What It’s Like Missing a Drug Addicted Mother

My mother passed away August 24th 2007. I was 9. I knew from a young age that my mother was not like most. She was out at most hours of the night and slept most of the day. The times she was awake, she was sitting in the dark, a shroud of cigarette smoke surrounding her like an undiscovered island.

My brothers and I always skirted around the island, for we feared the fire breathing Mom hidden within. She always watched from the fog of her island, careful to warn us away with her roars and insults.

My brothers and I learnt to watch where we were walking to avoid stepping on anything that could harm us. On Mom’s good days, her smile felt like a warm hug on a chilly day. On Mom’s bad days, we learnt to hide away so that her screams wouldn’t get to us. Moms good days were mountains but her bad days were as deep as the Mariana Trench.

On the good days, her laughter would fill all the empty places in the house. We would smell the homey smell of something baking. On the good days, there were fresh flowers in a cup on the table and their perfumed scent would chase away the demons. On the good days, the windows and curtains were open, letting in the healing light and breeze and letting out the boogeymen. On the good days, she held me close and her voice rang out with a million ‘I Love You’s’.

On the bad days, her voice and her hands rained down a million little hurts. Sometimes I would have to hide in a cardboard box so she didn’t find me. On the bad days, we would wonder if we were going to be fed or if we were going to be safe. There were times when that smiley face cup that always made us smile, made us cry instead.

The bad days always out numbered the good days. It got to the point where the good days were no where to be seen, as if they too were hiding in a cardboard box from The Fire Breathing Mom.

The day we were taken away from home, she didn’t really seem to care. She sat there as I cried for her, begging that she save us. She stared at a wall and smoked her cigarettes and hid in her shrouded undiscovered island. I never forgot that day.

She’s hurt me in so many ways, the last way was her death. Little 9 year old me learnt the hardest lesson of all, someday, people you love will leave you in a permanent way. I remember being too afraid to go up to her body, too afraid to see her laying there lifeless. Too afraid to see the way she had wasted away in her last year on the earth.

Missing a drug addict is the hardest thing you will ever feel. There is hate for everything she put me through, and everything she put our family through. On the other hand, there is this inexplicable love and ache I feel when I think about her. There are days when I’ll think about everything she did, and I’ll wish I had had a better mother.

There are days I’ll think about the good in her, and wished she had stuck around. She had done such awful things, but at the end of the day, under the medicated armour she wore, she was my mother. My mother, soft smiles, booming laughs, off key singing, warm hugs. My mother, cigarette smoke, yelling, and drugs.

Thirteen years have past and I still get an ache in my chest, 1 part sadness, 1 part anger, and 2 parts trauma. I will hate and love her the rest of my life.