I wasn't always afraid of needles, or squeamish in intravenous situations. The first time I remember being hesitant to get a shot was when I was about six, and let my mom go first. It was a small clinic in Seattle for low income families. It was the only clinic I had ever been to. I watched the nurse try to get blood from any available place on my mother's body, but there was just no reachable vein.

A child's mind does strange things, because as a child, one is so intuitive and at the same time so naive that everything one sees is absorbed and processed for 'good' and 'bad'. That moment registered needles for the first time as 'bad'. That wasn't it, though. I am not so easily put off.

Needles ended up being a recurring motif during my childhood and it's during this time they gained their horrific connotation for me. I watched my mom disappear into bedrooms and come out droopy eyed and distant, stumbling and almost falling asleep. On the dresser, through the cracks, I would see hypodermic needles. Being a child, I did not understand the process, but I connected those needles to this shell of a mom and that was 'bad'.

It came to the point where I knew what went on, to an extent. I found blood splatters on the ceiling in the bathroom. Once my mom collapsed on the living room floor and a needle fell out of her shirt pocket.

I can't say it was drug use that bothered me, and I was aware of drugs and their aftermath. My mom told me every day of my life that what she did was something she could not escape and that what she did was not something for me to do. I watched my mother deteriorate. I was there for her forty-five minute seizures that were violent and raging, during which I carefully navigated the furniture to protect her writhing, flailing body in an attempt to keep her as safe as possible. Once, she saw me. During a seizure, she looked at me scared, alone, and horribly sad and screamed for me to help her and I cried and screamed back that I couldn't. And it was like screaming across a gorge to the only person who has ever meant something to you, as you watch them get torn apart.

Every night, I stayed awake and listened for these seizures and I knew that if everything was okay by midnight, everything would be okay through the night. She had a bad seizure that I had managed to confine to her bedroom. When it was over, I went in and found the room destroyed and there were more of those needles sticking into mattresses and scattered on the floor. I helped my mom calm down and went to bed. The next day when I got home from school, you never would have been able to tell anything happened, except for the black eye my mom had for awhile after.

My mother cherished me. My mother, an addict since she was fourteen, quit every single vice she had ever known when she was pregnant with me because in a sense, I was the life that saved her. Growing up, I always felt everything she felt for me. I knew how much she loved me, I knew how much of herself she gave to me, and not once was I ever wanting for anything. Not a day went by that she didn't say she was proud of me, she told me and she told everyone else who might listen. My mom was my mom, and my best friend. We were the only people we had.

But she had her demons. She lost her mother when she was twelve. Her father drank, womanized, and did not care a bit for what my mother might become. The only person that had hope for my mom was her mom. I do not think my mother ever got passed that, though I know she tried. She got her Associate's Degree while I was in preschool, she raised me better than I have seen any other parent do. But she had her demons. And those needles just would not get out of the picture.

My third day of eighth grade, I did not make it to school. My mom didn't wake up that morning and I couldn't get a hold of my neighbors. I spent the day cleaning the house, walking the dog, going to the store, and I spent my night watching t.v. and talking to my friends on the computer. At around 10 p.m., my mom came into my room to ask how my day went and said I looked cute in the outfit I was trying on. I answered and she went back to bed.

I had gotten into the habit of checking up on my mother, I guess the way she checked on me all through the night (it wasn't until I lived with my dad that I found out what a restless sleeper I am, my mother had always put my blankets back on my several times during the night). At three in the morning, I went into my mom's room and couldn't hear her breathing. I turned off the t.v. and the house was silent. I put my hand on my mom's still side, and leaned over her. Her beautiful blue eyes were open and empty and her face was cold and stiff.

In the earliest hours of the morning, I was absolutely and terribly alone for the first time in my life. I felt abandoned, betrayed, crushed, isolated, and devastated. I had the shell of my mother, once and for all, empty and in the next room. And she died as cold and alone as I was right that moment.

I watched her death, slowly over the years. I watched her body decay from the inside out as her collapsed veins left the flesh to rot with no oxygen. I watched her go from healthy to skeletal; I watched her go from 5'7" to 5'. We both cried and yelled because we knew - deep inside we both knew it was coming. I know that she could not stand knowing she was going to have to leave me behind, and I could not stand being left behind. All my life, I had planned on making her proud of me. I had planned on going to college and getting a terrific job and buying her a house, and a car that was reliable, and a horse, and property. I had planned on her cheering for me at my high school graduation louder than any other parent would have the guts to do. I had planned on her crying over my wedding dress and being radiant and proud at my wedding, helping me with my first born because I am scared to death I that I might not be able to raise a child and be as close to him or her as I was to my mother.

I can't do those things for her. She won't be there with me for those things. Still, I can live every single moment of my life in her memory. Every thing I do, I do knowing it would make her proud of me, I do knowing she would be hugging me each day and cheering for me in every auditorium I entered. Those needles may have taken her away from me, but they did not get in the way of her being there every step of the way. She fought so hard for herself on my behalf, she was so strong, and she was so infinitely caring despite her life that I attempt to model myself on her strength and her character and her lessons. I still get queasy around needles, but it's a fear I will outlive. I will outlive my demons so that I can make up for all the things I can't give my mother, and so that I can somehow show her I can become all she thought I could.