I have been paying for my daughter and her boyfriend to stay at a hotel for the last three nights and am planning to rent them a room to stay at for a couple of months where I plan to help them with their MRSA and drug addiction and I can feel everyone looking at me like I’ve lost my mind. Unspoken questions about if I am enabling their problems and why don’t I practice a little tough love and let them live on the streets or in a tent like they were talking about doing. I was really planning to let them try the tent thing but then it has been cold and raining since they lost their apartment and I didn’t have the heart to put them through that. I have been homeless and living in a tent many years ago after losing everything when my youngest daughter was crippled in an accident, and I remember sitting in a leaking tent feeling helpless and miserable and wouldn’t wish that on anyone. I was saved by a nice elderly woman I met who had an empty house for rent that she let us move into without paying until I got on my feet a bit. It didn’t “spoil” me but taught me gratitude and to give others a helping hand, too. And I’m not seeing any dependence developing in my daughter and her boyfriend either. What I’m seeing is extreme gratitude and shame to have ended up in the position to need my help. I have confidence that they are both good enough people to gain from this and be better people and learn to not let this happen again to them. They learned what good friends all of their drug buddies were when they went down. No one lifted a finger to help us clean out the apartment everyone had stayed at at one time or another. We went back for something we forgot a few hours after taking the last load of things out of there that we could store at my place and found the apartment stripped completely clean like locusts had been through. A couple of their “friends” were still there scavengering for more leave behinds. Jami cried when she saw them and the apartment.
I have spent a lot of time with them at their hotel talking and we talk about getting off the drugs and starting a better life. I think they almost feel obligated to do so and I think that might be more motivating than the “tough love” let them live on the streets attitude would have done. I could be wrong. But I just might be right. I almost wish the people looking at me funny right now would actually confront me so I could give this opinion or say something in my defense. Jami and Kirk have their heroin habit down to $12.50 a day each which is a huge improvement and a place they can see quitting from. They are much more clear when I talk to them about their MRSA now and are willing to do more to take care of it and are more understanding of the fear I and the rest of the family have of catching the disease. I honestly think I can make this dependent time constructive for them. I feel Kirk feeling like he as the man should have prevented this from happening to them as well as his shame at having me step in and take over. Maybe just this once or a thousand times, maybe extra love can conquer the demons instead of tough love. Love and a lot of prayers for guidance! I’ll see you guys around the blog. Have a good one!