot of worrying, stressing, and crying. I didn't hear from her again for 4 days.

I was at work when I got the call. It was a police officer and he said he found her and her boyfriend sleeping in a vacant house. He had brought her to my house, where she was outside talking to her brother. I headed home.

My daughter is a small girl and has always looked younger than her age. At almost 19, she still looks about 14. This is what tugged at the officer's heartstrings and prompted him to call instead of arresting her for trespassing or letting her just walk away back onto the street. She reminded him of his 14 year old daughter.

The officer and I spoke for a bit. He said there were 2 other men staying in the house. They were bad guys with bad records that would wind up in prison, he had no doubt. Apparently, my daughter had broken up with her boyfriend (which she's done several times in the 6 months they've been together) and one of the other men was trying to convince her to go with him. The officer, bless his heart, couldn't stand to leave her there and risk her going from the frying pan to the fire, so brought her home.

His intention was that if she came home and got cleaned up and spent time with her family, that she'd realize how much better life could be than being out on the streets. But I don't think he realized that addiction overrides comfort. If I let my daughter stay and shower and refuel, it would only be a matter of hours before she'd leave in search of her boyfriend, or ex-boyfriend, and/or her drug.

I have to say though, that I'm grateful for all the officers out there that truly do care. They see so much suffering and sadness and stupidity it's a wonder they aren't all jaded and cynical. But there are many who are still tenderhearted and care and go out of their way to try to help.

He talked a bit more to my daughter to try to reach her heart, and he did for a moment. She cried and admitted she needed help. I asked her if she would go with me to a treatment center to just check it out and see what it was like. I'd asked her this question before, and the answer was always no. But this time, she agreed. It wasn't exactly a commitment to treatment, but it was a start.

When we arrived, we talked to an intake specialist who was the perfect combination of compassion and directness. A recovering addict himself, he tried to encourage my daughter to commit to treatment on the spot, but the best she would do was to say that she would come back. She did fill out intake paperwork though, which surprised me.

We toured the center and she was quiet, but positive. When we were done, the specialist and I tried to convince her again to commit to treatment, but she said she had to go back to the area where the officer picked her up because "people" (a.k.a. other users) saw her driving away in a cop car, without handcuffs, and talking to an officer, so if she disappeared for a while, they would think she's a snitch. And bad things happen to snitches.

Of course, that was more paranoia and excuses than anything else. Maybe on the streets there's some truth to that, but I doubt any users that saw her would even remember it after their next high, so it likely wasn't a real issue.

But, once again, she couldn't be persuaded to go to treatment right then. She said she would call me later that night. She did, but still wasn't ready to go. I was disappointed, but still felt like although it wasn't a triumph, it was a small step forward. Maybe enough small steps would eventually get her there.

I next heard from her 3 days later, from jail. That's part 3 of my story. I promise to post it tomorrow.

Disappointment

It's been a month since my last post. Wow. I'm so sorry, my little blogging community, that I'm not more consistent. It's just that I get depressed and overwhelmed, and I feel so spent by the end of my workday that I just can't sit in front of my computer and type when I get home.

And to add another reason not to blog, it's been getting warmer here and my office is upstairs and at 5:30 in the afternoon, when I get home from work, even with the air conditioner on, it's just so friggin hot in my office. Oh, and my hot flashes that like to come and go without notice are back, so that's double the sweaty fun.

But I have to blog today, because I have a story to tell you. It's a bit long, so I'm telling it in two three four parts. Yes, I promise to have part 2 posted tomorrow and part 3 on Monday and part 4 on Tuesday. Really. I will.

This story took place over the last 2 weeks and it's about my daughter who we're trying to get into treatment for her drug addiction. As you know, the last time didn't go so well.

Two weeks ago, while I'm in the dressing room at the mall with my mom (new post coming about my revised view of "mom jeans" by the way), my ex-husband (a.k.a. dad) calls and says my daughter and her boyfriend (also an addict) showed up at his house and asked to stay and just sleep for a while.

Oh, I'm getting ahead of myself. They were homeless (my daughter and her boyfriend, not my ex). He lost his job because he no-called, no-showed too many times and they wore out their welcome on other addict's couches (because believe it or not, even addicts don't like other addicts sleeping on their couch) and her car which they were living in, had been towed. So they had the clothes on their backs and whatever she could fit in her purse.

