I had a person in my life that was a heroin addict. Im sure I am using the wrong politically incorrect term i think its supposed to be drug affected user or something along those lines. Anyway the point is this persons life, and consequently the life of his family revolved around his 100% dependency on drug use.
This was a long time ago. Gone are the days where our entire lives were consumed with worry about his survival. I try not to remember much about him during those years (about 15 of them) but i think the most poignant was when i was about 13 years old, and i asked my mum if i could go to my friends beach house for the weekend. Mum and dad looked at me and said no, we dont think thats a good idea as we are not sure if he will survive the weekend, you need to stay in Melbourne. With that i shrugged my shoulders and told my friend i had to stay home for another reason. His drug use, illnesses, jail terms, and crime had stopped shocking me from a very early age. Looking back the fact that i felt nothing towards him then saddens me a bit. Most of the time i secretly wished he was never in our lives.
However that was a different person, and now he is a new one. I am building my relationship with him now and I dont look at him and think about how amazing it is he recovered from his addiction ( it is amazing though), i look at him and now finally think of this person as my brother and not the drug addict, junkie or drug affected dependant person that he has once was. He has a wife, children, a home and all the worries of a 35 yo man raising a family would have. I never believed he would recover, we came so close to losing him so many times, but I also never had a reason to believe in him. This man that is now my brother proved me wrong, but I dont mind, not a bit because family are supposed to teach you things, and he taught me to believe that in your darkest hour, things can and will change.
