You're the only person you have to live with the rest of your life
The problem is no one can stop death. The more we try the worse it gets. People are becoming obsessed with death. With Covid death specifically. People have locked themselves in their house. They refuse to see family and friends. They won't work. They won't go outside in the fresh air for fear it may be contaminated.
As people we have the right to be left alone and to do as we please. The choices we make then decide the life that we lead. This has become completely turned around by everyone. Most people in our society and in every political party seems to think that freedom means doing whatever one wants without consequence and rights are to have whatever they choose without the needs to work for them
I don't see trauma in that way. I certainly don't see bad things that happen to me as a reflection of me at all. I didn't cause my parents to divorce, or my brother to leave, or my son's father to do drugs, or my parents to die. These are things that other people have done that affect me but does in no way embody me. I am who I am despite all of these things happening around me and to me. I am who I am because of all of the things that happen around me and to me. It doesn't do anyone any good to create a persona of trauma and hold onto it so tightly that it drowns you.
Now I read this article about Sesame Street talking to millions of kids about their parents. Millions of kids whose mommies and daddies have to stay sober using nothing but will power. My son is not the only kid I know whose parent has died from the crisis.. my son is not the only kid I know that needed a monitor to make sure he was safe when his Da was using.
Two years ago I finally said enough was enough. He was out of my house for the third time, and back in jail for assaulting his mom when I told him that he had to go to re rehab. Not a 2 week or 30 day dry out, but a real program that really worked on the heart of his issues. He refused. His mother agreed that as long as he had dried out and promised to stay sober that was all that mattered. I knew that one of these days things were going to go to far and I didn't want my son or me anywhere near it.
I am a believer in medication when needed, but I also believe that it's a band-aid to help take the edge off so that you can do the real work with thoughts and actions. We are our brains. Our emotions come from chemicals released in our brains.. our thoughts activate those chemicals being released. He had an overwhelming amount of "stress" (cortisol) hormones and low amounts of "happy" (dopamine) chemicals in his brain. He would try to fix that with drugs, and for the short term they would help, but he had no one to help him through the rest of the process when he was younger and still forming.
I was never married to Neil. I wasn't even with him at the time of his death, but I was his family. I was his person.. and I was his widow long before the last hit killed him. Opiates stole his life. They stole him from us. I am an opiate widow, because opiates killed my family.
That message never came in.. that call was never made. Neil was dead. Neil is dead. After almost 2 years of sobriety my biggest fear came true, and I had to be the one to tell our sweet little boy that his father was gone forever.
If there are people out there who are looking to get healthy, but don't know where to start, or feel like they'll be shamed, I hope that they see the mannequins of people who look like them and realize that they are not alone. There's an entire market of people just like you wanting the same thing.
I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.