My Kids Didn’t Save Me — Desperation Did | by Kavi

Desperation gets a bad reputation. People whisper about it like it’s shameful, like it’s something to hide. But let me tell you this: desperation is the only reason I’m still alive.

And let me be brutally clear about something: my kids didn’t save me.

That’s the line I’m “supposed” to say, right? That I saw their faces and suddenly straightened up, became a mother worth having. But that’s not my story. Because when I lost them, there was a small, ugly piece of relief buried inside me. Relief that I could finally stop pretending. Relief that I didn’t have to keep failing them day after day.

It wasn’t pretty. It wasn’t noble. It wasn’t mother-of-the-year redemption.

It was desperation.

The kind that burns through every lie you’ve told yourself and forces you into a folding chair in a church basement, praying somebody else’s story will keep you alive for one more day.

The In and Out

I didn’t get sober once. I got sober, then I didn’t. I’d swear off drinking and using, only to find myself crawling back to it with shaky hands and shame dripping off me like sweat. Every relapse came with new promises: This is the last time. This is really it.

But here’s the thing about addiction: it doesn’t care about your promises. It doesn’t care about your good intentions. It waits. It whispers. It convinces you that just one more won’t hurt — until you’re drowning all over again.

I could sit in the rooms of AA and share a share, but that’s all I was doing — putting on a show. I knew the words, I knew the lines. I could string together just enough honesty to make it sound real, but inside I was hollow.

I was in, and then I was out. Couldn’t hang around long enough for someone to really look at me, to see past the performance, to see I was a fraud.

It wasn’t until I had lied enough, stolen enough, given away every single piece of me, and had nothing left to offer — not even the mask — that I finally got desperate.

That’s when recovery cracked me open. Not because I wanted it. Not because I suddenly loved myself. But because I had nowhere else to go.

The Lie of Strength

People think recovery is about strength. That’s bullshit.

If strength worked, I’d have white-knuckled my way into a perfect life years ago. Strength had me locked in battles I couldn’t win. It kept me fighting myself, bargaining with myself, losing to myself.

Desperation is what cracked me open.

Desperation made me teachable. It made me honest. It shoved me into the arms of strangers who said, “Keep coming back,” even when I didn’t believe I belonged.

And it kept me coming back when I slipped. Again. And again.

What Desperation Gave Me

Desperation gave me permission to stop pretending. To admit I was out of moves. To stop bargaining with my own destruction and finally hand over the wheel.

And here’s the irony: the thing I fought the hardest — admitting I was powerless — turned out to be the thing that gave me power.

Because desperation isn’t weakness. Desperation is a beginning. It’s a doorway. It’s the place where survival and surrender finally meet.

We glamorize strength, but strength almost killed me. What saved me was the ugly, crawling, last-breath kind of desperation.

If you’re there, good. You’re closer to freedom than you think.

Source link