Everything I Never Wanted to Be

by Dina Kucera

  The day before we left, we stayed late at the hospital with April. When it was time for us to leave, April walked us out and here is another memory that will stick in my head forever: John and I were driving away, and in the rearview mirror I could see April standing on the sidewalk as the snow fell. Just standing there with her arms crossed with the snow falling on her face. My daughter, a mom, with a very sick baby.

  Moses is eight now. He is in charge of every person in the house. He can’t talk, but he has managed to become very bossy. With his left hand he summons you to come to him. He kisses you and then he actually points for you to go away. What he’s saying is, “I’m done with you. Walk away.”

  He is so, so handsome and lovable. Moses has cerebral palsy. They said he wouldn’t live. He’s alive. They said he would never breathe on his own. He plays basketball with his grandfather. They said he wouldn’t walk. He actually doesn’t walk. He runs. Everywhere. I always say to him, “Moses, slow down. You don’t have to run. You can walk.” He looks at me and runs off.

  He gives me so many kisses that I say it’s a fine line between giving Grandma kisses and Grandma being charged with a felony.

  We are madly in love with Moses, and Moses is madly in love with himself. He teaches us more in a day than we can teach him in a lifetime. He is always happy, always smiling, and his spirit can bring you up no matter what you’re going through. Moses is the center of our world.

  Moses wears a leg brace on his right leg. One day in a sporting goods store we were standing in line. There were two little boys about Moses’ age standing in front of us with their father.

  One boy said to the other, “He’s got a plastic leg.”

  I leaned down and whispered, “It gives him super powers.”

  The boys began to pull on their father’s pants. “Dad. I want that.” Pointing at Moses’ leg brace. The dad ignored them. They started crying, “Dad! I want it! I want super powers!”

  Moses stood there staring at them. Super powers are something you’re born with, not something you buy off a store shelf.

  After Moses’ traumatic birth, April’s alcohol issues surfaced, and she has used alcohol to cope with life ever since. It is what it is. April has hardened. She will verbally rip us into pieces. If she has to, she will attack us physically. She’s gone after John on several occasions and, I hate to say, almost won a few times.

  The pain is eating her alive. We walk around on eggshells to stay clear of Hurricane April. She tells me she hates me, and that I never should have been a mother. I tell her that I thought I’d be better at it. It’s like a job you think you’ll excel at then you begin work and you completely suck. I know she doesn’t mean it, but it’s hurtful, and God knows I’ve given her plenty of ammunition.

  On the outside, you’d never know April’s pain. Perfect hair, makeup, perfectly put together outfits, gorgeous, driving a great car. All the latest purses and sunglasses.

  And Moses is always in top fashion. He is the best-dressed child I have ever seen in my life. They both walk through life looking like a magazine cover. They live in a great house that is beautifully furnished, and April keeps it perfectly clean, always. You’d never know how sad April is on the inside. She does what she has to do to survive. One day in the neurologist’s office, the doctor said that Moses only uses half his brain.

  April said, “So when he grows up he’ll be right on track with other men.”

  I’m proud of April for any way she gets through the day. She’s a strong, strong young woman.

  Carly, my youngest daughter. She was born old.

  She made her own money by the time she was ten. She sold lemonade. She sat out there for hours and came in with sixty dollars and sometimes more. She watered down the lemonade so her lemonade and sugar would last longer.

  I said, “But you are selling watery lemonade, and these people are paying for it!”

  She said, “What are they gonna say, Mom? I’m a kid.”

  She changed religions. One day she was a Buddhist, and the next she was an atheist.

  I said, “Don’t you believe in God?”

  She was nine and she said, “There’s just no proof, Mom.”

  We went into art stores, and she told me about Vincent Van Gogh. Sometimes I have wondered if I took home the wrong baby. I wonder if there is a young girl in a five million dollar house somewhere craving Spam and wondering why.

  At one point she became a vegetarian. She was on honor roll. Her teachers loved her, and she was in the popular crowd. She was gorgeous. She was funny.

  I told Carly to be home by ten o’clock. She said, “By law, the curfew is eleven.”

  She asked if we would buy her a stereo if she cleaned her room every day until a certain date. We said okay. She went to her room and came back out with a completely written out contract for us to sign: “If Carly cleans her room every day until the fifth of March, we will buy her a stereo,” and then “sign here.”

  Sometimes we had three or four contracts active at the same time. She taped them to her wall. If we tried to back out of a deal, she marched us into her room, pointed at the wall, and said, “What does this say?”

  She started smoking pot at the age of twelve. Soon after—this is in middle school—kids brought various pills they had stolen from their parents’ medicine cabinets. Painkillers, Xanax, anything that would make them high. We didn’t have any pills at our house (yet), so Carly brought money, stolen out of my purse or her father’s wallet.

  By her first year of high school, Carly was taking so many of these pills that she got sick when she didn’t have them.

  One day, Carly came into my room and told me she needed to talk to me. She was fourteen. She said, “I need help.” She was crying. “I have been using OxyContin every day for a year and I can’t stop.”

