So I'm a callous, heartless, bitch.

Maybe I hold onto my view so desperately because to break away from it is to admit that my father DID love me, just not enough and that would break me. I'm clutching to the idea that he didn't care with both hands, knuckles white, like it's the ledge between myself and death.

And really, it kind of is.

Could I handle knowing that while my father loved me, he loved drugs and alcohol more? That while he looked at me the same way my husband looks at our children, it didn't matter? That even though he cradled me in his arms and cried with happiness he STILL thought only about his next fix?

So I cling to my beliefs. I wear them like a well loved jacket and never take them off because the cold would cut through my insides.

He didn't try.

If he had maybe I would feel differently. You can't say that someone has tried to get clean or stay with his family when he walks away from it, when he hasn't been to rehab or counseling, when his every "attempt" is met with more drugs and a stop at the bar on the way home because it was "calling" to him.

Do I sound callous?

Yes, I fucking do.

Because I've been there. I was scraping meth off a public bathroom floor to shove up my nose bad. I was so high I peeled the "skin" from my eyeballs until they swelled so much I couldn't shut my eyelids bad. I was dealing to survive bad. I was pouring beer into soda cans to drink at church bad. I was snorting in the high school bathroom bad. I was so far gone nothing even registered anymore.

And then my child registered.

It was like spending my entire life in a wasteland full of heat and dry staleness then being given a sink full of water. My life literally began and ended in that moment. There was a choice between continuing and finding a new life.

So I turned away.

I lost every friend I currently had. I just stopped going where we used to go and stopped calling. I didn't answer them. I detoxed and stayed clean alone because I was terrified of telling someone like a doctor and having them decide I was an unfit mother and taking my life saving child away. I spent my entire pregnancy getting ready for college and sitting on my grandparents couch reading so many books I can't even remember the authors trying to escape the pain.

The calling.


And that's the thing. I know what the calling is like. Drugs still call my name. My entire family had to move 6 hours away from my home town because the calling was too much. It's this voice in your head that tells you everything will be alright and better if you just go with what you know. Go with the drugs. Go with your friends.

Do you know how much you could accomplish if you just got ONE tiny bowls worth of meth? And how much weight you'd lose. If you were pretty enough you could even get it free. You could clean your entire house. Your husband would love it. You could play with your kids without pain. You won't cry everyday. You won't be tempted to cut because you'll finally be HAPPY.

Lies. So many fucking lies that have to be acknowledged and fought or simply believed.

I chose to fight.

I used every trick I had in me to win this constant battle against using and giving in. Does that make me strong? I don't know. Maybe. To me it just means that I survived. That this bullshit I let control me for so long didn't actually win.

But that's the thing.

Giving "weak" people the excuse of being weak is just that. An excuse. There is no weak and strong when it comes to a child. There is just doing everything within you to give them the life they deserve. It's loving them enough to realize that you're totally fucking up and need to become an adult.
It does no good to let people believe they're weak. To give them excuses. They don't need anymore excuses, they have a trillion on their own!

I need this to function. I'm not actually that bad. I still pay my bills. I see my child, on the weekends, one day, for a few hours. No one knows I'm on drugs because I don't act any different. I look incredibly sexy, I have no side effects related to drugs at all. I'll quite before I become like him.

Fucking news flash.

You ARE like him.
Everyone knows.
You don't pay your bills.
And you look terrible.

I would much prefer my husband, friend, even a random fricken stranger to say "I have to walk this bar everyday when I go to work and everyday it calls to me. It's getting harder and harder to walk past it without wandering in for jut a second... Can you please walk with me?" Than to tell me he couldn't help it because the drugs and alcohol just kept pushing at him until he had no choice but to succumb.

THAT'S true weakness. Giving in without actually fighting.

Strength is giving everything to the fight until you're breathless and shaking but still standing.

Everyone has that option some just choose not to take it because it's easier to do what they've always done. I take offense to people that live in a bubble of weak people vs strong ones. It's like saying my battle wasn't as bad as there's because I just don't understand. I'm tired of hearing that its just "easier" fir some people.

No it fucking wasn't, but I did it anyway.

Someone recently likened it to sweets. "If someone told you to stop having candy and soda and sweets or you'd never see your kids again, you couldn't."

