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.