Grief, an emotion that everyone goes through at least once in their lifetime. For me grief, it’s an emotion I have dealt with many times. Whether it was a loved one that passed, my parents that separated, or even my mental health. The one subject that hurt me the most and caused me the most grief, when my mom got involved with bad people, and with that, she had to end up in rehab to try to get better. My mom will forever get the award for the strongest woman I know and I can tell you she's definitely one of the only people I look up to. Everyone has difficulties in their life they have to get through and mine happened to be, not getting to see my mom for almost two years. My mother, the person who used to hum and sing to me at night and the person I could talk to about anything. She soon became the person that left me every night to do drugs to get the stress out of her life, when I wished she could have talked to someone about it. Every night I used to watch my mom get in her car and leave. When I asked where she went every night at the same time, the answer would always be “to Walmart.” I used to wait for her all night to sing and hum to me, but when she never came back I would try to hum to myself and think about the memories, but I never could do that without happening to cry myself to sleep. I remember I sat in the car for a while because that night I needed to find out what she’s really going to do. I wanted to wait for her and see where she really went and when we got there I would get out and confront her, but I couldn’t. I got out of the car, went back inside, and watched her drive away again. Too scared of what could have happened if I went and if she ended up under the influence of drugs with people there. I still wonder what would have happened if I did go. 

I don’t remember all too well what made her finally go to rehab, but I'm just so grateful that she did. That’s the moment where I only had hope in my heart. Hope that my mother will get better and hope that everything would stay the same as it used to. As much as I wanted everything to stay the same again, it didn’t. Nothing could stay the same. That decision that my mom made impacted my life as well as it did hers, but it happened to be my mother’s decision at first to do drugs. Then after a while, she had no control, my mom wanted to feel relieved, so much had happened and she couldn’t handle it. When she wanted to try to get better the people in the group wouldn’t let her. They threatened that if she got better and left then they would hurt my siblings and me. 

After the rehab and all the visits, she got better day by day she overcame all of it. All of the stuff that happened to my mom made me have a whole new perspective on people that have drug problems or have someone in their family with addiction. It made me realize before they started to use, something or someone in their life had brought them to do the things they wish they haven’t. I've heard many tragic stories of people from Decatur that just makes me feel for them and wish them the best even if they aren’t the best person because of that tragic thing that had happened in their life. Everyone goes through things sad, happy, and things that could end up changing their life forever. People's lives sometimes rely on people's decisions, which mine did. My life has forever changed. I see people for them and don’t judge them if they have or had an addiction because you never know what someone has gone through until you go through it yourself.