The Silver Lining On The Fucked-Up, Drug-Addicted Cloud

Thanks to a reader, Katie, for sending her story.



I married a great guy, who had primary responsibility for three young children. Love the kids. Hate their mom (a whole other blog I suppose.) His mom, well, I knew she talked about me behind my back but was super-great to my face. You know the type, right? Made me paranoid. For 7 or 8 years. Doesn't anymore.

Why not?

Well, my friends, it's because I found out she doesn't know what the hell she ever talks about and no one ever believes her because they all know she's a druggie. No, not coke and heroin drugs, but steal-'em-from-your-friends and shop-around-at-hospitals drugs. Found this out in the best possible way.

My oldest had his tonsils out at age 7 or 8. The hospital sent him home with liquid Tylenol-3, you know, the fun kind with Codeine in it. Was giving him a dose every morning and every night for about a week so about half the bottle was left. The last dose I gave him, he commented that it didn't taste so bad anymore. "It almost tastes like water now!" Hmmm. Water? Really? Dipped my finger in it and discovered we'd performed a miracle in our house. Backwards, though. We'd turned T-3 into water! Hallelujah! Actually, guess who'd come to babysit while I'd run to the grocery store? Yep! Druggie gramma! Seems like she'd downed half a bottle of T-3 while taking care of my four small children. Awesome!!! But since I didn't know it yet, our suspicions actually turned to my teenage sons. . . which is fabulous to contemplate. Your teens are not only taking drugs but have stooped to the level of stealing it from their young siblings. It was a shitty moment. Thankfully,we didn't confront them (since it turns out they didn't do it) we just put things away in, we thought, a safer place. About 6 months later, I had my gallbladder removed and things became much clearer. Since I had four young children, Drug-gramma (henceforth to be known as D-G) took my kids for a few nights because I couldn't lift the children and was in a LOT of pain. My vicodin was stashed in the upstairs bathroom cabinet. Strangely, when D-G brought the children over for a visit two days post op (actually to dump them on me because she suddenly had some mysterious errand) she did something very strange, had to use the upstairs bathroom about 15 minutes after using our downstairs bathroom. Oh, and she rummaged our kitchen cabinets 'looking for a glass' even though she'd hit the glasses in the first cupboard. So that night I got my drugs out (again -- two days post op and in a LOT of pain) and realized there weren't quite as many. So Hubby and I counted. She'd taken over HALF my prescription. Guess I should be thankful it wasn't ALL like she did to her grandson.

Anyway, over the years we've confronted, ignored, tried to deal with and get her to deal with her problems. But we've maintained the relationship because the grandkids love her (who wouldn't love a gramma who let you do whatever you wanted and fed you tons of junk food?), but the final straw happened last December when our oldest son, her oldest grandchild, got married. Oh, yeah. We have a D-G wedding story.

Instead of coming to first grandson's wedding, she was at the ER shopping for drugs. So I called her on the phone in her room at the ER, and upon getting her on the phone (here she's thinking I'm going to commiserate) I sweetly informed her that if she didn't get her fucking druggie ass to her grandsons fucking wedding she wouldn't see her grandchildren again. The loving words that flowed from my mouth would've made a sailor blush.

So now she's comparing me to my husband's psycho ex-wife (when I say psycho I mean it because the woman's spent over three years of the last 12 in the psych ward) and telling everyone that I'm a bitch. I guess the silver lining is that she no longer has any friends (because she's stolen drugs from all of them) or anyone to believe her, so the word that I'm a bitch isn't spreading far.

Cuz I'm a silver-lining type of gal.