It was chaos the moment I opened the door. The kind of chaos you could never be prepared for.

I had thought I had been gone long enough that the house would be asleep or at least on their way, boy was I wrong. As I walked in the door there were people in the living room I had never seen before and they were definitely high.

It wasn’t just pot I could smell in the air. The whole house smelled like burnt sugar. As I walked into the kitchen there was Stacy at the kitchen table with her oldest son in her lap lighting the crack pipe. I froze in disbelief mixed with rage.

As quickly as I had frozen had the back door been kicked in by no other than Tom. He wasn’t alone either he had brought Stacy’s sister who was in full-on rage mode screaming at her about how she would never see these boys again while she packed them each a bag and left with them.

Tom kicked everyone that didn’t live there out of the house and fought with Stacy for what felt like hours. At some point, it had gotten to be too much for someone and they called the police and since Tom wasn’t supposed to be in the house off to jail he went.

Stacy’s sister didn’t bring the boys back for about a week and when she did she had a social worker and court papers in hand. Stacy acted surprised like she didn’t see this coming, me however just thought she was dumb and really did believe everyone would just let it go.

The social worker took the boys, placing them temporarily with Tina while giving Stacy a laundry list of things to complete and participate in so she could regain her boys.

“Civilization is a hopeless race to discover remedies for the evils it produces.” – Jean-Jacques Rousseau