So there they were, on my exes front porch. I left the mall and headed over. By the time I got there, police had been called because my ex was trying to hold my daughter there-literally-and the boyfriend didn't like it and started causing a ruckus.

So the cops, her dad, her step-mom, myself, and her brother, all try to convince my daughter that it's time to stop this craziness and get help. We told her boyfriend the same thing. He needed help too and the officers gave him a card with places he could go to get help. Her boyfriend is a dick-head, but he's a dick-head with the disease of addiction and I'm not without compassion for him, even though I'm angry at him because of the way my daughter's life has spiraled downward so fast since she met him.

I watched my exhausted daughter agree with all of us that she needed help and tell us that she would get help only if  her boyfriend agreed. I realized then what a sick hold he had on her and how much control she had lost over her life. He was her connection to her drug and so controlled her almost as much as her addiction did.

The cops could see it too. One of the cops took boyfriend outside while the other tried to talk to our daughter with us. We tried to tell her he didn't care about her and if he did, he would let her go get the help she needs. We told my daughter to ask him straight out if he would let her go to rehab and see what his answer was. If he cared, he would let her get off the streets and get help.

So we all traipse outside so she can ask him. She looked him straight in the eyes and she asked in a pleading voice that broke my heart if he would let her go get help. And that little mother-effer said, "You don't need rehab, you can get clean on your own."

Bzzzzzzzzzzz. Wrong answer dick-head. But my daughter didn't see it. She said she needed to talk to him alone.

We couldn't hold her there. The cops couldn't make her go. They couldn't haul boyfriend's sorry ass away because he hadn't committed a crime. Our daughter said she would talk to dick-head and get him to agree to rehab and she'd be ready to go to rehab the next day. She said she just needed to talk to him alone.

And so we had to watch our homeless daughter walk away. With a dick-head.

By now, you've probably figured out how this story ends. Because addicts are a predictable lot, not known for keeping their word.

My daughter had said she'd call us the next day by 10 AM and we could take her to rehab. She called at noon. She was high, talking very fast and angrily. She wasn't going to rehab. She couldn't leave dick-head alone on the streets because people were after him. There was no reasoning with her.

She slipped out of our grasp again.

Do you want to know how a parent sleeps knowing their child is out on the streets, homeless, and entrusting her life to a dick-head? They don't. They worry and they cry and they try to enjoy a thing or two here and there, but they're never truly happy because they hurt for their child and for themselves and for their family and for what is no more.

I truly pray everyday for every addict out there, including dick-head, and for every parent of an addict.

Please come back and read part 2, part 3, and part 4 of my story. It gets better.

Sunday Snippets

This really was meant to be a "Friday Fragments" post, but since I'm both a procrastinator and much to tired to come home from work and blog, it's now a "Sunday Snippets" post. You know, just snippets and fragments that, when strung together, just might qualify for a blog post. Maybe.

Snippet #1: I went shopping yesterday at Kohl's in hopes of finding some springy tops to resurrect my winter pants. Out of about 10 tops I tried on, I found only one. One. Quite disappointing. It was a cute one though:

Right? And might I just add here, that whatever Blogger did to it's "insert image" function, SUCKS!! This wasn't uploaded sideways, but no matter what I did, it would only insert sideways! Also, Giggity.

ANYhoo, I just found the one top. In my rejection of all the other tops, I realized something. You know all those cartoons and jokes about gravity affecting women's bodies, and that things hang that didn't hang before, yada, yada? They. are all. true.

Looking in the dressing room mirror, I could have sworn I shrunk 2 inches. My butt sagged, my arms looked way fatter than I remember (and it hasn't been THAT long since I've been in a dressing room. Maybe a couple months), and I had a camel toe, even though my jeans weren't tight in the least.

Which tells me even my vagina is now sagging. Just. Perfect.

I looked like an Oompa-loompa.

And it didn't help my already jangled-due--to-an-unpleasant-dose-of-reality nerves that my cousin (whom I love dearly and whom I asked to go with me shopping, but who couldn't because she was going to take a nap), kept texting, asking me to send her pictures of Jennifer Lopez's line.

