Memories of My Mother and Her Addiction, in Six Parts
My mother died as an opioid addict at the age of 53. I don’t know when her addiction really began, but I’ve come to realize that she self-medicated to escape. I have a vague vision of her at one time being the mother I needed her to be, but I’m unsure if it’s a true memory or something I conjured up to ease our history.
The truth is I never knew who my mother was as a person. Our relationship while I was growing up was empty, and she was an empty shell. I don’t remember any fun times or happy moments, but six memories I have of her and her addiction stand out.
One
She had certain traits I could never forget. She threw up a lot, and when she was finished, she’d take a swig straight from the Pepto-Bismol bottle. I can still hear the way she would sob and the shrill of her yelling at my father to stop beating us, her voice usually coming from her bed because she rarely felt well.
These details represent the core of who my mother was. She had been a victim of child abuse herself, and the severe, untreated depression she experienced shut me and my siblings out of her world. Opioids temporarily fixed things for her while we were left without a mother.
