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Message: <blockquote data-quote="New Leaf" data-source="post: 766134" data-attributes="member: 19522">Unexpectedly, but not so unexpectedly, as I watched the news in the early evening, I heard a voice coming from my driveway. “Ma”. It was Rain, who made her way to my house on a dilapidated moped with an old street ex-boyfriend, both of them looking disheveled, wearing the long history of addiction.She sat stooped over on my porch step, clutching a bag and rambling on about her “boyfriend not boyfriend” who I call Mumbles, because In the few times I’ve met him, I can’t understand a word he says.Apparently, the apartment she took the taxi to from the hospital was never a place she planned to stay at. I asked her what happened to transferring to the medical shelter, she said because she had the address to the apartment, that wasn’t an option. So, in other words, she had no intention of going to the shelter.She then went on to say that she went down to the bridge where she had been living and that “Mumbles” had thrown her belongings in the stream.She recounted that she walked to a nearby park and Mumbles was there, where a confrontation ensued.Talk about “rinse, repeat”.Her demeanor was so different from when in the hospital, I suspected that she was high, and I asked her if she was. Of course she denied it, and said that she was shaken up by her argument with Mumbles. By her description, he is the same type that she has latched onto for years, controlling, jealous, and violent. But, she stays in the situation, blaming him for always “showing up.”I am reminded of how many times she has appeared at my doorstep, beat down by the choices she’s made. Or, her sisters have rushed to meet her at emergency rooms, because boyfriends have assaulted her and she called her siblings for help, they held her hand and encouraged her to press charges, get clean. She would be treated and released only to go back to the same men. Her sisters are understandably “done.”Rains lifestyle has been walking on the shaky fence  of street life, violent partners and drug use for so long now, and just as I had pondered about this time around, as soon as she was released from the hospital, back on the fence she went.She said she “just wanted a hot shower”. She showered and sat for a bit, her brother made her a plate of food, then her street friend came back and off they went into the night. Like so many, many times before.I saw in the news this morning that there was a fire set last night in the homeless encampment under the bridge where Rain has been living, and I can’t help but wonder if it was Mumbles. Who knows? I swallow the lump in my throat and attempt to stop my mind from ruminating over supposed possibilities, by writing here and saying a prayer.I can’t save her, I never could.She will make the choices she makes.I try not to go to catastrophic thought, as has been my way as a mother, (as if thinking of worst case scenario’s will prepare me in case the unthinkable happens). I read an article not too long ago, which explained that thinking this way only sets one up for heightened stress levels and anxiety. It can also lead to issues with chronic pain, and PTSD, which many of us have stated that dealing with addicted loved ones surely has led us to.Practicing mindfulness and living in the present moment is essential to retrain thought processing and calm down. (I am talking to myself here). It is what it is. What will be, will be. Or, as my fathers favorite stoic quote from Epictetus bodes, “Seek not to have things happen as you choose them, but rather choose that they should happen as they do, and you shall live prosperously.”Still, it is a weird feeling, carrying on the days chores while all of this shifts through my heart and mind. Maybe it is the truth of powerlessness, the work of quelling the voices of old habits whispering that “I need to do something, anything,” coupled with the knowledge that I am not the answer.I am not the answer.New Leaf</blockquote>

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