Warning: Famous Landmarks Bingo is Not to be Played Under the Influence

A couple of months ago I introduced all of you to The Killer. This thing is vile, strong and does not let go without putting up a fight. It still has a firm grip on someone very close to my heart and to that I say this:

We use to play games all the time when we were younger. Some games we made up, others came in a box and had instructions. Whether we followed those instructions or not depended on our creativity and imagination that day.

One game I remember us playing quite often was Famous Landmarks Bingo. It was laid out just like a bingo card, with pictures of famous landmarks in place of the usual numbers. One player would pull a card, read the fact about the landmark and the other player had to guess which one it was. If they guessed correctly, they were able to dot the card in that spot (The way we played, we got a dot regardless of being right or wrong). We played that game, round after round, until we had those facts memorized and didn't need the cards anymore. We could call out a landmark and the other person would yell out a fact. Sometimes we were wrong or we would mix them up, and when that happened we just laughed.

It was because of famous landmarks bingo and all the times we played the game over and over and over again, that I was able to point out and name the landmarks I saw in Europe this summer. I would point to it and say, "Pantheon! That was on our famous landmarks bingo!" Then I would think to myself, she has to get here; she has to be able to see all of the monuments on that bingo game, just as I plan to do. We always said we wanted to. We didn't know what it meant or what it would take at the time, but we wanted to. We wanted to visit Stonehenge because we liked the name. We thought the Great Barrier Reef was "so cool!" And the Taj Mahal, well that building just looked unlike any other so, of course, we had to see it someday.

It angers and frustrates me to see that The Killer still has such a grip on her life that she can't see clearly anymore. It has interrupted her thought process, fogged up her mind and taken her morals and values hostage.  Continuing to give into The Killer will take any chance she ever had at seeing those landmarks and rip it to shreds. I would be surprised if she even remembers all the times we stayed up late playing the game.

There has to be some loop hole, some road off the beaten path to get around the "you can't help someone who doesn't want to help themselves" crap. I know that somewhere deep inside her mind she is screaming for help. She is hoping and yearning for some miracle to happen. One that can turn back time and stop her from making the decisions she made. She is hoping that when that feeling comes back, the one that completely overcomes her and paralyzes her mind, she can turn her cheek and refuse it. She is crying out, but she is so numb from The Killer's effects that she can't even hear herself.

I know she wants a relationship with her family. She wants to be close again. She wants to be able to take her parents out to dinner and talk to them about anything. She wants someone to be proud of her. She wants someone to see through the bad decisions and into her good heart. She wants someone to love her the way she knows she deserves to be loved. And, YES, she still deserves all of these things!

I know that if she had the choice between the life she has now and a life free of The Killer, free of the pain and addiction, free of the loneliness that comes with all of it, she would choose the free life. What does a person have to go through to get to a point where they are strong enough to make that choice? What kind of "rock bottom" does she have to reach to make the leap herself? Where is this "rock bottom?"

If I knew, I would pick her ass up and put her there! Why? Because I need her back! These parents need their daughter back! Her family needs the sweet, energetic, curious and brave girl back in their lives. She needs to experience life. She needs to travel the world and see the landmarks we talked about seeing so many years ago. She needs to see the world through the eyes of a child. Her decision to venture too far into the territory of The Killer took that away from her and she deserves to experience it. She can't do any of that under the influence.

If money could buy freedom from substance abuse addiction I would pay for it!

There has to be a way out of this - a way other than the one I've dreamed about.