Today was a good day, its been awhile since I felt like I could say those words. Its been almost two months since I lost my only daughter to an accidental overdose. Most days I feel like I am in a crazy dream, and I often wonder how can this be my life. How can I be the mother who lost a child, it seems unreal. I really was in a fog the first two weeks, I vaguely remember my friends and family never leaving my side, they were in my house everyday. They came with me when I had to go to the funeral home, they did most of all the arrangements to the most meaningful celebration of my young special girls life. I felt blessed to have so many people around see I am an introvert, I spend most of my life alone. So to have so many people come out and around and support me through the most painful part of my life was eye opening for me. Now two months later, I am still in a dream most days. When I can talk about addiction in itself I am okay when I talk about losing my daughter I am still crying. I don't let myself think about the finality the trauma the loss because it hurts too much. Though I know I have to let it seep in and grieve but my mind won't let me yet. I haven't opened her bedroom door yet, another hurdle I will have to get through one day soon. March 19th the police came to my house to tell me that I had lost my precious daughter to the drug that she desperately wanted to beat but it was too strong. She was waiting for a treatment facility to open and was ready to go and work on beating her demons. Its still not open, red tape preventing youth from escaping their nightmares. So frustrating, I did a short interview about a month after and spoke about the lack of resources for youth and that night, I felt like I was sucker punched when I read the vicious comments from some people who never met me or my daughter. Comments of how terrible a mother I must of been and how dare I ask for resources for something I should have been able to parent out of my daughter. The lack of compassion shown for people with addiction and mental health issues staggers me. My daughter did make a bad choice, she suffered from depression and after so many years of feeling bad someone gave her a drug that in that moment made her forget her sadness. Over the next two years she tried a few different ones and told me once that it was the first time she had felt good or okay. It broke my heart, I knew she would regret it, but she was a teenager with the lack of foresight to see the future hell she would be in. Many months later when she was in the pain of detox trying so hard to fight the relapse, she told me, crying in pain, she never knew how bad the withdrawals would be. No one could have prepared her for the torment that her brain and body would go through, well not true, the ones who shared their drugs with her could have. I'm not sure she would have listened anyways, she was a free spirit. She loved with abandon, she loved the homeless people, the drug addicts, she defended them vehemently. When I begged her to stop hanging out with those people. She would get so angry at me and yell "don't call them those people you have no idea what they have been through" and she was right. Now I find myself on forums yelling the same message to others who want to condemn people with addictions and let them die on the streets feeling hopeless. I feel like my reason for breathing has been taken away, my identity has been stripped from me and I am lost not sure where to go from here.