Getting Through Another Day

I wrote this the same night I wrote "Family Affair" (so six days ago) but I really wasn't sure if I wanted to post it. Since my first post I haven't posted anything that is just raw emotion and me just writing to write and not to tell a story. Telling my story of my experiences isn't hard for me. What's hard for me is being so honest about the pain. Even though I started this blog to talk about the pain, it's something that I still struggle with.

Everyone loves hearing stories of people who have overcame adversities and go on to do great things. But no one wants to hear about the pain the person goes through while overcoming everything. In our society, especially in the midwest, we make sure we don't make anyone else feel uncomfortable with what we're talking about which is part of the reason why I was reluctant to share a post that was about my pain. 


I think this is something that needs to change. We need to feel comfortable hearing the emotional pain of others because everyone has it. People need to feel like they are in a safe place where they can share those emotions if they want to. So while, I still am apprehensive about sharing this, I am going to. Because I don't want to always feel like I have to hide the pain. I don't want others to hide their pain. We all experience pain, we should all be comfortable talking about it, hearing about it and sharing it. 


This post ends abruptly because I got to a point where I was crying so hard, I couldn't write any longer. When I am missing my mom I usually just force it out of my mind so I don't have to deal with the emotions. But when I write, I am forcing myself to feel the emotions that come along with not having a mom. And many times, it's too hard. So that's why this post just kind of stops, I just couldn't keep writing. 

While I was writing my blog about Diana's story of drug raids, I was perfectly fine. Just reflecting on a few memories and thinking about how proud I am of Diana. But about an hour later I find myself crying and just thinking about how much I miss my mom. I'm so tired of missing her. I never get to stop missing her. That's what it's always going to be - Alisha missing her mom. In everyday life. At college graduation. At my wedding. No event in life comes without me wishing my mom was here. I wonder what my mom would think if she read my blog. I wonder what she'd say if I could call her up and tell her I was watching Selena.

I had a dream about my mom last week for the first time in a really long time. I really don't dream about her very often but when I do, it's always her contacting me, usually by phone. God never lets her talk very long though.

In my recent dream, I had a voicemail on my phone so I check it and the next thing I know I'm hearing my mother's voice. I can't quite make out what she is saying because in my dream, it feels so real. I start bawling and freaking out because I can't believe I am actually hearing her voice. I can't believe God let her call me. In my dream, I am so overwhelmed with emotion that I miss most of what she says. From this dream, I remember hearing her say "Babydoll, I am proud of you and I love you so much. I really wish I could see you."

After I wake up and am back in reality, all I can hear is her voice. I repeat the dream over and over in my mind because it feels so real, it sounded so real.

What I would give to receive one more call from her, a call in this reality. In the reality that my mom is now a person I have memories of, photographs with and dreams about. No new memories can be made. No more photographs can be taken. No more phone calls except for those that come to me in my dreams.

Although reality is I'll never hear her voice again, my dreams, memories and pictures allow her to always be with me.

But that's not who my mom should be to me. I hardly ever ask why me but when it comes to losing my mom at 16, I can't help but ask - why me? God knows I had already had it tough then he gave me the biggest adversity I could ever face to top it all off. But I suppose He knew my mom could no longer take the suffering that came with her drug addiction and He decided to free her from that.

When I was around 10 years old, I remember making my mom promise she'd be at my wedding. She pinky-promised with a smile and said she wouldn't miss it for the world.

Two things come to my mind when I think of this:
1) What 10-year-old feels the need to make her mom pinky promise to be at her wedding?
2) How in the hell am I going to get through that day without her there?

But I'll have to figure it out, like I have with the last 1,937 days since she's been gone. It's always going to be a struggle but like she's taught me - I'll continue to fight through it. No matter how much it completely sucks. But for now, I'll just look forward to more dreams of her and finding comfort in the memories and pictures I do have. And to keep on being grateful for the days I did have with her. What else can I do?

