What can I say? One minute I’m barely able to get up to dress myself because I’m consumed with despair and the next, well, I’m running out of my house with a  golf club in one hand and a coffee in the other. The coffee probably explains the golf club, and the fact that I actually felt regret that I was not able to use it. My elaborate plan to hide in the back seat and jump out to whack someone off the top of their head, gleefully cheering as blood spurted from the wound was thwarted when picking up my daughter became somewhat anticlimactic. I would like to say I’m not a violent person, but I’m not sure that would be accurate. I don’t seek out violence and I certainly don’t randomly jump poor souls as the walk down the street. But I have to say some of my favorite movies are pretty violent (Natural Borne Killers, Pulp Fiction, Reservoir Dogs, Tombstone {don’t ask, I have an obsession with Wyatt Erp}) so I think that means I err on the side of bash a bitch’s head in, without much need to follow through. Except when it comes to this.

When your daughter crawls in the back seat of your car broken, beaten, dirty and sobbing, there are not enough heads available to cut off to calm the anger. Unfortunately, even when you want to behead an SOB, there isn’t always an SOB around. Some of what she is experiencing is at the hand of her own poor choices. I can’t ignore that she puts herself in dangerous situations. The level of disgust I feel at the advantage people will take on someone when they are vulnerable, i.e., high, is outrageous. Someone said I should fear not because Karma will come back around but it’s impossible to wait for that. I get the whole Karma bus has it’s own route and will come eventually but for once, for one time in this whole fucking mess, I want to see it. I want to see the bus steam roll over someone. Just once I want to get the satisfaction of saying that I saw justice get served.  And we are back full circle to the violent thing. Am I supposed to feel bad that I want someone to suffer? That I want drug dealers who prey on the vulnerable young women who eventually have to face the things that have been done to them which makes them want to use again be put through a wood chipper. Still alive.  I suppose. Every once in a while I say something that makes me say to myself, you are one sick cookie. I think I am at that point so let me rein it in a minute. Let’s take a step back, and put on our non-violent thinking cap for just a moment.

So, she cut off communication and it was devastatingly hard. I would check Facebook messenger to see when she was active. I would check to see if her locator was on meaning her phone was on. It was the longest two days of my life.  We did everything we could think of, including circle the house we knew she was in, on the regular, hoping to catch a glimpse.  We, along with some close friends of hers, tried profusely to get her to answer us, show us she was alive. We called the guy who owns the house we knew she was in, and left a message. Of course he didn’t answer.  Dick head. Anyway, AC left a message that we just want to hear from her, no cops, no tricks. Shortly after she texted me. That she wasn’t ready to come home. That she was scared. She was sorry she was hurting me. Not to chase her. Let her be.  That is the hardest thing in the world for a parent to hear… I’m in a terrible place but ignore that and let me continue to make this bad choice? But the truth is we had no choice. If we busted down the door, a-5-iron-ablazing, she would have run, and if I managed to get her into detox she would have walked out when I left. As painful and agonizing and anxiety-provoking as it is, I couldn’t do anything. That night, the last night, I had a dream that AC and I were walking through a swamp and we could hear her calling to me. By the time we found her she was up to her chin in thick, heavy mud. We pulled and pulled but the more we struggled the farther down she slipped until all I could see was the very tip of her pony tail sticking out. Not moving. I threw myself into the mud, but no matter how hard I tried I couldn’t get the mud to take me too. Tell me that isn’t symbolic. Where ever he is, Freud is having a party with that one.

Having faith that an addict will do the right thing is the absolute epitome of the word. It was the only thing I could do. Have faith. I sent her messages of love. I told her how much we loved her and needed her. Others did too. AC sent her a long message about how much he loved her. Her brothers did. Her dad and her step mom did. It was the absolute essence of killing it with kindness. The next morning she sent text me and I could tell she was scared. It took a lot of coaxing and paying off her drug debt to get her out of there and back home. The girl that left the house pissed off and determined a week ago was not the girl who crawled out of the depths of hell into the loving arms of those of us waiting for her.  And that bring me to the “can’t even.” The ridiculous process we went through to get her to detox was another 24 hour hell of its own which included me sitting on her purse in the emergency room which did something to her stupid vape which then caught fire in her purse under my ass. That led AC to yell something is on fire, lifting me off the purse, grabbing the smoking vape IN HIS BARE HANDS and running out of the hospital before the sprinkler went off. So ya, that happened.   That’s a story for another day. Today, I work, I go home, I eat and I sleep. And I pray to all that is holy that when I wake up tomorrow, she is still in detox, willing and surrendering to a better life.