  At that moment I had no fear because I had no idea what OxyContin was. I was confused. She said OxyContin was a very strong painkiller. I still had no fear. I thought, Just stop taking it. She told me she had to have it as soon as she woke up or she got really sick.

  Then I thought back over the previous year. There were so many times I heard Carly throwing up in the morning. She got really bad headaches, and she was losing weight. A lot of weight.

  I called the number on my insurance card and made an appointment at a detox facility. The detox facility said that OxyContin was extremely popular and use of this particular drug had skyrocketed over the past five years. They said it was a good thing I brought her in and no, she could not detox off this drug at home. I suddenly realized the gravity of Carly’s situation. She was in a shitload of trouble.

  Then we met with a doctor after Carly had spoken with him privately. He used the word “heroin.”

  I said, “Wait. Did you say heroin?”

  Carly said, “I only used it a few times.”

  I said, “Heroin?” I felt like I was in another world again. Something in my head said, This can’t be happening. But this is the end of it. Carly will detox, and then we’ll get on with our lives. After all, this is what happened with Jen—only Jen was twenty-three, not fourteen. Jen stopped. Carly would stop, too.

  Carly’s boyfriend was also using, but he promised he would also stop. So there you have it. They would both stop because it was ridiculous to just continue doing this. This will kill you. So they would both stop. I was so proud of them.

  Carly’s boyfriend was a really sweet guy. He wasn’t what you picture a drug addict to be. He was handsome, and so, so intelligent. They were together every second of the day. He was polite and courteous, and he went on family vacations with us. He was also using this OxyContin. We talked to him about it, but he assured us he was never going to take drugs again. We believed him. I think he actually believed himself.

  Carly went through detox four times before the insurance company would finance an inpatient rehab. She went to the thirty-day rehab, and her boyfriend wrote letters talking about how he was clean and how much he missed her. How they we
re going to stay clean together. It all sounded very sweet, and looking back, I just wanted to believe that was the case. They would stay clean. The day she got out of rehab, Carly said she wanted to see him immediately.

  This was typical of my decision-making skills. I look back and know I was a special kind of stupid.

  I instinctively knew it was not a good idea to let them see each other, but I didn’t follow my instincts. I dropped her off for an hour while I ran some errands.

  Even as I read that, I am kicking myself in the ass. I dropped her off with the kid she used drugs with. They promised not to use drugs anymore. They fucking promised! And I looked at their faces and believed them! The day a heroin addict can look you straight in the eye and flat out lie is a sad day for the world.

  I got a call a half hour later saying they were going to a movie. During the course of Carly’s drug use, the “I’m going to a movie” line would be used hundreds of times. And, of course, I only have my stupidity to blame. Two days later I noticed Carly was sleeping twelve hours a day, but now I knew to check to be sure she was breathing.

  I know there are other parents of alcoholics and addicts who will understand when I say the words, “Carly has to decide to be clean or not. It’s up to her.” But I feel sick when I say that. I know she has to be the one to make the choice to stay clean. But I don’t think I’m the only parent in the world who is thinking, I will take care of this. Because this is what we do as parents.

  It starts when they are little babies. The tears come and you pick her up and bounce her or spin her until she laughs. Whatever comes up, we try to fix it. We just want her smiling all the time.

  She gets older and the boy doesn’t like her back... he likes her friend. So we buy her clothes and take her to a movie. And just like that, she is “fixed.”

  Now we are on a journey, but we cannot take this journey together. I know for Carly to successfully recover I have to dump the entire bag of shit on her lap. She has to venture out on her own and make it happen, or, God forbid, not make it happen. And I hate that. The idea makes me ill.

  One day, I said to Carly, “You know, I’ve done all I can. It’s up to you now.”

  She smiled that pretty smile and said, “Sorry, Mom. But it’s always been up to me.”

  I thought I could make her better. With love. Am I the only one? Do other parents try this exhausting road making them stay clean with “love”?

  Another thing I’m guilty of is thinking, If she has a Coach purse like the other girls, she will stop using heroin. I can’t count the number of times I’ve heard drug addicts say, “I was a heroin addict, then I got a Coach purse and never used heroin again.”

  I’m sure when Carly and I were walking through a mall people thought she was an average teenage girl. And I liked that feeling of being just like everyone else. A mom and her daughter out for the day searching for the perfect trendy item so the daughter wouldn’t use heroin that day.

  We went on like this for years. She eventually broke up with the boyfriend. We were relieved but also silently worried that he would overdose. He may be a drug addict, but he is a good person deep inside, and we were always fearful about getting that call. Carly worried too. I think she still does.

  OxyContin is expensive, so my daughter and her group of friends found out that heroin had the same effect as OxyContin and was much cheaper. So they supplemented their OxyContin use with heroin until their use elevated to the level that they could only afford heroin. They had to stay high all day or they would become very, very sick. They would smoke it off tinfoil. Carly and a couple of the other kids also found out that if they injected it, the high is much more intense.

  Many of the kids, including my daughter, injected heroin with crystal meth. So they were in even deeper—so deep that it’s almost impossible to ever get back.

