ALT-2 Parenting the Greatest Gift you can Give your Child is yourself
I do have to say that this is a true statement. My mother was a drug addict. I tried very hard not to hold it against her. I always felt that if I even spoke that over her, then she might just stay that way, because instead of calling her out of that darkness with words like, "hey mom do you know how awesome of an artist you are!" At first I would speak it as a young child, I would try to uplift her and edify for everything that she was that had nothing to do with the drugs. It didn't work. Not on the surface. It may have helped to keep her somewhat hopeful on the inside, but it did not make her change her addictions. I was without. I lived without. There was no living spirit or life offered to me by her because for her it was all about where to get her next high. I did not realize as a teenager that it would last forever. I thought for sure that she would get clean. I did not stop believing in her talents and her gifts, most of all her dreams. Her dreams were wonderfull, as wonderfull as anyone else's, which gave me hope. No matter what day by day, she was still doing drugs, week by week she was still spending all her money on drugs, year by year she was still doing them even more than before. Since I was an adult she was more addicted and I was more immune to seeing her do them. As child I waited for her more in my spirit than anywhere else, I waited for her in my spirit. The surface level drug addict that she was was not even who she was meant to be. I used to sit in my bedroom floor and color an entire coloring book because in one of her good moments when she tried to care, she had taken the time and colored a picture with me, in the middle of the book too. I loved it because then I could color in all around that one picture every so often turning to stare at what a most beautiful coloring book picture my mom had done, I always loved how she would write her name in the corner like she was a famous artist or something. I would turn to it to learn everything I ever needed to learn about how to color a color book picture and all it took was one moment with her to teach me, one and I thrived through an entire coloring book, an entire day I would sit and color and color and color remembering that she had come in my room and sat right there beside me. She was mine at least for that moment and she had just been sitting there beside me a few minutes ago, I remember holding on to the reflection of her sitting with me for a lot of hours. I remembered her there. And then after awhile I couldn't remember her there anymore and before I knew it I would want to go get her to "do it again mommy" She was always high and along with being high she was being beat so that before too long I quit going to look for her because I knew I might get beat too. I remember I had this favorite pair of underwear, they were silky pink, the kind that had the ruffled butt. I was three or four then, I would sit to color and my aunt would have to come over about three days later to make me change my underwear. My mom was sick and beat and broken and addicted and I was just there. She never gave me herself and the part of herself she did give me was very sick and very hard to battle as I got older. It took me some time to learn to cope the way she should have been teaching me as a child. All during my teenage years it was somebody elses mothers who gave. It was my grandmother Nana who gave. It was my teachers who gave, it was the church members who gave, and it was during young adulthood, it was my pastors who gave. Neither one of my parents gave except hereditarily what God demanded. My father was basically non existent and what part my mother was giving I mostly did not want. It most definately has affected the type of person that I am today. I am not someone who wants to be around a lot of people and I am very choosy about who I am intimate with. As an adult my mother became a toxic human being to me, my father, he was sill nonexistent. My mother became so toxic that I literally felt like my system was going into toxic shock and literal shutdown every time she was around. I had to cut the ties. I have not seen her in years or him for that matter, I guess she got the majority of the articles space because she was the one who had custody of me. She was an antagonist to my life. The greatest gift you can give your child is yourself, your true self, not the self that the world was allowed to create. I would not have a relationship with her today so if you want your children to love you later on in life, if it is important to you that your children thrive then you do have to be willing to lay down your selfish choices and lay down your unneccesary desires, lay down your life for them. More than anything as we get older we would much rather see our parents as healthy and successful and wise, protected and safe, than running around terrorized from a drug addiction that lasted thirty years. That was when I snapped, after thirty years my mother is still doing drugs like she did when I was two or three. She never gave me herself she gave me her addiction, she gave me her despair, and she gave me her poverty. One time I remember her saying that she hoped I'd dance. I thought wow you know what I will probably remember her saying that for the rest of my life because she very rarely said nice things like that to me that truly spoke to who I was. I would not want her today even if I did have the chance to have her I would want everybody else's mothers who have given themselves to me, because they gave. I do want her happy and healthy and taken care of either by herself or someone who is worthy of her, but as for me I would not even if I was given the chance.
