Recovery ~ #poetry by @Tashtoo

She was in her mid-thirties.
Broken, beaten, some wounds fresh, most festering
Sick, so sick
Chin deep in recovery
looking for the hope that would keep her head above the black see
that hungered for her essence.
Fucked up and living in our spare room,
no bigger than a closet,
because she honestly had no place else to go.

I was 15 and watching.
Watching a mother, so sick, she sacrificed her relationship with her own children on a daily basis.
Watching a woman, so sick, she would lay with any stinking man who would have her
Even at 15, I understood
that addiction
The need to feel wanted, connected
An urge to feel alive so pathetic she would trudge through the cesspools of contaminated and distorted hunger...
Because once you got deep enough, the pain can finally reach you,
and the part of you that feels it...can be the sick and twisted hope that keeps you going.

I received her life lessons on a daily basis.
Life lessons meant for a daughter my own age...yet they fell to me.
Perhaps because of the guilt of her condition
Guilt so raw and red
no amount of hail Mary's, tribal sweats, or vicious lashings could chase it away.
The lesson here is always time
When you're in it...you never see it.
To watch one fall from such an amazing height and live to tell the tale is a lesson in itself.

The beauty of the story...
when you take the long view of history and look back
is, she made it.
20 years later, she's still preaching
delivering her life lessons to her daughter, and anyone else who has the ears to hear.
And it is beautiful...amazing...a miracle
but it's a sad ending too
because something on her insides won't let her see
that in her recovery
she took the win in the hardest battle any of us can ever have to fight
Her mere existence in this realm
let alone her sober smile
is the most amazing example any of us will ever have, of miracle.