Letter #6

Dear Tyler;

Yesterday your Dad and I were in Salt Lake and decided to go to Tucano’s for a late lunch.

The view from our table was of the area that we sat at when we took you there for your One Year Sober Celebration. 

It was one of your new favorite places to eat and we thought it would be a good place to celebrate this milestone with you. 

We had a pretty good time.   Your entire family was there for you.  Everyone congratulated you and told you how proud of you they were.  I gave you a scrapbook that meant a lot to me to create for you.  I hoped it would mean a lot to you, too. 

But, your reaction was very hard to read and I still have no idea what you thought about it at the time. 

As I remembered that day and the hope that we felt in showing you our love and support, I felt sad about where you are now.  On that special day, we all wanted you to be able to hold onto our belief in you as you continued onward and upward in maintaining your sobriety.

Now, I don’t know where you are at as far as being sober.  I know that you are court ordered to be clean at every random drug test and that you are also ordered to stay away from alcohol.  But, I don’t know if you have found a way to get around that order and still be able to smoke pot or do anything else.

I hope you are staying sober and that you will be able to see how good life can be that way.  I wish for something that will turn you around and make you want to be the great person that I know you can be.

But, I feel a lot of fear that you won’t, and that a reconciliation of our relationship will never happen. 

After lunch, we drove by an area that held a lot of the homeless population of Salt Lake.  It was very disheartening to see such a large group of people with nowhere to live or people who were just resigned to the fate of living on the streets. 

When I saw a young man with long black hair and black clothes kind of lying on the side of the street in a drug induced kind of stupor, I had to do a double take because at first I thought it was you.  I knew in my mind that it probably wasn’t because you haven’t been staying in Salt Lake lately, but my heart leaped into my stomach at the sight of that poor guy.  I didn’t want it to be you just as much as that young man’s mother most likely wouldn’t have wanted it to be her son.

I never thought you would be in the situation where you could easily be homeless at any moment like you were when you got out of jail in January.  It was heartbreaking to know that in the middle of the winter you had nowhere to go.  I still worry so much about your living situation and want so badly for you to be in a good, positive place.

Nobody wants their child to be homeless.  I didn’t want it to happen to you. 

I hate this situation so much.

I wish someone could help you see a better way and could help you realize that your parents never wanted life to be like this when you became an adult and that we still would do anything that we could to help you if we thought we could.    

I do love you for who you are--because I know who you are deep inside.  I have seen the real you and I wish I could see that person again.  I just can’t live with what you have been doing in the last few years and how you act toward me and your Dad.    

I really miss you and hope you are doing okay. 

Love,

Mom