A journey through addiction

I will start this story from the beginning, but it will take more than one post to finish. I grew up in the Foothills of the Appalachians. We were dirt poor. In that kind of poverty, addiction is something that takes a hold of a lot of people. I believe the root cause is the hopelessness that poverty can make you feel. Many of the men became addicts. They felt the responsibility of providing for a family, but had no means to do so. They watched their children go hungry, their family go without healthcare of any kind, their cars break down again and again, and any hope of a better life dwindle away into the night sky.

When I was little, I was always told we were poor. I wouldn't get Christmas presents like the other kids because we were poor. Sometimes we had very little to eat because we were poor. I couldn't do activities some of the other children got to do because we were poor. I didn't go to the doctor when I was injured because we were poor. I didn't feel the poverty. I ran in the woods and played in the creek. I picked wildflowers and laid under the stars at night. The nights would be so dark that you couldn't see your hand in front of your face. If they stars were covered by clouds, you couldn't tell if your eyes were opened or closed.

To me, it was a magical life. I helped chop wood with my little hatched. I knew how to build a fire. We often cooked on a fire outside in the summers. It was too hot to cook inside. The well water we drank was always cold and prefect for a hot day, with a taste better than any water I have ever tasted. Fiji water, move aside!

We heated with wood. My parents would work on getting enough wood all year. The wood stove could make our little trailer very warm. I remember waking up and feeling so cold. My parents would stoke the fire, and it would soon get warm again. The floor would be icy in the mornings, though. I remember taking a bath, and then running to get under the covers with my dad to warm back up.

My parents were both college graduates. When they were lucky enough to find work, they often worked for minimum wage. None of the jobs down there offered healthcare. They didn't have to. People were so desperate that most jobs had applications from in from all the surrounding counties.

I remember that I loved my dad, but sometimes he got scary and mean. It happened occasionally. My mom and I would sometimes leave and visit friends, and then when we would return home, everything would be ok again. What seemed like a sometimes thing, an annoyance, grew into something much bigger, especially after we moved so my parents could find better jobs.