My Heart Is Breaking

It's 8:16 a.m. and so far, this day isn't going very well.  Today I'm a basket case.  Today I just wish someone would hold me in their arms and promise that this is all going to be okay.  I don't feel like it's going to be okay at all.  I feel like my son is lost to me and I'm petrified that he's lost forever.  I hate heroin so much that I don't even know how to express it.

This is so hard to write right now.  Tears are rolling down my face and my heart is breaking.  How do any of us parents live with this pain?  How do we go on each day?  How do we pretend that things are fine when inside we're dying inside just as surely as the addict is?

My son is in the county jail.  He's been there since Monday night.  He was picked up with his girlfriend for stealing at the local mall.  They were stealing to get stuff to trade or sell for heroin.  It's sickening.

While he's probably stolen before, I never really knew it for a fact.  We've been fortunate really that none of our stuff has gone missing for this sick habit.  And how sick is that?  That I actually consider myself fortunate to not have had anything stolen?  Shouldn't I have a right not to have my stuff stolen by my son?

The girlfriend, a girl I tend to think of in a string of descriptive expletives, it turns out is a very experienced thief.  Go figure.  My husband has always said that she's no good and not to be trusted.  I agreed, but I've made her somewhat welcome out of love for my son.  Wrong move.

I know my son makes his own choices, but I have to wonder if he'd have had the nerve to go to the mall and steal if it weren't for her.The other day she was here showing me her expensive purses and wallets and something just hit me that she was stealing them.  It didn't even take 24 hours for the proof.

My husband and I told our son for years that if he got arrested that we would not bail him out.  We haven't.  I was never quite confident that I could stick with that, but I have quite easily.  Not to say I haven't had any doubts, but each time I wonder if we should have bailed him out, I remind myself that if he were out, he'd immediately get his hands on heroin.  With that thought in mind, he remains in his jail cell downtown and I sit here in my own prison as well.