About That...

Remember the time that there was something wrong with dad's tea? Yes, that was me. It all started because I was ten and I couldn't take his drinking anymore. I studied the plants that were in the yard and made a discovery that one of them is dangerous if taken or ingested. Now before you worry nothing happened and he just made me make him a new picture of tea so there was no actual damage done but I was a child, and I was trying to protect us from the beatings that we all got, and I wanted to make it end.

I never meant any serious harm I just wanted to make him suffer the way that we suffered on a daily basis because of the drugs and the drinking. Getting thrashed and being told that I was useless was not the way a child should be treated. I was told that I mistreated you and treated you like you were just an object and that I was worth nothing. I was trying to protect us and take him down a notch. Clearly it did not work but my heart was in the right place.

I love you mom to this day and hope that you can forgive me for trying to poison him. I was 10. It was us against him and he held all of the cards and did he play them against us. After one night of crying myself to sleep you checked on me the next morning because he asked you too. He knew that he ripped me apart on many levels and wanted to make sure that I was okay. It's sad that only when he sobered up slightly in the morning that he would think and remember to check on me. Most nights like this happened when I was a young child. When I grew up there was the ability to take care of myself which usually meant staying at friends because I could leave. You couldn't and for that I regret all. I wish I could have taken you with me and made sure that you were safe as well. You wouldn't go though, because you loved him, and he would literally die without you. I don't mean that in the endearing way. You literally did everything from him from meals to setting out his clothing every morning and after work, so he did not have to do anything. Now is the same only his drinking is catching up with him and the pain and suffering he has to endure must be great.

You remember sitting on the porch with a knife all night to make sure no one harmed us? I remember!

His drunk buddies were too handsy when they weren't streaking through the back yard when I had friends over. You are my everything because you kept us alive and going when everything we knew was darkness and drugs. You are the reason I am here and not a drinker or smoker or any kind of drug user. You are the reason I am clean and happy with a husband and a full-time job. You are the reason that I am as strong as I am and without you, I would just have drunken myself into a stooper just like the rest of the family.

Now I do my best to be good. I am working all the time and have a house and several cats that I take good care of. They have little pudgy bellies. You can ask for pictures if you don't believe me. I read the good book and are following my dreams, something that I never thought possible without you. My husband keeps me on the straight and narrow with his logical thinking and makes me rethink my choices. I am grateful to have him for I would be crazy making if I didn't have him to reel me in. Sometimes he drives me nuts, but I know that everything he does is for the betterment of us all and not just to take care of himself.

Now I only fear what would have happened so many years ago if he had drunk that tea and gotten sick.... Would he have been really sick, or could it have killed him? I would have been taken away and sent to some sort of Juvenile detention center. That would have changed the course of my life profoundly. I'm glad things worked out the way that they did, and no one was injured. You never knew this because I didn't want to tell you what was happening inside my head. If you thought that I wanted to harm him, you would have put yourself in between us and potentially gotten harmed yourself and I could not have lived with myself should anything have happened to you. You are all I have in this world the only mother that I will ever have and will not risk anything when it comes to you.

Yes so, my confession: Remember the time that dad threw a fit because there was something in his tea and he yelled at me and made me remake it? Yes, that was me and there was a name for what I put in it but I am not going to share it here. What the point is, is to let you know that that was me many, many years ago now, trying to protect us. If you saw someone beating up your mother physically and then mentally what would you do if you were me? Luckily we didn't have any guns in the house or things could have been way worse. Nothing happened and I never tried anything like that again for fear of doing something that may have upset you. You were gone working 12 hour shifts seven days a week and were never around to know about this.

"He would have just gotten sick", she thought to herself as she prepped that plant for a purpose.

On a side note, We always did have very beautiful flowers outside the house and round the back.

Your Daughter,

Linda