It makes me sick that I have to ask that question - what else can I do? I try not to be mad, but right now I can't help but feel angry that my mom was taken from me way too soon.

A Family Affair

I wish I could say I was the only one in my family affected by my mother's meth addiction but that would be far from the truth. When someone is addicted to drugs, it affects everyone around them in multiple ways. My mother wasn't alone in her addiction - she had a mother, a sister, two brothers and niece to share her addiction with. Drug addiction is a true family affair in the Wauters family. It is what everyone in town and all the towns next door knew us for.

My mom and her sister, Diane, were really close. My mom had two kids - my brother and I and my Aunt Diane had four - Danielle, Nicole, David and Diana. All of us kids were always together and we had relationships that were as close brothers and sisters. We were all affected by our mothers' addiction. We experienced a lot of the same traumas but if you talk to each of us individually, there will be certain things one of us remembers better than the others.

My cousin Diana is now 20 years old and studying at Mount Mercy University. She has been through numerous obstacles, some similar to mine, others much different. She has found a way to push through them and is making something of herself. I am so proud of her.

Diana wrote a mini story about the way her mother's addiction affected her during childhood a few years back. It is about her view of the police and the multiple drug raids she experienced. This is where our experience differs. I barely remember one drug raid while Diana has a clear, sharp memory of the drug raids and how she experienced them. This is Diana's story about the raids in small town Iowa.

"I never liked police; they took my dad away and were always bugging my mom and her friends. I have lived in a lot of places, but the police really seemed bad in Brooklyn. Too bad for me the police were like my cousins, I saw them once a week.

The police really wanted my mom. They knew she did drugs they just wanted to catch her, and they did. They didn’t catch her right away. We had many house raids, it was kind of like a family reunion with them. We got used to seeing 30 cop cars and vans in front of our house, we also got used to being the talk of the next day. Friends saying “There were a lot of police in front of you house last night,” well no shit I was there too. We got used to the raids quick, it was usually just 20 or so cops would come in and tear my house up, scraping ice out of the freezer and going through our flour. It was quite comical after awhile. My siblings and I would just sit in the living room and draw really ugly pictures of them on paper plates.

There was one raid that was different than the usual ones. I was home alone with mom and we got a knock on the door and as I open up the door, little did I know that, that little knock on the door would change my life. Give me a feeling that nobody should have to feel. I was pushed to the ground by a police officer all dressed in armor and he had a gun pointed on me as the other police officers crowded in the house yelling “MOVE! MOVE! BROOKLYN POLICE!” I was a scared little girl, I was in the line of death or at least I thought. I didn’t like raids after that or answering the door. What kind of person points a gun on a little girl? You never know what will happen in Brooklyn, [Iowa]."

This is one way drug addiction can affect children that I never would have been able to touch on. I am so appreciative Diana allowed me to share this on my blog.

Last week Diana stayed over with me. I woke up to her crawling onto my futon with me and she was bawling. She was thinking about her mom. Unlike my mom, Diana's mom is still alive and is deep in her drug addiction. If you know a drug addict, you know one of the effects of addiction is not being present. While Diana's mom is still here - her mom isn't here the way a mother should be, the way a daughter needs a mother to be. Diana loves her mom and she can tell you a lot of really amazing things about her. But unfortunately, the drug addiction takes away from all the positive attributes her mom has to offer. Drug addiction took my mother's life and drug addiction is still taking over Diana's mom's life.

In another mini story Diana wrote a few years back, I think she describes a child's love for an addicted mother perfectly.

"My mom was a drug addict and loved the drugs more than she loved us. That is a very hard thing to say. But it is the truth and still is to this day. At the time I never realized it because that is the way it had been my whole life. I love my mom very much, I didn’t ever notice anything was wrong with the way she was raising me and my siblings, I thought it was normal and every family was the same way. "

Growing up with drugs did seem completely normal to us because it was a family affair. We didn't know anything else. We knew drugs were bad things and our mom's weren't making good choices but what we knew more than that was how much we loved our moms and how much they loved us.