Yes. Oh yes I would. I would walk away again, in a heartbeat. Because nothing is worth more than my children.

"Am I supposed to be able to feel the coldness?"

"Where do you feel the coldness?" The anesthesiologist looks down at me, grabs my hand, waits. "All over my belly, right side, now left, middle, upper thighs," I answer haltingly. He frowns behind his mask, I can tell because his eyes squint a little at the corners and his forehead wrinkles. He glances over the sheet draped across my chest , "Thighs is normal. But we'll test before cutting to make sure, I promise it'll be alright." He squeezes my hand again then passes it off to my husband.

I glance at Steven, smile.They're taping my stomach up now, making it easier to reach the babies after making the incision. It starts to feel like my lungs are compressed to nothing and I struggle to breathe, my chest is refusing to expand. My arms are strapped down, my legs. I feel panicked, begin shaking, "I can't breathe." Everyone glances at the monitor to check my oxygen. "You're alright, you're ok," Steven says, "Your oxygen is good."

I know this.

Pushing it away I concentrate on the anesthesiologist as he talks about his kids, his new grand babies. I focus on the man complimenting my make up. On Steven gripping my hand and try to be strong enough for him.

Then pain, sharp and strong in my lower stomach and I cry out. "I can still feel it, it's not numb." He frowns again, checks some levels, "I can't add anymore epi, your blood pressure is falling. They'll give you a local anesthetic and that'll give the epi time to work and get deeper." I nod, unable to do much else while silently losing it. Too many stories of people feeling their c sections has made me paranoid.

I feel the stick of the needle, but only barely. They wait a few seconds where my breathing is still shallow and quick before starting. I look at Steven again, holding his eyes as I try to calm myself and smile because I will finally have my babies.

I scream.

Startled, confused. I feel the scalpel as it starts cutting my flesh, a sharp pain shooting through me as I jerk my legs against their straps. "Stop, stop!" I can't breathe. Anything they give me passes to the babies. We're not doing alright. We can't pass anything. I don't want my husband to leave. I don't want to miss their birth. They stop to give it more time to numb me, only it doesn't.

I keep crying out, tears are streaking down the sides of my face as I try to hold still, as I stare at the ceiling and the lights and try to breathe myself to relaxation. "You're focusing, that's good," the anesthesiologist again,. I know he's trying to help. He wipes the years away from my face but they just keep coming. "Her bp is too low. 60/30."

That explains it.

My body is floating. I'm somehow floating above it and still inside it feeling every time the scalpel cuts through another layer. "She is in excruciating amounts of pain!" Steven yells. He knows me enough to know that my crying and actually screaming is abnormal. I want to stop, I want to be calm and relaxed and let Steven enjoy this birth.

I scream again. "It's almost over right?" I stammer through my teeth, still feeling lightheaded. They don't say anything, just wipe away the tears that keep leaking from the corners of my eyes. Steven keeps squeezing my hand while I stare at the lights and jerk against the straps every time I can't hold myself still anymore. I know they have to cut through the scar tissue but its so slow. Torturous. "We'll give you something to calm down and relax you and take it away as soon as the babies are out."

I manage to nod my head in between screams.

"Do you hear that? It's the water breaking, they're reached baby A. They're pulling him out now." I tried to focus on that intense pressure, the feeling of him leaving my body rather than the sharp pain radiating through my vagina and pubic bone. They keep saying they don't know why I am feeling pain there, just that it is probably referred pain from the incision. I jerk. Straps cut into my thighs.

Every time they pull trying to yank him loose from my body I cry out, the pain becoming more than I can silently handle. Finally he's free and I hear screaming. Tears now fall for another reason as I struggle to turn my head and catch a glimpse but I can't. I'm quickly distracted by more pain as they pull my stomach apart to reach baby B whose wedged himself into my ribs.

I gasp, breath leaving my body completely. It feels like they're laying against my stomach and ribs attempting to pull him out. Finally he's free "he was feet down!" and everyone scrambles. My IV is pumped full of morphine, something to relax me, another something to stop the pain. Steven is trying to look at them so I tell him to leave, to go be with them because something is wrong. Someone isn't breathing right.

My chest is heavy now. the morphine starting to work. I'm heavy and floating and finally starting to drift off into nothing happily.