I stood in the pristine white bathroom of the therapeutic office, my thoughts attempting to overthrow my sanity. Looking up, I gazed into a mirror with dark swollen eyes staring back at me. My grip tightened onto the sink as though to keep myself anchored to reality, the salty tears flowing freely from my eyes and landing with soft thuds on the linoleum floor. "Smile. Be happy. They don't care how you actually feel. They're faking it even more than you are," I whispered to myself trying to convince myself I was alright.

I had to drag myself into the therapist's office, each step sinking into the grey fluffy carpet. She was a kind, middle aged woman, but she didn't actually care about me. I sat on the large black couch, clenching my fist to keep from crying.

"How has your week been going?" she asked, taking off her black worn down shoes that had scuff marks on the inside arches of the shoes.

I looked at the ceiling hoping she couldn't read into my soul. "Fine," I said lying straight through my teeth. This week had been the worst for me. I had to call 9-1-1 on my mom. She had emptied her pills into her mouth and mixed that with whiskey to drown her "inner demons" as she would say. This had been the normal routine each month. Except for the fact, this time she was sent to the hospital to recover. Following the routine check up, they found signs of liver failure. She had been doing this for so long that it had taken a drastic toll on her body.

"How do you feel about your mother needing a liver transplant?" she asked, seeming sincerely apologetic for the whole situation.

"She won't get it," I replied bitterly.

"Why do you think that?" she asked with a hint of confusion in her voice.

"They don't give transplants to someone who doesn't want to repair their life or even live their life," I said my eyes filling with tears.

"Oh, " she sighed not knowing what the right words to say were. She had tried on many occasions to connect with me, yet I refused each time. I guess I don't know how to accept help, because before therapy I've never been offered it.

Silence had taken over the room and she slowly put on her black worn down shoes. All lady therapists do this as an indicator that the session is over.

The phone on her desk rang. "Hello? This is she," She paused stunned. "Oh, no. I have him in my office. I'll tell him." She hung up.

Her most sincere look she could muster took over her face, "Your mom. She passed in the hospital an hour ago. They did everything they could."

Tears flooded my eyes as my heart sank into my stomach, making me want to throw up. 'Don't care. Stop showing you care. It doesn't make a difference,' I thought in my head. I had expected it to happen, but it didn't soften the blow of the therapist's words in the slightest.

I tried effortlessly smoking one of my mom's cigarettes. I know smoking kills, but I didn't care, I loved how the feeling it gave me. My mom chose her way to die, so why can't I choose mine?

I still remember how this all started. It was sixteen years ago. My mom had me at sixteen. We lived with her parents till she was eighteen and on her eighteenth birthday they kicked her out. My father was a rich boy who couldn't be seen with a child with a woman of less value. He was twenty when she was eighteen. Since we had nowhere to go, my mother began to threaten my father saying he needed to give us money or she'd take a DNA test to the news papers to prove he was my father.

This made my father very angry. He promised that he wasn't going to pay a dime and that if she went to the papers with their story he'd make her life a living hell. Calling his bluff she went to the newspapers with our story and sure enough he kept his promise.

He had her fiance arrested for a crime he didn't commit and made it so he couldn't get out on parole. He also made finding a job to support me impossible. He even tried getting me taken away from my mom. Feeling like a failure, my mom started drowning her mistakes with a bottle of whiskey. When that didn't work, she took her antidepressants and began to double and even triple the dosage.

The court ordered me to go to therapy after I saw one of my moms short term boyfriends shake and throw my baby brother across the room, killing my baby brother. He would also beat up my mom until she passed out. The thought of all this made me throw up.

There was a knock on the door. My social worker was here to take me to the group home. I will be there until I turn eighteen and after that who knows who I'll become. Will I be like my mother or father? Will I be okay?

Seeing everything I've seen and going through everything I've been through means I'm nine times more likely to commit crimes, twenty-five times more likely to have a child as a teenager, and I have a thirty percent chance that I will abuse or neglect my children too. But I don't want to be a statistic.

* * * *

The drive there was hell. The weather has been crappy. The group home has too many rules. But the worst of it was the funeral. When my father got up there and talked about how close of friends him and my mother were. Pathetic is what it was. He knows her addiction was his fault and now he's trying to act as if he had nothing to do with it.

My anger, frustration, and hatred towards him filled my stomach, it made me want to throw up. I'm so tired of sitting here waiting for karma to come back and bite him.

Without thinking, I stood up, "You're a liar! Tell them what you did to her! Tell them why she started using and how you killed her! Enough of this b.s., blaming her addiction on anything or anyone else!"

"Excuse me?" he asked obviously confused at how I could see right through him.

"You killed my mother! Tell them the truth!" I screamed at the top of my lungs.

The pastor and his wife, Karol, came to escort me out of the church. Karol took me by the shoulders and pulled me in for a tight embrace. I fell to my knees with her still holding me and cried.