Now that we're older and can understand the affect addiction has on our family, my brother, my cousins and I have been pushing through the adversities to make a new name for the Wauters family and a new family affair.

Child Abuse Survivor: The way I experience it

I was re-reading my blog and realized I used a term to describe myself that I have never used before.. "child abuse survivor." I don't know if it was just the rage of my emotion coming out and thinking about the way her addiction has affected me but I have never identified as a survivor of child abuse before. I didn't even know I would be considered a child abuse survivor until last fall.

I took a child welfare class last semester (Fall 2011) and it made me really curious to know more about my child welfare case. Ever since I can remember DHS had been involved with my family starting when my mother was shot until after I began living with my dad. I always thought their involvement only had to do with my mother's addiction. I decided to go through all the papers my dad had kept about my case. I wanted to know more about my childhood that I didn't remember. I had questions that only my mom would know the answer to but I couldn't ask her. I thought my case file would be able to answer some of them for me.

I dug out the two huge folders packed with papers from DHS. In no way was I prepared for what I was about to learn. My mom had multiple cases of child abuse against her, mainly for denial of critical care which can include numerous things like inadequate supervision. 

I never remember going hungry. I never remember not being watched after by somebody, whether it was my mom, my grandma, an aunt or a neighbor, someone was always there. But here it was in my case files that there were times my mom didn't provide critical care. There was a specific story of my mom sleeping on the couch really sick (likely coming down from a binge) and my social worker came over and my brother and I told her we were hungry because my mom didn't make food for us that day. There was another time my social worker came over and my mom had no idea where my brother was. They had to go looking for him and eventually found him at a friend's house. 

What struck me the hardest about my case was the stories of the times my mom didn't show up for our visit while I was in foster care or the times my mom refused to go to treatment even though it was a requirement before she could get us back. 

I never knew any of this. I didn't remember any of it. To read this on paper broke my heart. It made me feel like my mother didn't love me the way I thought she did. The way my memory told me she loved me. She was a worse mother than I thought. After just reading papers I went from remembering my mother as loving, caring and always providing me with what I needed to trying to wrap my mind around the fact that I was a victim of child abuse. 

I was struggling so much with this that I reached out to one of my professors in the School of Social Work. She said something so powerful that has stuck. She said, from what I know of you and your past, I have never known you to identify as a child abuse survivor because that's not how you experienced it. It's up to you how you want to identify and while some people would call you a survivor, you don't have to have that identify if you don't want to.

I share this story because it is so important for people to realize that no matter how bad of parents people think drug addicts are, children are going to love and care for their parents no matter what. I may have went hungry at times or not always been watched after the best but that's not what I remember. What I do remember is coming home from school crying after being bullied and my mom telling me over and over how beautiful I am inside and out. I remember my mom teaching me how important education is. I remember my mom calling me almost everyday just to tell me how proud she is of me and that she loves me.

Do I identify as a survivor of child abuse? No. 

Do I realize the ways my mom wasn't a good parent? Yes. 

But all the good she did for me, all the love she gave me and all the lessons she taught me have always spoke louder. There's a reason my mind doesn't recall neglect I experienced and that's because my mom showed me love way more than she neglected me. 

Some kids may not have been as lucky as I was to have a mom who showed so much love. Some kids may remember the amounts of neglect they experienced. But I think one thing holds true for all kids of addicts and it's that - no matter how bad the addiction their parent has and the ways it has hurt them, they love their mom/dad and will always have a part of them that will never let go of that faith that some day, things will be different, and their mom/dad will sober up. 

An Unexpected Response

When I decided to share my story, I did not have any expectations of people actually reading it. I knew my family would and those close to me. Never once did it cross my mind that in less than 36 hours it would already have almost 700 page views. Never did I think I would have people messaging me to share their story about living with a parent who was an addict.

