Crystal Clean Read Online Free

I should know by now what to expect, but every single day I hope against hope that something will change.
    “I had the hash with me, and they took everything.”
    “Bummer. Can you get any more?”
    “I’ll try,” I say. You bastard , is what I think. I don’t want to talk to him anymore right now. He’s ruining my high.
    Andy comes home. I can’t wait to hold him and hug him. He doesn’t know what’s going on. At fifteen, all he knows is that Mom wasn’t here this morning to get him up for school. Again. He knows I’m gone most nights and usually get home just in time to help him get ready. He doesn’t understand or have any interest in where I was last night – only that I’m home now.
    “Hey, bug!” I wrap my arms around him before he even takes his coat off.
    “Mom!” I kiss his cheeks and nose and the top of his head. He kisses me back and hugs me.
    “I missed you, sweetheart. I’m sorry I wasn’t here this morning. Did you have a good day at school and program?”
    “Oh. Yeah.”
    “What did you have for lunch?”
    “Doh know. Enna watch Star Wars?”
    “Sure, honey. I’ll make you dinner. I love you, Andy.”
    “Auya you.”
    And for some reason those two words flood me with guilt. After dinner, Allan takes me to my car; I go to my downtown office and hop right back on the rollercoaster. There isn’t much of a choice. Not only do I still need to make a living, but now there are legal fees as well.

Chapter 3
     
    Meth kicked my ass. I’d done my share of drinking and drugs before I started using it, so I’d been around a block or two, but by no means was I prepared for the unique insidiousness of methamphetamine. That may seem unrealistic, but in 1999, the year I started using, there were no anti-meth campaigns like there are today. Looking back, though, I don’t know if the information available now would have deterred me. It certainly hasn’t seemed to put much of a dent in the nationwide pandemic.
    Meth reaches across all socio-economic strata, from those living in extreme poverty to middle class soccer moms, college professors, doctors and CEO’s. Many of them are people you would never imagine to be involved with, let alone addicted to, methamphetamine. I know these people because I’ve used with them and sold to them. I know them because I’m one of them. For years, I led a double life, and no one outside of the drug world had any idea what was going on with me. But the fact is, I’m an addict, and meth was my vehicle to self-destruction.
     
    Although I’d done drugs in the past, I was sober when I had my son and I’d been sober for four years when I decided to become a foster mother for the state of Idaho. People asked me then, and sometimes now, whether I was crazy at the time. After all, I was a single mother of a son who has Down syndrome and I worked full time. I remember the decision to foster being a spontaneous one. The idea popped into my head one day, I looked into the licensing process and before I knew it, I had my first placements. Over those three years, I took care of eighteen children, including respite care I did for other families. The oldest child I had was seventeen when she came to me. My youngest was five hours old.
    When I think about that time in my life, I don’t know how I pulled it off: daycares, schools, and visitations with parents and social workers, meetings, middle of the night arrivals, therapists and doctors. One child at a time whose life was being ripped apart in its own unique way. On top of that, I worked full time and my son, Andy, went to school and attended developmental therapy five days a week. It was chaos, it was heartbreaking and it was worth every minute of it, although there’s no way I could do it again. It drained everything out of me, which is probably the reason I started fostering in the first place.
    It’s likely that I was in a manic episode of my bi-polar disorder. I was diagnosed years ago and although for me the