Vices

Chapter 1

Everyone had their own methods of coping.

For instance, at the tender age of 14 my birth mother began to crave love in, for a lack of better terms, an "adult" way. You may be asking yourself; why would such a young girl need that type of attention? From what I've been told by my countless social workers that have been in and out of my life since I could remember, she grew up in a rather neglectful environment. With both parents heavy drug abusers and no concern for child safety some 30 years ago, she never felt the caress of a loving hand. Her mother and father rarely shared a sober word towards each other, let alone express anything remotely similar to a healthy romantic relationship.

Nonetheless, "love" was something she was never taught. She had to try and figure it out on her own, through the fuzzy television screen playing and replaying video cassettes of low-budget romance movies and the vulgar words of the hottest magazines of that time, displaying articles such as "50 Ways to Please Your Man in the Bedroom" and "How to Look Sexy in Time for Summer!".

The girl's perception of love was warped into something unimaginable at such a young age. Upon entering high school, she had begun sleeping with many people to fill up the empty pit in her heart she felt needed to be filled with anyone's bare skin and a cheap hotel room. As you can expect, unprotected sex led to pregnancy and pregnancy led to the boy high-tailing out of her life before she even had a slight bump of ripening life in her youthful body.

Miraculously, she survived 8 months and delivered a 5 pound premature baby. Unfortunately, complications post-delivery left her with hemorrhaging and, despite taking immediate action, led to her passing in a few short hours. I was instantly placed into a foster home while a social worker was given my case and the search for family and friends began. Much to our dismay, his search came up fruitless. That is, until 5 years later when they found my grandparents' holed up in a crack house, sober and blindly clawing out in rage from withdrawal. They were immediately deemed unsuitable guardians and I was without a family once again.

I guess what I'm trying to get at is, I don't blame my mother for what she did. The environment she grew up in was nothing she ever asked for, or deserved. She made some bad decisions along the way, and her coping method for her broken childhood ultimately led to her demise. There are other ways to deal with emotions, as I've learned from my therapist over the years. You can express yourself through art and music, but sometimes we just can't find escape in such simple thing. This is when addiction to drugs, alcohol, even sex, comes in. I've learned that the addictive gene my mother had could be lying in wait and thriving inside of me, just waiting to strike it's deathly blow.