After I finished writing my first post, my tears had finally stopped. I didn't think I would spend the rest of the night crying. But I did. I had so many people commenting and messaging me about how courageous they thought I was for sharing or how my story touched them. In no way was I expecting to get so much support and encouragement.

My post was filled with deep emotions I never share with hardly anyone, not even my closest family. When I cry, I do it alone and I hate talking about it. To see that so many people were reading my story, some I knew really well, others from my community and some people I didn't know at all, I wasn't sure how to feel about it. Every comment I've gotten has been positive but part of me feared there are people out there who won't think so positive of it.

You see, I never talk about what my mother's addiction means to me because drug addicted mothers and their kids are so scrutinized against. There are so many stereotypes about drug addicts living off welfare and being undeserving of help or even raising children. I was told as a child to not even plan on graduating high school because people from families just like mine, don't do that. I met a woman once and when she found out who my mom was she said "Wow, you're really pretty considering who your mom is." Let me just say - my mom and I look exactly alike. She didn't think I was pretty for having an ugly mom, she thought I was pretty for coming from a family full of drug addicts. I learned from an early age I wasn't expected to be smart or pretty. I wasn't expected to be anything but another drug addict.

And I fear that to this day, even though I am a senior at Iowa and on the President's List, people still expect me to fail eventually. But to all you of out there who think I will fail - I dare you to continue to watch to me succeed. Because I will. While I had all these people telling me I can't, I had my mom telling me I could and I would. My mom's voice has always been bigger, stronger and more influential on me than anyone else's. She may be gone from this earth but I still hear her loud and clear.

I want to continue blogging about what my mom's addiction means to me and the way it is still affecting me today. I think it will continue to help me grow even stronger in who I am and will really serve as a great therapy for me. The comments I have gotten have encouraged me to keep doing it, each comment made me more confident in my decision to share my story. So to each of you have read my blog, "liked" it on facebook, shared it with others and commented on it, I want to thank each and everyone of you for helping me through this.

In a little over two days, I've already seen the way people can relate to what I've gone through and am going through. As a future social worker, my dream is to touch people, to help them. If I can do this by taking a risk and sharing these emotions and experiences with people, I want to do that. I want to encourage other's to share their stories or reach out for a helping hand. I don't want the voices of children raised by drug addicts to be quieted down. I want their voices to be heard. To be loud. To be recognized as people who don't have to fall into the statistics of becoming addicted themselves.

Untitled

I wrote this tonight. Without any plans of anyone seeing it. I was over flooded with emotions tonight when my professor posted the ingredients used to make meth (more in the blog). I think you'll see in this post the roller coaster of emotions I went through while I was processing this in my mind which is pretty typical when I'm grieving my mother and thinking about what her addiction meant to me. This post is really long and all over the place because I came home bawling from class and just started writing. This is what I got. 

Most everyone knows I grew up with my mom who had an addiction to Meth and eventually died from her addiction. Over the past two years, meth addiction has come up in one or another class. I've always known my mom's addiction affected me, especially her death. But as I get older and am learning more about what it means to be a meth addict, the more I learn about my mom. 

I thought this would be a good thing. I thought the more I learn about her, the closer I'll feel to her. You don't have to have a mom with a meth addiction to know how toxic and dangerous the drug is. I've known this ever since I knew it was her drug of choice. What I didn't know was that knowing more about it would make me feel further and further away from her. 

My mom loved me but I never was her first priority. When I was younger, I'd tell myself no matter what, no matter how hard into the drugs she was, no matter how fucked up she was, I was always her first priority. I used to think I was enough to make her want to quit, to give her a motivation to live a good, healthy, sober life. Every time she'd relapse I'd forgive her because I would just tell this to myself over and over and over again until I finally believed it. When you have a mom who is addicted to meth, you hold onto every single phone call you get, every word of affirmation you get that tells you you're loved because they don't happen nearly as often as they should. 

