How to Live and Let Live

Oh, the drama.

Over on lovineveryday,  I posted a story today, a story that blended my shattered childhood with some of the problems I experience as an adult mother. I've said multiple times, when you write on the internet, the person you thought won't read it will, for sure, everytime..

And yes, of course, SweetAngelLittleSister read it promptly.

*sigh.

I know better, really I do.

So this missive will take on another form...one where I tell her, and the world at large, why our family is so broken. Who knows? It could be therapeutic.

But where to start?

I remember potty training. That's as far back as I can go. When you get old, and the gray hairs start to peak out around your eyebrows and you start to say things like "because I said so," and "kids these days", your childhood begins to break up into chunks, and if you are me, you carefully chip away at the chunks and turn them into snapshots. Snapshots hold less anguish then full on movie scenes in the brain.


More specifically, I remember my Mother ARRIVING to potty train me. She always smelled like lipstick and unnamed cheap cologne, and she was beautiful. I wanted to be her. Badly.

She put me on the toilet, and I argued. A lot.

I did NOT have to go.

Finally, she caved, picked me up, and set me on my grandparents hamper. And I promptly took a dump all over it.

My grandmother finished my potty training, as she tucked me in each night, and as she taught most everything else. You see, I did not live with my mother. She was a stranger, a lady that visited and drank coffee and smoked cigarettes. And she smelled like lipstick.

I don't know why I lived with my grandparents. I've heard the stories, from both sides, and they buzzed through my head like stinging bees for years before I decided I didn't care anymore. I've long forgotten the details, the whens, the whos, the hows.

One thing I know for sure. My name is Heather, and my mother is a drug addict.