Drugs OVER your children

It seems like all of my blogs so far have come due to watching some show. Todays show was Celebrity Rehab. I think a lot of people know that Frankie is Keisha Cole's mother and that she was a drug addict and alcoholic. She always gets angry whenever her kids lash out at her for her not being there and essentially choosing to get high over her responsibility as a parent. Anyone that knows me, knows that I am the daughter of parents that are addicts. My father at some point was addicted to dope. To my knowledge he has been clean for years now. When I was 2 years old I guess my mother got tired of all the drugs, gambling, and women on the side- so she left my father and took me to Florida. I lived with her in Florida until I was about 9 or 10. Then we moved back to Cleveland. I finally got to meet my father and other family when I was 10. He was still addicted at that point and was in and out of jail. I didn't personally experience much of his addiction, I just remember him being in and out of jail. Even though I didnt feel the full effects of his crack addiction, I knew what it looked like, because for about 2 years up until then my mother became an addict as well. I knew what the facial expression of a person that was loaded looked like, the gloss effect on the pupils, the constant twitching and inability to sit still. I knew when my mother was holding crack in her hand because she always kept it clenched tightly. I knew the smell, I knew what a pipe looked like. All of this I knew since the age of 9. I remember it still till this day, they won't leave my memory. I had to listen to murmors of my own family, telling me my mother was a crackhead. I remember sitting in the dark, or being bundeled up in multiple blankets because the lights or gas were cut off. My mother was married at this time to a man that I never loved, or would even shed a tear for if he died. I don't hate him, Iv'e learned how to forgive him, but that doesn't mean that I have to like him. I was told everyday that I wasn't going to amount to anything, that my father didn't want me, that I was a waste, that my life was pointless, that I was less than his biological son. Everyday, everyday of my life this is what I was told by a man that married my crack addicted mother. I instantly took on these things that he said to me, believing it was true. Believing that those things were me. It took me till the age of 21 to start to forgive my parents, and my mothers husband, also to forgive myself. Parents are supposed to be there to protect their seed, to provide for them, to keep them safe. Safe, I can never remember feeling safe. I don't remember joy, smiles, laughs, or love. I don't remember any of that in my childhood. My parents failed me, they left me to raise myself. They left me in the care of people that didn't care about me. They put me in harms way, walking to go with my mother for a 10 dollar rock, in and out crack houses. As a child I interpreted this as if no one loved me. Was I right? I think it may have been that they didnt love themselves- so what did they have to give to me. Hugs, to this day to hug someone gives me a certain level of anxiety. I didn't know affection, I didn't get hugs and kisses. I wasn't told "I love you". Those words mean so much to me now. There is a void, and I feel it everyday in my soul. Sometimes I feel like that same timid little girl who was always wishing for something- anything that showed me that someone somewhere loved me. Loved me for who I was, not for what I can do for them. Everyone demanded so much from me, wanted me to be the adult, wanted me to mother my brothers. All the while all I ever wanted was to be a kid, to be free of worry, to not have to think about if my mother was going to overdose, If there would be dinner on the table, if the house would be cold. I cried so much as a child, thats what I remember most from my childhood years, not playing in the snow, not Christmas dinner, not my favorite baby doll. I remember crying.