All is not always as it seems.

I think we have pictures, in our heads, of how certain people will look, how a pedophile will be a pasty faced man in his 50's with shifty eyes, grimy fingernails and a dirty mac'. A kind of loving soul will be a granny type with an apron and a home that smells of apple pies.
Drug addicts are dingy people with black circles under their eyes, skin and bone, hopeless expression and misery etched in their souls.
They don't look like this, do they?

The answer to that is, yes, they do.

My beautiful girl has been back down the road of destruction and it is quite the most heartbreaking thing. She told me though, after a massive binge and a few days of oblivion she told me what she was doing and like a 5 year old with a broken toy she handed me her fear and left it with me. I don't know why my children trust me the way they do, I don't know why they believe that I will know what to do. Me. The teetotal, prudish mormon who has never so much as rebelled by drinking a cup of tea, who waited to be married before having sex, who has spent 49 years avoiding even the appearance of evil, I am supposed to know what to do about cocaine addiction, homosexuality, alcoholism and paying off debts to drug dealers. I have perfected, over the years the calm exterior when being told the most  terrifying and heart stopping details of the situations my children place themselves and have been placed by evil at large. Each experience makes me both know without doubt that God exists because really, how else would I know what to do? It also makes me wonder why, why me? Why not THAT women with more kids that me? Why can't just one of hers have one of the trials faced by my kids, how does she get to have that many kids and have all hers stay safe and unaffected? What is it that makes it necessary for me to know this stuff? I don't know. I find myself less able to care as I deal with these unbelievable circumstances because one day at a time is all I can do. I swear a lot, in my head mostly because WHAT THE FUCK? Is pretty much all that will run through your head as you sit in a dark car while your only daughter leaves to pay a drug dealer the money she owes him, swiftly followed by "Dear Lord, please keep her safe, please keep her safe, please keep her safe" until she walks back, as beautiful and precious as ever, with a smile and a look of relief. When I ask her why she tells me this stuff she says " because I don't want to to do it and I need you to help me" Then I am overwhelmed by a relief and a joy because she trusts me, as well as a rage and a sadness so deep it makes me long for oblivion and in that moment, right then, I understand why she slips, why for her, getting something that takes her away from her thoughts for even a few minutes makes all the risks worth it.

She has been diagnosed with bi polar disorder and she was so sad about that she sought a release from it all, what she got was an even more muddled brain, more misery and a big old debt to boot.

She has agreed to go on a course for addiction recovery and starts this week, she seems keen to go and I think I am glad about that, I am just a bit jaded and weary of hoping and thinking we have cracked it all.

One day at a time. One day at a time.