To be or not to be....

To be clean or not to be clean. To be at peace or not to be at peace. Those are the questions that my girl and I work our way through day by day.

I am ready to go home today. I want to get back to my routine of exercise and walking and being in my own home.

I think this whole gardening adventure is a God thing. For some reason, my girl has glommed onto gardening. In the middle of being so sick or so strung out or so depressed, she will still get her skinny little self up to go out and water and tend to her plants. She has started so many thriving plants from seed....like took the cantaloupe seeds right out of our cantaloupe and now has cantaloupe plants growing. Or the morning glories trailing up an arbor on her deck, grown from seeds she harvested from some morning glories that hung over her fence when she lived with the boyfriend.She teaches me as we go along. She teaches me so much. This girl has been by far my greatest teacher.

She quietly goes about her days. I don't know when or how or if or what it will look like for her when life becomes truly a healthy thriving endeavor, but for today she is safe and tending to her garden. For today I can accept that. Its not perfect, it has messy moments, but she is here, safe and still trying to find her way to a different place than she has lived in for the past 10 years.

My girl has never stolen from us....if you can believe that. We have never had to deal with our cars disappearing, or our credit cards being maxed out (we did that ourselves,) or money disappearing.  Even when she helped me take care of g-ma while she was dying, she didn't take any of the meds....she asked me to take the needles out of the house if she was going to be there alone. In her crazy world she makes good choices. She has her moral code which she still tries to live by....even in the depths of addiction. Once during some sort of upset where she was being accused of stealing by another addict, she called me up and said, "Whatever happens, whatever you hear about me, I want you to know one thing. I may be a lot of things, but I have never stolen and I am not a thief." My history with her tells me that is true.

 She is not a "partier." She has no friends, this is not fun anymore. This is survival, managing, trying to feel normal.

My beautiful girl....she doesn't hurt other people, at least not intentionally. She mostly only hurts herself.

I try to not write too much about her here....but she is a beautiful person and I feel like I want to say that today. I don't just love her because she's my daughter...I truly do like her as a person. She has this gentle smile that she will give when she listens to someone talk. It says that she knows exactly what they are saying and she feels their pain. Its says so much without her uttering one word. If she can survive and get past all of this....she will one day be an amazing healthy grown up. That is my prayer. Let her live long enough to experience a good life. Let her be able to share her own story of redemption someday. I pray that for all of our kids.

Annette