Meth Story to Help Kids

Meth story to help kids, by Arrissia Owen Turner, Vietnam Vet implies reading, writing, and art hobbies help stop drug use; request writers and artists’ volunteer help.

Send your art or writings by regular mail to me, Carl G. Mueller. Enclose any special requests with materials otherwise I’ll distribute them to news outlets along with my regular complaint letters.

Carl G. Mueller, Nam 68 ….. http://www.blogger.com/profile/8749161
PO Box 120707
38941 North Bay Drive
Big Bear Lake, CA 92315-8944
Phone: (909) 866-9310

To Whom It May Concern:

AND

To:
Newspaper Reporter Arrissia Owen Turner
mailto: aoturner@bigbeargrizzly.net
Big Bear Grizzly, www.bigbeargrizzly.net
PO Box 1789
Big Bear Lake, CA 92315
(909) 866-3003

Dear Mrs. Turner:
I enjoyed reading your 10/5/05 personal story. In fact I enjoyed it so much that I will now take back half of all the bad things I might have written about you. :>)

I also will post this letter. The sad thing about this is that some big paying Media outlet on the East cost will see your story and writing skills and Big Bear Lake will lose a strong reporter, loving mom, and a bunch of other actuates. In the interim I’ll keep my complaint letters soaring. God Bless You.

Turner’s Story:

Thanks for the memories, meth
By Arrissia Owen Turner

My father hired a hit man to kill my mother. The plan was hatched. It seemed perfectly reasonable to someone high from a two-week meth binge. He would invite her to go Christmas shopping, and my mother would agree to go with her estranged husband in an effort to hold on to some resemblance of normalcy for her kids.

My father planned to have my mother killed two days before Christmas and then kill himself. Luckily, he had a nervous breakdown instead.

The phone rang a few days later. I was 14 years old and my dad told me all the details. We didn’t have many secrets, at least not from each other. I spent Christmas visiting him in rehab and my mother in the hospital because she had her own breakdown from the stress, and the relief of knowing she could finally stop looking over her shoulder.

My sister and I opened Christmas presents wrapped haphazardly in black trash bags. That wasn’t rock bottom. It went on for another 10 years. My father’s drug use changed me, my sisters and our childhood.

Recently I called my mother to say thank you. We both went through hell. Our versions of the nightmare differ. My mom could not muster a “You’re welcome.” The outburst of gratitude was too weird, too long and too drawn out, especially more than 15 years too late. A mom should not be thanked for not neglecting her children.

Thanks, Mom. Thanks for not making it any crappier than it was. Thanks for not being a meth addict, too. Thanks for not letting our lives sink that low.”

When both parents use drugs, kids have very little chance of leaving a drug-filled life behind.

Now I’m a mom. I have a 3-year-old who relies on me for everything: food, shelter, helping her climb up to the potty, making sure she doesn’t run in front of a moving car. I hope she never has to look back and thank me for not blowing her up while cooking meth on the stove.

I could have been if my mom had joined in. I know many readers don’t want to hear this. You don’t want to hear that I could have been harmed any number of times from my dad’s irresponsible behavior. My dad doesn’t want to be reminded either. He lives with the guilt now even though he, by some miracle, decided to quit. He did not quit for me. He quit for himself.

You want to believe that meth isn’t your problem. You want to look away. But secretly, you know it is. If it isn’t now, it will be. Don’t look away.

I was a cheerleader in high school with many friends. They mostly led picture-perfect lives. People assumed I did, too. My picture included a meth-addicted father who if he was home was asleep on the couch, for days at a time. I told people he worked nights. That was the mid 1980s. Times have changed.

The Domestic Violence Education and Services (DOVES) executive director, Janet Trott, told me based on her experience she estimates 30 to 40 percent of the parents in Big Bear Valley use drugs. I cringed. That would mean a third of the kids I interview at the schools have secrets.

I don’t want these kids I interview about penny wars and scholarships to make excuses for their strung-out parents when the drug dealers come to the door to collect. I don’t want them to be ashamed when their friends ask what their parents do for a living, and they think to themselves, “Beat people up for drug money.”

I don’t want them to muster up the courage to flush their parent’s drugs down the toilet. I don’t want them to be scared when one parent finds the fight to pack the kids in the car and leave. I don’t want them to be the one to feel the weight of his or her shoulders.

They should be cheering or playing at a football game, or making a short film, writing poetry or perfecting Ramones songs on guitar. They should be filling out college applications. Not policing their homes. They shouldn’t be 33 facing taking care of their parent who can no longer take care of him or herself because, God willing, that drug-addicted parent survives and now that parent has incalculable health problems and cannot function in society.

If you think that sounds angry, you have no idea, because the love is so much deeper that you can’t see it. No one loves more than children of addicts, because they carry the burden of actually thinking if they are smart enough, funny enough, talented enough, athletic enough, skinny enough, pretty enough, that their parent will choose them over getting high. Love is why they keep the secrets: to protect their parent who will not protect him or herself. If you think that isn’t true, ask one of them. Really, ask one of them. Ask them what they saw. Ask them how they think of themselves. Ask them how lucky they are. If they’re not too high to answer, they made it. They’ll tell you how thankful they are.

Sincerely,

Carl G. Mueller, Nam 68

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