Forgiveness and other humble words

Forgiveness.
It is one of the hardest things humanly possible to do.
Letting go of the baggage of memories, of hurt created, and time wasted.
All of those moments youll never get back, stolen. Letting the hurt from that go.
Whether it is a person or a situation you can't forgive, it is hard.

Grudges take energy, a lot of it expended over time.
Forgiveness takes energy too. But usually the energy that forgiveness takes is a giant load all at once, and then it is done.
letting go means building up the courage, and facing fear.

As humans, we make plenty of mistakes, and forgiveness is thrown around a lot.

...but what do you do when something serious happens? Something life altering?
and what do you do when one of the people you looked up to more than anything is owed this forgiveness?

Growing up wasn't easy for me. But I did it fast.
My mom was a broken woman from a young age,
and when she was 22 she injured the discs in her back at work.
She never recovered.
The surgeries made it worse.
She slowly melted in to more pain than she could bear
and the doctors slowly started prescribing the medication.

Ask anyone who has done something for years...
old habits die hard, and sometimes they become addictions.
When I was 13, my mom went to a doctor while we lived in Michigan
who prescribed her xanax, morphine, the patch, vicodin, whatever he could think of...
my mom was a walking pill mess medical experiment.
She couldn't walk upright, fell asleep with my sister and I in the car and while vacuuming, and called us "beautiful lions"...
as funny as it sounds, being able to convince your mom to slow down by convincing her she will hurt invisible cigarettes at so called "cigarette crossing" Shouldnt be a form of entertainment that anyone should have to witness first hand.
I once convinced my mom that she peed on the floor because she fell asleep on the toilet for an hour, and didnt know where she was. It was a form of disappointing entertainment because I never really knew how I was morally supposed to cope with it.
These "episodes" went from happening 3-4 times a year to about once a month or every other month or so.
That was when it became less about coping through entertainment, and more about screaming. Convincing my mom not to drive, hiding car keys, and kicking down doors (literally, I have done this more than once). More about crying and kicking, her hitting and threatening to call the cops, her telling everyone near that she hates us, and us trying to talk sense into a drug induced alter ego.
My dad is a great man. Through all of this, he has stayed. Through every "I hate you" every "Ill call the cops" and every "Fuck you". and now through her trying to beat him, and throwing objects such as laptops at him...  He stays there because he doesnt know what to do either, and because the only woman he has ever known was her, since they were 13 years old. He doesn't know what to do besides love her, and scream back, but not leave. She probably would have died ten times over by now if we werent around. That is the seriousness of the situation.

Doctor after doctor dropped her like a hot coal.
Until one day she gets dropped, and by this time is taking too much, and then has seizures.

200 mg of the Fentanyl Patch (80 times stronger than morphine) every 3 days.
She was going through withdrawal of this, and overdose of Oxycodone and ativan at the same time.
Her body couldn't handle it.

As scared as I was, when she told me the doctor dropped her, and that she wasn't going to be going to another for more meds, I forgave her for everything she has put me through since I was 13.
I let it go. Because I knew that if I didn't, and I lost my mother, I would regret hating her every day for the rest of my life thereafter.

She did some things no kid should have ever known about or seen, but when she wasn't doing those things she was a damn good mother.
She cooked and cleaned, and worked, and loved, and taught.
But I grew to resent her with a bad intensity.
It was a deep dislike and I can't even recall when it started to burn inside of me.
I used to love her so much before all of this.

She isn't a terrible person, she just has a terrible disease... and that is no excuse for anything.
She is the one that puts the medicine in her body, but her brain is telling her to keep doing it and she listens.
I hated that. I hated that I was the one screaming at my mom that she needed help, that I was the one begging her to stay with my dad, that I was the one kicking down her door to make sure she is ok, or not getting anything done in school because I can't get ahold of her and think she might have finally overdosed.
I hated that I cared so much and that it took so much out of me, and took so much of my childhood.

But I forgive her. Because I have to. Because I can't live hating her, but I can hate the disease. I can hate the pills. I can hate what she does.

But I love my mom.I live to see her smile, I love the moments when her eyes are clear and so is her speech and she knows what is going on around her. I love when she looks at me through her own eyes, and not through drugs. I can always tell the difference so easily.

But the past ten years have taught me patience, and love, and respect for my body, and what not to do, not to let pain get the best of you, not to trust someone because they are SUPPOSED to be the expert on your body, and most of all to never ever take pills.

I tried Oxycontin once. I liked it too much. Then I tried it three, four, nine, twelve times. And I liked it even more. Then I tried it again. Then I convinced the doctors to give it to me when I got my wisdom teeth out, and then I slept the whole time, and then I puked, and then my mom had seizures and my little sister and I promised eachother we will never take them again. We like them too much.

I promise you I won't either.

Forgiveness gives me the strength to love my mom again.

I was raped, when I was 19.
Forgiveness gave me the strength to not let him rape me every night for the rest of my life.
I could sit around and think about it every day.
and it would be the same as letting him do it every day.

Or, I could take an experience, turn it in to a lesson, and feel better about the positive of the whole situation.

I can't live with regrets. I never will. I am a being that lives today. I always ask myself if I could do or say anything in a situation, what would it be? And it is such a big personality, that some people just can't handle it.

For these reasons I say what I think, what I feel, how I see things all the time.
I will never not tell you what is on my mind.
I will always be an open book.
I don't believe my book should be a mystery.
Take me or leave me.
Love me or hate me.
At least you know what you are getting into.

<3 xoxo