Yeah, right? The nerve! While she's napping at home, I'm stuck in the Kohl's dressing room, all by myself, staring at the reflection of an Oompa-loompa and forced to deal with the trauma of realizing all those things Maxine says are true! Like this:

And this:

But instead of saying "Hell-to-the-no, Be-atch, get outa bed and get your ass over here and tell me I don't look as bad as the dressing room mirror says I do," I took pictures of JLo's cute tops and sent them and informed my cousin that yes, JLo's flowy pants are really cute, but they had no size 14's, and no, I didn't see any JLo platform shoes.

But at least I got to end my shopping with a glass of wine at Mimi's with my sister, who texted me after she woke up from a nap to see if I wanted to go to Mimi's with her so she could get away from her husband and step-kids for awhile. What the hell is up with everyone taking naps??

Snippet #2 and yes, I promise it won't be as long as snippet #1: Hubby and I are going to Zion next weekend on a little 3-day getaway, just the two of us. We haven't went away together in a while and with all the stress from my daughter, and just life, we're really looking forward to it.

Attention internet weirdos looking for houses to break into: No, our house will not be empty while we're gone!! We have kids in their 20's that still live at home, and my daughter has already asked me if she can have "a few people over." Translation: Can I have a house party and let everyone crash for the night so they don't have to drive home. So, not only will our house not be empty, but there's likely to be more people there than I care to think about at the moment. Now back to my blog post:

Room rates for the town of Springdale, right outside of Zion, start at $130 a night, which really was more than I thought. I was a bit disappointed. I even came up with the idea of pitching a tent in one of the campgrounds, just to sleep in, to save money on the room. 

Yes, I really did. I like camping, so it wasn't a bad idea to me, and surprisingly, hubby even agreed. This is the same hubby that told me once, after I told him that I could just pitch a tent on the beach in Hawaii and live there, perfectly happily, that I should make sure the tent is close enough to the hotel he would be staying in so that he could wave goodnight to me from his room. 

So I was quite surprised he agreed to this idea..

In the end, we decided to go ahead and spring for a room because we really did need a stress relieving getaway and having to traipse across a campground to the bathroom in the middle of the night wasn't really very stress-reducing. So, we found rooms for about $108 a night at the Bumbleberry Inn. No, I have no idea was a bumbleberry is, but I'll find out and let you know.

Snippet #3: The boy (that's my son), who has been going to cooking school for the past several months, got a job as a cook at a local bar and grill. We're very happy for him, because it's a start in the field he wants to be in, and it's a job after having been unemployed for close to a year.

Snippet #4: I'm also very proud of my older daughter, Sissa, for not letting anything get in the way of her goals. She continues to pursue her dancing and her associates degree, while holding down a job, and plans to get her own apartment, with a friend in the coming months. Which would be great because then she can have her "few people over" at her house.

Snippet #5: I'm still hoping and praying for my youngest child, The Girl, that she'll have a moment of clarity in her addiction and realize she needs to get help, and get it.

Snippet #6: I almost made the fatal mistake of confusing Star Wars with Star Trek while at work. This may seem like no big deal, but I work with computer geeks. And Star Wars and Star Trek are like the old and new testament to them. Seriously. I tweet to our work twitter account, and someone had tweeted that Spock was celebrating his 81st birthday. So I was about to tweet that at 81, he would  need the force to be with him to blow out all those candles.

Fortunately, I realized my faux pas before I sent it. In case you aren't a geek, the force was a Star Wars thing and Spock was from Star Trek. Anyway, I ended up saying that I hope Spock lived long and prospered, which, my husband informed me later, was lame.

Snippett #7: I bought some new spanx, and would like to say something to all spanx-makers everywhere:

BE PART OF THE SOLUTION, NOT PART OF THE PROBLEM!

By this I mean, if you make a product that is supposed to hold in a woman's gut and diminish her fat rolls, but said product simply rolls down to the waist, adding to the woman's already existing rolls, THAN YOU ARE NOT SOLVING THE PROBLEM, YOU ARE ADDING ANOTHER ROLL, WHICH IS ADDING TO THE PROBLEM! 

Not too mention making for a very uncomfortable workday as I constantly tried to unroll my spanx from my waistband. Oh, and then I remembered the security cameras. Perfect.

Oompa-loompa here, signing out.