“I believe in you and I love you.” These were the words spoken by a mother to her daughter who was addicted to drugs.
To save them both she had to let her go. “When you stop using drugs you can come home,” the mother said, and she would always add, “I believe in you…and I love you.”
She tried relentlessly to be let back in to her home but with courage this wise and loving mother stood firm, “No, not until you’re off drugs…I believe in you, and I love you.”
One day her daughter came home and asked her mother if she would take her to a rehab to get help.
Today she is at home, living with her family, clean and sober.
Her story brought me back to my own — And hearing her mother’s words, pierced my heart as though they were spoken to me by our Mother-God, “I believe in you, and I love you,”
My will mixed with my wants were flooded with false fears
I drank and drugged and gorged and spent
Then wondered where the time and money went
Youth, is the time of life they say is fleeting
Never dawned on me to be of value any way
I drifted in a carnival of lost loves and patron saints
Catholic schoolgirl days long gone
Smart enough to figure out what weak men wanted most
Bought me anything I needed to keep the merry-go-round turning
Until one day the music stopped
The pintos and the stallions froze
Painted faces, bucked toothed steeds
Wooden and unfeeling, inanimate as me
The silence in that moment exposed the terror and the fantasies
For years one voice never ceased but could never be understood
Driven deeper by rising, screaming, damning thoughts
A camouflage of cheers pretending to be necessary for survival
Have a drink, a sniff, a shot
And pick the pocket of a loved one
They’ll forgive you; they always do
What they have is yours for you to take
If you don’t, your very life is what’s at stake
You cannot lose what you have already lost
The world owes more than it can ever pay
All of this I lived and thought was true
Life was hell so why wouldn’t I live it out this way
One morning I grabbed my side in distress
A swollen liver throbbed in pain
With only me, the drugs and the booze to blame
O.D.’s and blackouts, and blocked with bile
I was scared of dying, but just for a while
Obsession took possession
The uninvited riots returned full force
The merry-go-round again went round
Then suddenly, it all grinded down
The mob within ceased screaming
The deafening silence became a pool for them all to drown in
Faintly a voice from I know not where spoke
‘You can’t continue to live this way’
Another voice rose in righteous defiance
‘Your weekends…The clubs…The dancing…Getting high’
The first voice didn’t reason, just simply reassured
‘There’s another way to live, without all of that’
I writhed inwardly as though my fate was in someone else’s hands
Until the voice was only one
‘You can do this; You know that you can…’
My will fell, my spirit rose
And it seemed the world was not anything like it was before
And I didn’t realize until then, that it was May, and it was springtime
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Doreen Birdsell Blog 