My life probably wouldn’t have lasted much longer if it weren’t for that day in a Skipper’s bathroom. I had made a promise to a few very confused and fragile little hearts a while back that were desperate for understanding about why I was gone and why their worlds had to be flipped upside down so abruptly. I was at war with myself, and the odds were not in my favor. Addiction, self-destruction, homelessness, poor mental health, and trauma had all been blended into a damn near lethal cocktail and I was grossly over-served.

The day I found out that I was deemed unfit to be a parent by some random lady with a clipboard, my will to live went out the door with all their smug ass faces. I immediately began my descent to rock bottom, and I didn’t miss a beat. Less than six months later, I found myself a wanderer, with no home, no destination, no job, no sanity, no nothing.

I remember when he told me he was moving them away. By this time I had been running around with some bad people and I had been doing bad things, and I didn’t talk to the good people much anymore because I had nothing to report that they would want to hear. Nothing that would do anything other than hurt them more. When he told me they were leaving though, I swear I literally felt my heart drop down into my stomach. Shortly after, I had one more chance to see them, and then they were off to start their lives somewhere else, where I would certainly be forgotten. I did my best to give them anything I could to make up for the time we had lost. I over-compensated with exaggerated enthusiasm, talking like I was mom-of-the-year and not just the junkie hooker I had actually become. I had to though. Otherwise I might risk breaking, and if that were to happen even a little bit, then certainly everything would come pouring out like a fucking geyser, and that couldn’t be how they remembered me. It started out okay, but then it was time to say goodbye.

Have you ever had those tears that are so intense that it is literally painful when they start falling? Where something goes so far beyond pain that even releasing it causes more suffering? With everything in me, I tried to keep a steady voice, and I told my girls, “I will be back for you. I promise.” When they left that day I cried those painful tears for a long time.

As it usually does, time went on, and I was so fucking broken that I couldn’t find it in myself to muster up the strength to make the change. Instead I did everything I could to numb it all because it was too much to bear, but I hadn’t even considered the fact that it hurt them just as much. I was a loser. A drug addict. A dead beat. Who would want that for a mom? So I dove deeper into my self-sabotage, and it wasn’t until that afternoon in a public restroom that my life changed at all for the better.

The younger two that had moved away made a visit to town with their dad, and that meant that they got to come and have lunch with mom. I felt pretty much equal parts nervous, excited, terrified, elated, and just all around crazed. Every so often I had been allowed to see them, but it was always really short, incredibly depressing, and I can pretty much guarantee super disappointing on their end. This time was different though. We finished up lunch and my youngest needed mommy’s help going to the bathroom. I followed her in, but her demeanor held something I had never seen before. She turned to face me and I could see that she was trying her absolute hardest to choke back tears. She looked at me, and with everything in her, she tried to keep her voice steady and said, “Mommy, you’re not coming back for us are you?”

My heart broke, Shattered. Right there all over the floor. Here was this tiny little girl who lost her mommy and didn’t understand why. Because I was right here. I immediately dropped to my knees and held her and made her another promise that I knew I had to see through. I promised her I was going to get my shit together. I was going to do everything I could to be her mommy again.

It wasn’t long after that that I finally admitted myself into rehab. I spent sixty days beginning to understand who I am and what that all means. Now, as we speak, that same little girl is sleeping in the room next to me in our apartment as she does several nights a week.She may not know it, but she is a large part of the reason that I am here today. All three of them are my motivation to keep going every day, but I never realized until I saw a little girl trying so hard to be so strong that my presence mattered as much as it does. She was my sign.

I still struggle daily with addiction. I am still working on figuring out why my brain works the way it does, and I am probably going to spend forever unlearning a lot of toxic behaviors. I am far from healed, and I know that. But it was that day I finally realized that I had to start trying. For me and for them.

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