Ancestor by Chris Light
I Am My Mother’s Protector Parent by Shaylah St. Pierre
From the age of 4, I have seen both of my parents in and out of jail, prison, rehab… If you name a place of punishment or reformation, I can assure you, they’ve been there. Growing up seeing this, I believed for the longest time that everyone goes to jail at least once in their lifetime. It was an everyday occurrence for me, and it came as a sort of culture shock when my friends had told me that their parents had never been to jail…or anything of the sort. I bounced around homes as a child, which made me feel as if no house I live in feels like home. I remember when I was around 6 years old, I would lay in bed late at night, pretend my mom died, and cry for hours. I viewed it as a way to get over the inevitable grief ahead of time. Trying to communicate with her how this made me feel, she would fly into defense mode and blame everyone but herself.
Everyone says that addicts are just sick and need help. Tis type of “advice” instilled into my brain, since I was young, has saved my parents years of blame that they very much deserved. Addicts will NEVER get better if they don’t take accountability and responsibility for their actions. No matter how much you can say you want to get better, if you still blame everyone instead of yourself, you will never be released from the hold addiction has on you.
Society needs to stop making the addict out to be the victim when they’ve clearly never put themselves into the shoes of the witness. Tere are still children who are in the same situation I was in. According to the National Library of Medicine, there
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