I noticed it in the smallest ways.
They stopped asking first.
Not dramatically—no tears, no accusations. Just a pause before speaking, like they were checking the weather inside me before deciding if it was safe to step out. At first, I told myself they were becoming independent.
I even felt proud.
That lie didn't last.
They stopped telling me things that mattered. I found out after—the test they passed, the problem they solved alone, the fear they swallowed without waking me. When I asked why they hadn't told me, they shrugged and said, I forgot.
But they hadn't forgotten.
They had learned.
I watched them clean up without being asked, make decisions meant for adults, comfort themselves in ways I should have been teaching them to rely on me for. They didn't need me the way they once had.
And that should have felt like growth.
Instead, it felt like grief.
One night, I promised them again that tomorrow would be better. It was automatic by then, the way people say I'm fine when they aren't. They nodded, hugged me, and said, "It's okay, Mom."
They weren't reassuring me.
They were managing me.
That was the moment something inside me cracked.
Because children learn patterns from repetition, not intention. And the pattern I had taught them—without meaning to—was that I was unreliable, unpredictable, and safest to love from a careful distance.
I realized then that my absence wasn't just physical anymore.
It was educational.
I had taught them how to expect less from me.
That night, I sat alone and tried to remember the last time they had run to me without hesitation. The last time their joy didn't pause before reaching me.
I couldn't.
And meth—this thing I had defended, hidden, rationalized—had done something far worse than steal time or energy.
It had rewritten my child's sense of safety.
I still told myself I could fix it.
I still believed there was time.
But for the first time, that belief didn't feel like hope.
It felt like fear.