The M&Ms I Still Eat

I flew to California to bring my son home from treatment, and he relapsed in the airport gift shop before we even boarded the plane.

I did not know it then. I thought he was tired. A month of intensive treatment, all that therapy, the emotional work of getting honest about his addiction. Of course he was exhausted. So when he slept through most of the flight home, I ate the peanut butter M&Ms I had bought to share. The ones I picked up in that same gift shop where he had stolen Benadryl and swallowed enough to chase away whatever he was feeling.

I remember the lunch we had on the way to the airport. I have a photo of it. He ordered an Asian chicken salad. We were both filled with hope, though mine was probably louder. A month earlier, we had lived through a horrific night in a hotel before he left for treatment. He went missing and was found unresponsive. We worked so hard to get him across the country to that program. And now here we were, heading home with a plan, with promises, with a contract we had written together during family therapy.

Days later I understood the truth of his relapse and that his addiction was already progressing.

I still eat peanut butter M&Ms. I remember that flight. Not with anger. Not with resentment. With understanding.

But understanding did not come quickly. It took years to see what was really happening.

Through addiction, my loved one lied. He stole. He manipulated. He broke trust over and over again. His addiction did not just affect him and me. It affected our entire family. My daughter watched him disappear into someone she did not recognize. She lost the sibling relationship she had known. She lived with the chaos, the fear, the unpredictability of never knowing what each day would bring.

Many families wait for forgiveness to happen. They wait for the apology that sounds right, for amends that acknowledge these specific harms, for their loved one to fully understand what those years cost everyone. They wait to be asked for forgiveness in a way that feels complete.

That waiting can become its own kind of stuck.

I understand that wait. I lived in it. But eventually I came to understand something that surprised me: my loved one does not need forgiveness from me.

This is not a rule for anyone else. This is about how I choose to frame his addiction. Not because the harm did not happen. Not because it did not hurt. But because forgiveness is the wrong frame for what addiction did to our family.

Addiction is a disease. The addiction itself, the hijacked brain, the compulsion to use, does not require my pardon any more than cancer or heart disease would. But the behaviors, the lies and theft and manipulation and broken trust, can feel different. They feel like choices. And choices can be forgiven or not forgiven.

I came to understand that the separation does not hold.

He did not steal money because he suddenly stopped caring about me. He stole because his brain was screaming that he would be in danger without the substance. The sneaking out was to use. The lying about where he was and who he was with was to acquire and use drugs. Even the Benadryl in the airport, stolen and swallowed before we flew home, was the addiction searching for any exit from the feelings threatening to surface on that plane.

Those behaviors were not separate from his addiction. They were his addiction expressing itself in whatever way it could.

I could catalog every harm and wait for him to acknowledge each one individually. Or I could see them as part of the same disease that had taken control of him.

I chose the latter. Not because it is easier. Not because it erases what happened. But because I know who he is as a person. I know he never wanted to cause pain to those who cared about him. I know addiction took control of him and caused him to do things he would never do, hurting himself and others in ways he did not want.

Others might say that I let him off the hook. That choosing understanding over anger meant I was not holding him accountable. But understanding is not the same as excusing. And my healing does not require his punishment or his perfect amends.

I do not hold bitterness. I hold empathy. Because while his addiction was painful for all of us, it was hardest for him. His recovery has been hard-fought. I witnessed the pain he endured and the tenacity he showed.

In the beginning, every glimmer of clarity brought hope, and every setback wore that hope down a little more. Each cycle, each relapse, each broken promise made the next round of hoping feel dangerous, like setting myself up to be hurt again.

Hope did not come back through deciding to hope. It came back through evidence. Through repeated efforts. Through more steps forward and fewer backward. Through watching the ratio change over time. The evidence built slowly, until hope no longer felt fragile.

I still remember the actions and the feelings. They will not be erased. I remember the hotel room where he went missing. I remember the calls that came in the middle of the night. I remember eating those M&Ms on the plane, completely unaware that his sobriety would not last and that we were bringing the addiction home with us.

But those memories do not guide me now. The pain does not burn. There is no bitterness attached to him. These are things we endured, sometimes apart and sometimes connected, and they are part of our story and who we are.

As we move through addiction into recovery, we see this truth. Addiction takes control, causes us to do things we would never do, and hurts ourselves and others in ways we do not want. Recovery, slow and imperfect and hard-won, gives us back to ourselves and to each other.

I did not wait for the perfect amends. I chose to see the whole picture. His pain alongside mine. His fight alongside my fear. What it cost my daughter. What it cost my husband. What it cost all of us.

In that choice, I found something better than forgiveness. I found a way to hold the memory of that flight, those M&Ms, that stolen Benadryl, that month of treatment that turned out to be a pause and not a turning point, without holding bitterness.

The memories are there. They are part of us. But they do not sting anymore. I can eat peanut butter M&Ms sometimes by myself and sometimes with my loved one, and we can enjoy the crunch, the saltiness, and the sweetness at the same time.

That is not forgiveness. That is healing.