It's Name Is... Heroin

As I look back almost twelve years ago now I don't remember any of this in the parenting books. Several years ago I said with the kids all gone from the house it felt like a new chapter of my life was being written. These aren't the chapters that I wished to write, however.

The word heroin became part of my vocabulary in 2006. Our son Kyle was about twenty years old then. That was the year that I learned that our son had been using heroin for many months. That was the year that heroin ripped through my family unit like a hell firestorm and changed us for good. Torn to shreds. Pieces of a puzzle that I didn't understand scattered across the floor.
Two thousand and six was the year I was working for 7-Eleven. I had been working there for years. I worked so many hours at that store worrying about that train wreck that was called... work and meanwhile my family unit was falling apart. I just didn't know it then. Its name would manifest itself, however.

I can remember several months in that year some of our younger customers suddenly became nice to me,

"Hey, Mrs... How are you doing today?" Then learning a few months later they were user friends of our son. A few of them were dealing heroin to him.

Looking back at those years, that train wreck of a store each and every work day if I had a crystal ball that I could have seen this all, I would have chosen my family any day of the week.

The many months that went by late 2005 when things didn't seem right. All of those months that I knew something just wasn't right. I could feel it in my heart. My son had changed drastically. His demeanor, he was getting thin, there were days that I saw him that I knew something didn't look right, didn't feel right. My heart was telling me, I just didn't know what to call it.

When I think about it I know in my heart I remember all those questions to my heart of, could he be using drugs? I never listened to my heart when I should have. It was beating the drum the entire time and I think I was afraid to listen. At that time I don't think wanted to know.

What I didn't know wouldn't hurt me, right? Oh wrong on so many levels.

Although our son was an adult I believe I went through his entire friend's list asking all of them, Is Kyle using drugs?

I never listened to my heart, only those around him when I asked, Is he using drugs? Only to be told No, he's not using drugs.

Liars... every one of them. They had their reasons for covering it all up. One of them told me a couple of years ago that he didn't want us to be hurt.

Hurt? Really? How much less hurt do people think I would have suffered then we do now?

I tell them now after all of these years of his using and abusing this powerful drug the hurt isn't any less painful.

Then there was the person who said, "Man I didn't want to be part of no family breakdowns."

Really!

I just wish that someone way back then would have stopped covering it up, especially a couple people who knew and knew us personally. I wish people would have stopped lying about it.

The more the cover-up about it; the more the lying about it left enough space for my own denial to continue. Until the day came that I couldn't deny it any longer. A huge hole opened up and it was there demon manifested and its name was... Heroin.

All of these years have passed and I still think a lot about those years back then. A lot of shoulda, coulda and woulda goes through my mind.

I think often about all of those who lied to us about what was going on. I have forgiven them. They have to live their lives while we have to go on with ours broken to pieces and torn to shreds while we for all of these years trying to put all the pieces back together.

I also have to think what could I have done differently if I had known?

I didn't have a lot of resources back then. No one did. I called many treatment centers only to be told waiting lists as long as two years. I remember once reaching out to ask a police officer, telling him our son was using heroin asking, what can we do?

Only to be told our son was a piece of trash. Yes, that is the exact words told to me by a policeman.

Society called it a moral failing in the family. In reality, it was the disease of addiction. Its name is... heroin!

Now all of these years later and the way heroin is ripping through this town, the high number of overdoses, the deaths that continue Heroin is now result of a huge society failure.

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