Renee Baker, 2001

I do remember my life took the change when I realized I just didn’t have anything to offer. That here I am, grown, 40, and then I decided I don’t think I can make another ten years doing it, I wouldn’t live! And I’ve always been afraid of dying and where I might die at. I didn’t want to die in some dirty old house. I didn’t want to embarrass my parents. I’m already an embarrassment! I really don’t want to embarrass them this way.

Now I feel that I can leave this world saying that at least I didn’t take any more away than I gave. I had feared that I was going to die in addiction and not have contributed anything. I had never wanted to be what I was; I just didn’t know what to do not to be it.

I’m working now as a rehabilitation counselor at the Duke Addictions Program. My clients let me see that I don’t want to ever repeat that part of my life again. Because I can see the pain in their faces. That pain is so intense! It’s awesome how God will allow me to see it, real vividly. It’s like I can just touch it, like I want to just hug it out of them. I can feel when it’s there. And I can tell when they are trying to hide it away. Amazing! I say, gosh, just imagine, I used to be the same way!

Before my mom died, I could see the aging in her face. And I often said to myself, how much of that did I cause her to have to come through? Just the pain in her face and how gray she had gotten. And it seems like overnight to me, because during my time of being in the streets and doing my thing, I never stopped once to really, really look at her! You know, just see how she was changing. I never looked ‘til I got clean.

The blessing is that when she died, I was clean. They didn’t have to find me. I wasn’t living from pillar to post or they had to ask this person or that person if they’d seen me. I was there. And I was so grateful for that, and I got to make my amends to her.

I asked my daughter, “Was there a time in your life when you were really happy?” She said, “It wasn’t until when you stopped getting high.”

I didn’t believe that! I said, “Shannon, what about before that?” She said, “You never knew this, but when you would leave me, I would run into the front door and try to bruise myself up, hurt myself, so that you would come back.”

I never knew that! I said, “Gosh, you know, what do you do with that information? What do you do!?”

That I still have not processed. Because she’s only told me that these last couple months. Now, I’m not in denial that I caused her a lot of pain. I’m not in denial about that. But I never imagined it was that intense.
 
I think it’s a lot of the reason I spend so much time with her and my grandkids now, because I never got to enjoy her childhood. And now I see my grandkids during their childhood and I’m enjoying it as if it were hers. Because I never got to do that stuff with her! I go skating with them, and all the things I should have done with her when she was their age.

I’m a firm believer that people should not have children until they are healthy enough to have them. You know what I mean? Because it costs the kids so much! It really does.

I just wish it was possible for us to go back and just change stuff. But it’s not. And my sponsor always tells me I have to not allow myself to always live in yesterday. You know, I’ve made my amends to my daughter. I made them verbally, I made them through the way that I live now, through how I am with her kids, how I am with her now. But I still don’t think it’s enough!

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