I was naive then. Thinking I could make her better. I know now meth was always her first priority. No matter how bad she wanted to stop, no matter how much she loved me, no matter how guilty she felt, no matter the consequences.. Meth always won. Meth was always on her mind. Her goal in life was to get high. She couldn't show me love without being high. She had to be high to enjoy her life, to feel normal, to function. She had to be high to be a mom. She was the worst mom when she wasn't high, coming down and withdrawing. These are the times when I saw her trying to hurt herself, sleeping all day, not eating, not feeding me and my brother. 

To come to the realization, my mom was only a mom on meth is almost too much to bare. I can't help but ask, why couldn't I have a mom who could just love me and be a mom who was always present. My mom probably doesn't remember half the time she spent with me because she was high. Why couldn't I have a mom whose number one priority was me? Is that too much to ask?

Today in my substance abuse class, my professor put a list up on the board. It read things like gasoline, paint thinner, battery acid, drainer cleaner, acetone, etc -- what was staring me right in my face, pure as day was all the chemicals my mom gave me up for, gave her family up for and ultimately lost her life to. I came second to these poisons.  I ..came second.. to these.. poisons. How in the hell do I wrap my mind around that? How can I possibly accept that?

If it weren't for drugs, I'd have a normal childhood. I wouldn't have been put in foster-care three separate times. I wouldn't be a child abuse survivor. I wouldn't have been separated from my brother. I wouldn't have a broken family. I would have a "normal" childhood to talk about.

I know my mom loves me and I know she tried to quit. If it was up to her, she would have been able to at a drop of a hat. Gaining this information about meth has given me a new perspective on my mom and it hasn't made me love her less or hate her for being addicted, it has made me hate the drug with even more of a passion than I had before. If anyone asks me, to do this day, I will tell you I had the best mom in the world. 

My mom did drugs, she went to prison and she was put on the child abuse registry. But if it wasn't for every single one of her mistakes, I would not be the same person I am today.

I am 21-years-old and the only drug I've ever used is alcohol - never tried a cigarette, never smoked weed. You will never see me do these things or even contemplate trying even if it is "just to experiment because that's what everyone in college does." 

I am strong in who I am and in my past. My mom taught me how to continue to fight to get what I want. She taught me how to take every negative situation or experience and learn something from it. You can ask me about the time my mom was shot, being in foster, being abused, being poor and I can tell you exactly what I've learned from it. And as I get older and look back, I continue to learn more from each experience I had. 

While my mom lived through hell and back, the most important thing she gave me was my passion. I have a desire, a craving inside of me to help people. Help people in anyway I can. My mom had a lot of characteristics many people would consider "bad." Not only was she addicted to meth and founded to be a child abuser on cases of neglect, she suffered from mental illnesses including addiction, depression and personality disorder. Being raised by my mother taught me no matter how many negative aspects there are to a person - that person deserves love, opportunities to better themselves and not to just be tolerated - but to be understood and truly cared for. 

Working with the population that my mom fits into is no easy task. They relapse and fuck up and then do it all over again no matter their consequences. But they are still humans capable of giving so much love. For those who knew my mom, the first thing they'd tell you about her is she has a heart of pure gold and would do anything for anybody. She loved helping people and didn't for a second think about what was in it for her. 

I don't judge people with mental illnesses, drug addictions, felony records, moms who have their kids taken away or anything related because even though my mom was fucked up most the time - I knew her. I knew the person she was and the intentions in her heart despite all the trouble she always seemed to be in. I never gave up on my mom. Until the day she died, I rooted for her, never losing my faith in her. 

My mom lost her battle. She left two kids and a lot of family behind. If it weren't for the struggles my mom went through and the obstacles I faced being raised by a drug addict, I wouldn't have the same passion I do now. My mom showed me God's light shines inside of everybody. My goal is to help that light shine so bright the darkness inside of them becomes a part of their past, a learning experience and something they can control. I want to do everything I can so that young girls like me don't have to grow up trying to accept the fact that they come second to meth or any other drug.