It's only natural for a good mother to worry when her child has a drug problem that she's somehow at fault, but that's not necessarily so.
I was involved in drugs as a teenager, but I took them because I was desperately unhappy for reasons unconnected with my mother. I was trying to medicate myself.
Really, the opposite was true; I respected my mother a great deal, and I always wanted her to respect me. When I came home for the summer after my junior year, I had brought some with me, and I put it in a drawer in my dresser because my mom never went trough my things; she felt that doing so showed a lack of trust, and that wasn't what she wanted me to think.
So, anyway, I suppose I had it there for about a month, but I didn't smoke any of it because I didn't want to be high around my parents; I felt they would know what was going on and be disappointed in me.
Then I began to think about how my mom might open that drawer on some innocent errand (like to check to see if we still had the drawer key to this Victorian piece), and find it, and that idea bothered me for the same reason.
It seemed like the longer I kept it, that baggie got bigger and bigger and more blatantly obvious all the time, like it was going to hop out of the drawer and shout and wave at my mother, "Here I am! Do you see me? I'm here because your daughter only thinks about herself, and so she doesn't care if she does something which makes you feel
really bad!"
So I flushed it down the john, and I didn't ingest much of anything I shouldn't have for the rest of the summer, and it wasn't so hard to do, either, because I wanted my mother to be proud of me Respect from her really
meant something.
Then, when I went back to school, I cut my intake, and again, for the same reason, even though she wasn't there.
This was a really good thing, too, because I was in trouble over math, and was in danger of flunking out becuse of it.
Casi, I guess what I'm trying to say is that, yes, I still took them, so if my mother had known (and for all I know, she did), she would probably have felt that she'd let me down somehow. But, that wasn't true; I was only able to do as well as I did (and I'm not just talking about drugs here) because I
had a mother like her, and I
did pay attention to things she told me and to the good example she'd always shown me. But, Casi, it's not like she would have been able to
tell that.
You may not be able to tell if you're a good influence on your daughter, either, but that dosn't mean that you
aren't! I couuld be that she's only doing as well as she is because she has you to love her and make it easier not to screw up.
Maybe that doesn't sound like much to you, but it made
all the difference to me! My mother kept me alive when I was T my most confused and unhappy ever (and that was
mighty confused and unhappy, believe me), and she accomplished this not so much by what she did or said (she had already taught me and shown me just about everything I was up to learning at the time, because she had started when I was really young), but more by being who she
was.
Because my mom was who she was, she didn't have to give "what for" all the time by then, so it was who she was that counted, and who she
was was my own mom, who loved me, and tried to show me adult respect and trust, hoping that having those would encourage me to
be an adult. She was right, too; that was what worked the best for
me.
My belief is that when your mother really loves you, looking beyond what a screw-up you can be to who you
really are, you can tell that she does, even though you may not have a clue as to how she can do that, or that you
are that better person who she can see in you, but you can't. When a mother can do that for her daughter, all the rest is small stuff in comparison, and small stuff isn't worth her sweating over.
Of course, I may be nothing at all like your daughter, but it seems to me that, when the rubber meets the road, that's what just about every daughter
really want from her mother, and, Casi, I feel sure you've got that covered.
Time to go pick her up from rehab.