I could feel my knees unlock and melt into the ground. My hands shook like jello.

A petite girl came running out of the church. I had seen her rarely, at school, as her crowd was not one to interact with someone like me. Her brown curly hair shined in the sun as she came over to me.

"Karol, may I?" she asked and with that Karol let go of me. She sunk down to my level on the ground. "I'm Bailey Hill." She took me in her arms and without saying another word just held me. It felt like she was putting my shattered pieces back together again.

When she let me go, her warmth was still with me and the pieces were put back in their places. Her deep, dark blue eyes looked directly into my soul. The best part was she didn't seem scared by what she saw. She seemed almost relieved which didn't make sense to me.

"Are you okay? I mean as okay as can be expected," she corrected softly.

"It hurts. I don't know who I am if I'm not taking care of her," I began to cry again.

"I know it hurts. That will never go away, but as you go on, it will hurt less with each passing day. Just keep holding it together and while you do that you will slowly figure out who you are."

For weeks after that day, she would spend hours on end reading verses from the Bible to me. They had comforted her with some of her losses. My favorite was Matthew 6:34, "Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough worries of its own." What it meant to me was take each day and live in that. Don't worry about what tomorrow holds, live in the present.

I began going to church almost every week, I participated in both a support group for troubled teens and a youth group. The youth group took up most of my time as we would do different things each week. It usually consisted of some sort of community service. It would always end in a Bible reading session.

* * * *

6 years Later....

A skinny, brown haired boy drug himself into my church office. It had been given to me to run and coordinate the youth group. The boys name was Theo. He was a recovering heroin addict.

I could see he had been shooting up again by the purple bruises from the needle he chose to use on his arm. Though he came from a very kind religious family, he had fallen into the hands of temptation just as my mother had. Theo was fifteen and had been in and out of juvie.

"Sir, I have lost my way and don't know what to do," Theo bowed his head.

"Pray for strength and forgiveness. Do not worry. We will get you help," I calmly stated.

I called for Pastor Jameson and we rode with his parents to a rehab center where we admitted Theo. While we were there we wrapped many blankets around Theo. We even dabbed a wet washcloth on his forehead and temple as it was obvious that the withdrawal symptoms were making him extremely sweaty and cold.

"Matt, he reached his hand for my forearm, "Will God forgive me for every sin."

"Yes, he sent his son to die on the cross so that we may be made pure again," I held his hand in mine while I spoke.

"Can you read to me?"

I picked up the book from the nightstand and as I was about to start he interrupted, "No, the Bible."

"John 3:16. For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life." He smiled mouthing the words with me and gripping my hand.

At 11:52 p.m. he passed through the gates of heaven and had let go of the grip he so tightly held on to. The stress the withdrawls put on his heart was too much for him. It was time for God to bring him home and we accepted it, because we all know he's in a joyous and better place. A place where there is no suffering, a place where he will forgiven. I think that's what we all want to feel. To some people, being safe and forgiven is all they need to feel happy.

The funeral was beautifully set up with white rose and pictures of him with his family. There were pictures of him as a baby, a young boy, a young man, and even pictures of him always stuffing his face full of food. His mother and father had asked me to do the eulogy. I had never felt so honoured.

"We will now ask Youth Counselor Matthew Broth to come up and speak of how he saw the life of Theo Sorensen. " smiled the Pastor.

"For as long as I can remember, my own mother suffered from drug abuse," I could feel the tears forming in my eyes. I looked around the crowd and one smile caught my eye. My wife, Bailey, sat there smiling at me. This brought comfort to me.

"She wasn't perfect, but her mistakes did not make her a terrible person. She loved those around her. And Theo loved all of you. This mistake did not make Theo a bad person. In fact, his mistakes helped him to be a better person, because through them he found God. He found a safe and forgiving place where he is no longer tempted. A place where he can be happy."

I went on, "This isn't a time to be sad or angry, but a time to forgive, rejoice, and remember everything good Theo brought us. It is a time to be thankful for the time we had with him and to share those joyful memories with each other just as he would've wanted us to."

It's been six years and I'm not totally healed at the loss of my mother, but I have come to peace with it just as teenage Bailey Hill had said I would. In the past six years, I have had two girls born to Bailey and me. Their names are Hope Lee Broth and Faith Louise Broth. Hope and Faith are named after two of the most important things Bailey and the Lord Jesus Christ has given me since the death of my mom.

I am not the statistic I was on the road to being. Instead, I am a youth coordinator, a mentor to troubled teens, a husband, a father, a friend, and hopefully soon a pastor.

Nothing has become of my father and I. It probably never will, but that's okay. He still holds to be my biggest role model in the way that he is everything I don't want to be. Both in a person and a father. Thanks to everything he put my mother and I through, I feel I've reached my full potential as a human being.