Dear Addiction

Recently life has been extremely challenging. Being in this field
of wellness does not spare me the casualties of being a human.

Though these hurts are new in so many ways they are not. So much
of my trauma has stemmed form the same source.

Addiction, abandonment.

Until the age of 13 I was a child of an addict. I would wake
and not know if my mother would be home if she would be off on a binge or if
she got put in jail. I grew up doing things a child my age should never have to
do. I spent afternoons with other children of addicts in little rooms while our
parents feed their habit. I was promised recovery and it didn’t come for years.

But it did come for my mom. I never dealt with this hurt
because I was one of the fortunate children that got my parent back. I wasn’t a
child of an addict forever and for that I am fortunate. I never felt the need
to explore those hurts because my mom was there and she was everything I prayed
for. It seemed disrespectful to talk about a time that didn’t exist anymore, a
person she worked so hard to overcome.

But the reality is that I did live that life and since my mothers passing it has
visited me again.

Addiction didn’t just touch my family life it touched my love
life. I married young, a boy I went to high school with. He joined the military
and war took from me the man I married in return I got the bits that remained.
He drank to cope with things I can’t begin to understand. However, I was the casualty
of his war. I was verbally abused, pushed into door frames and told I was
unloved. 

I dated others with the same demon… Addiction.

I don’t hate any of them because I know I too have soothed or
hid from myself with a bottle.

A part of me is ashamed. Ashamed I never stood up for
myself as a child or as a young woman. I didn’t protect her, stand up for her
or tell her story and I want you to know it’s never too late.

So I am doing so now, not to my mom, or my ex husband or men
I have loved but to Addiction.

Dear Addiction,

You robbed me of my childhood and I sat quietly while you
did. I cried on bathroom floors because of your slurred spiteful words. I
was kicked out of home after homes because of your inability to provide
stability. But I am not a child anymore and that little girl deserves an
advocate and I am strong enough for her now. I owe it to her to tell you that
what you took from her I will spend the rest of my life getting back. You have
no place in her life anymore and I can not be sympathetic to you that I
ignore her ever again. It was not right that you turned those she loved into
people she could not recognize. She will never again be abused because of your
failure to heal, she will no longer feel unworthy or abandoned because your
insecurities. She will no longer live in fear that you will return to her life.
You have many faces and my stories but they are not hers. You have not only
tried to take those she loves but her as well, telling her you comfort her with
whispers and whiskey but I know that too is another lie of yours. You can not
have her. I hope those in your grip too find out how empty you really are. How
you don’t offer any relief but rather hinder any healing. You destroy families,
relationships and individuals. I see you for who you are a disease and I hope any one
reading this does as well. That anyone reading also knows that meeting you wasn’t
their fault and that they don’t deserve you no matter what they have done, that
there is always an escape from your grip no matter how hard you try to hold
them, my mother is proof of that and I will be as well. And even after all you’ve done and what I know you to be…

I forgive you, because you come from someones brokeness and we are all a little broken.

Sincerely,

The one you couldnt have

We can’t change how addiction has changed us but we can tell
it to leave.  We can call it out for what it really is, make it face what it has done to us and no longer give it a
place to hurt us.

Speak your truth…

Even if it’s a letter to a faceless foe.

Be who you needed to be when you were younger, who you need
right now.

I hope if you have been touched by addiction you feel a
little less alone. If you have ever battled with it or currently are. You are
not a bad person but you are a broken one and if you ask me broken pieces make
the most beautiful comeback stories.

But you have to fight. Take action. Seek help. Be Honest.

if you have been a victim of addiction. It wasn’t your
fault, you didn’t deserve this and there was nothing you could have done
differently to avoid it.

But it is your job to heal from it.

So no matter where you sit with addiction, simply breathe
and begin,

Begin to heal.

I’m healing with you.

Con todo Amor,

Jena