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Her Story: My Father Was a Drug Addict

A Journey Through Addiction

By Dawn MPublished 6 years ago 2 min read
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Growing up as a child, I never had a good family. I knew my parents argued a lot about money and when they got too loud, I'd hide in my mother's closet. I figured this was normal because I never seen anything different before.

As I got older, my father became worse and I was still far too young to realize what was going on. My father would leave for hours while my mother was at work and tell me if anyone comes to the door, don't answer it. And some days, I wish someone would of came. He'd return late in the evening either drunk or high on opioids and then go to bed. Why was my father like this? I always thought he just must just be tired.

His addiction slowly started tearing our family apart. My mother was strong when she moved us into my grandmother's house, but I still didn't understand what was happening and missed my father. Later, she finally sat down with me in my bedroom at my grandmother's house with rivers pouring down her face whispering, "You're father is an addict and very sick." I had countless lessons on how drugs are bad and the people that do them are bad. But I never seen my father as a bad person; he was my father.

He would call every day telling us to come back home and I wanted to badly, but she never did; she wanted to leave him. When we finally moved back home, the suitcases were laying on my parents bed with clothes in them, were we going on a trip? What I thought was a happy trip was actually the departure of my father leaving us. Tears streamed down my face as my nightmare of my parents' breakup was happening. I was their only child and after hours of crying, my mother let him stay.

It's now been about 10 years since that moment, and I somehow still feel responsible for ruining my mother's happiness because I knew she could have found someone better for our family. My father hasn't touched a pill or bottle since that year of going through rehab and hospitals and always reminds me that it is the ruination of life.

In a way, I am thankful for my father doing what he did and being able to change his life. It made me a stronger and wiser person, and I am able to handle tough situations now. Without the lesson of drug abuse, I wouldn't be who I am today. I understand people make mistakes, but you have to learn from them too. I am blessed to have a family who loves me and that since the time being, my father and I's relationship got a lot closer than it was 10 years ago.

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