Moving forward without looking back in The Wanderer

The difficult part is all the bullshit I've had to deal with in California for many years. The scariest was the drugs. Yes I've had my own stint with certain drugs in the past but I'm far past that crap and I was never deep into them that they destroyed my life. The other people I was close to it was a different story. I had a very close friend struggle with a meth addiction for such a long time. It tore our friendship apart because everything was suddenly a lie and she always felt the need to hide it from us. I was always suspicious of her and it made for an untrusting relationship and impossible to move past because it was just always there and suddenly everything about our friendship seemed fake and there would be those times I would hang out with her and try really hard to pretend I wasn aware of what was happening behind the scenes but I just felt void of anything real and true. She is supposedly better nowadays and I truly hope she is, but there is that doubt in the back of my mind of all the years I could not trust her. There was my cousin who was addicted to meth for many years and had to go to rehab and is still living in a sober living house. Being around him was difficult because he was so paranoid and I never knew if the things he said were just delusions because since he believed what he was saying everything seemed to true, but how could I ever really know? He was doing good, but he went back to drinking and after his grandfather passed away last year he inherited an ungodly amount of money so I just hope he doesn't get back into meth and blow it all.

And then there are my parents. It's such a sad story. When I look at my mom I don't even feel warmth or like she possesses a soul within herself. My father is a joke. They both are heavily addicted to pills and gambling and who knows what else. Their entire life is based on lies and failures and I am sad to see that this is what has come of them. There is zero trust and its hard for me to care about them anymore. I look at people who are best friends with their parents, especially girls I've grown up with who are so close to their mothers and I wonder what that must be like. And as I lay awake in my grandmas house I think about how lucky I am to still have her. I would be so lost without her...she is the lifesaver I have clung to I hard times, the only person close to me in my family that I can count on, the one person I trust and love so much. And the reality that she is 80 years old is hard to accept. I hope she lives forever. I can't do this life in California without her.