  There were ten or twelve kids in this group, and all of their lives have been destroyed. Two young people my daughter knew died of overdoses.

  Carly has been in intensive care three times because of overdoses. She has been to rehab, doctors, outpatient, inpatient, and detox nine times.

  One night after a week-long drug binge, my beautiful seventeen-year-old daughter said, “Mom. I’m already dead. I’m just stuck here.”

  Every single inpatient treatment Carly has received was only because I didn’t accept their refusal to treat her.

  Every insurance company in the world will first approve what they call “a lower level of care.” The translation is, “We are saving money by not medically treating your child.” Fight, scream, cry, do whatever you have to do to get help for your children. They deserve help. They desperately need help.

  Carly is nineteen now and has not been to school since she was thirteen. She has never worked or had a driver’s license or had anything or done anything that other people do. She didn’t smoke pot in junior high school and progress to other drugs as she got older. She smoked pot one day and it seems like she was smoking heroin the next. There is a slang term for smoking heroin: Chasing the dragon. That’s when Carly began circling the drain. And because she was so young, it all unfolded in front of our eyes as we watched in horror.

  In the last couple of years, our daughter’s drug use has sent us crumbling to the floor in fear and desperation more times than I can remember.

  I’ve made so many mistakes. Obvious mistakes. Did I really think Carly was clean? Or was the truth just too painful for my brain to comprehend? I don’t know. Both, I guess.

  At our house, our lives are in two parts: before Carly started using, and after. The other day, walking through a parking lot, I thought, I just want my daughter back. The way she used to be. And then I realized, I don’t remember how she used to be. I don’t remember most conversations, most events. I don’t remember holidays or birthdays. I don’t remember the little things that people remember about their kids when they were growing up. It has been so traumatic watching her drug addiction progress that my memory from before is gone.

  I do remember her weeks in intensive care... her seizures and vomiting... her stays in detox and rehab. And I remember watching her when she was psychotic from meth and cowering in the corner of the dark laundry room because the helicopters were coming to get her. A ninety-pound stranger. Watching and feeling that I had lost her. The “her” she was—my beautiful, beautiful girl—now someone else, something else.

  God,

  Thank you for all the gifts in my life. My husband, my beautiful daughters, my perfect grandson, and my mother. Thank you for guiding me day-by-day in this difficult part of my life. Thank you for courage to face my challenges, and grace during my victories.

  Please God, wrap your arms around my family so they know we will be safe because you are walking with us. I know you are watching over us because we’re all still here. That, in itself, is a miracle, and I thank you and try to have gratitude in my heart everyday. Because of you I am able to cry, but also able to laugh.

  I have three issues on my prayer agenda today. One. They say you don’t give us more than we can handle. I feel that you’ve mistaken me for someone else. You’ve mistaken me for a really strong person like Angelina Jolie, the Mia Farrow of our generation.

  The truth is I’m not able to handle all of this ridiculous crap. I am not Madonna or Oprah or Kelly Ripa. I’m just a person.

  Two. My foul mouth. Every time I say a curse word, I feel like you’re looking down at me like a parent would, still loving me, but thinking, Why does she have to use that language?

  That’s just the way I talk. I don’t think I can stop. The foul language doesn’t feel like anything to me. The word I really like is the F-word. I’m very heavy on that word. I also like saying “shit sack.” I use these words as verbs, nouns, and adjectives for just about everything I’m describing. It’s just the way I talk. And I know you love me anyway. But as far as being a better person, to stop with the foul language is not something that I can do. Someday I will. Just not today. And not tomorrow. />
  The third thing and most important: if there is any way I could get that government stimulus check sooner, I would have complete gratitude. I know a lot of people are asking you for this, but you know my situation. I really need the cash.

  I have previously prayed to win the lottery and of course, that prayer still stands.

  Thank you for all the miracles in my life. Without you, I would be lost. And you’ve seen me lost. It’s ugly.

  Amen.

  Assault, Mary Jane, and a Prior Conviction

  I wish someone had told me what would come later. I mean, on down the road. I could have been better prepared. I wish someone had told me that kids become drug addicts. And they almost die. And when that happens, a piece of you is gone and you feel it leaving. You dig your feet in and focus, but the whole time the ground is moving. The blue lips, the beeping of the equipment monitoring your kid’s breath. And all you can do is watch.

  I wish someone had told me what would come later. Watching that kid try to pick up the pieces of her life from off the ground. Piece by piece. Her eyes red and tired—her spirit asleep. And you want to help, but you can’t. She has to pick up the pieces by herself. Some of the pieces are as sharp as broken glass, but she has to pick them up anyway so nothing will be missing when she’s done. Piece by painful piece—only to drop them on the ground again.

  I wish someone had told me that this would become the way we live... watching the pieces fall to the floor, watching the kid pick them up again... and actually praying to God every minute that this kid will be able to pick them up one more time. And I wish I knew the magic thing to say or do to make it stop. Should I love her more or love her less... should I do this or not do that... and on and on as I fall asleep at night. Every night.