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Ever since I can remember, my mother was an alcoholic.  Only I didn’t know that she was an alcoholic.  And that wasn’t all that she was - she was also kind, talented, and funny.  She also struggled with a deep depression.

When, as a teenager she told me that she was an alcoholic, I was angry.  Why hadn’t she told me before?  Shortly thereafter she moved out and I was so angry that visits were difficult.  I missed her.  Why can’t you just come back and take care of me? I needed her.

I was always afraid to talk to her, to tell her honestly how her drinking affected me, because I was afraid that she would hurt herself.  She was always so sad and I didn’t want to be the person who pushed her over the edge.

The hardest thing for me was not knowing who to expect.  Which person would I be talking to?  One mom was very different from the next.  It created a lot of stress and anxiety.  I also constantly worried about her and wished I could protect her from herself.  I know her life was not easy.

We walked a fine line between fiery anger and deep, longing love.  I wanted more than anything for her to be the one mom that I adored.

I got sick in my later teenage years and she was in rehab.  She took care of me and I know that she saved my life.  It was the single most incredible year of our lives together.  I actually got to know my mother as a person and came to understand who she was a lot more.  This 12 months is still so precious to me.  But it was only 12 months and soon after, she was back to drinking and our one year was gone like a mirage.

The next couple of years were difficult with glimmers of good moments in them.  I was tired of playing the parent, of being the responsible one.  I was starting to see a pattern within my relationships with other people that really reminded me of my dynamics with my mother.

My mom died almost two years ago.  Last night, she visited me in my dreams.  So often I feel like a small child, wanting her with such intensity that it feels like physical pain.  I wasn’t sure how this process of grieving for her would unroll.   I thought I would be consumed by guilt, for all of my anger and for all of the unrest and turmoil of our relationship.  But I am not and am starting to understand that my reaction was normal.  She visits me in my dreams and it’s always the same - she tells me that she loves me but that she cannot stay.  I am starting to realize that although I have lost her physical being, her physical presence in my life, she is still in my mind and my heart.  And we are still working on our relationship.

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There are many trials in life that one must go though, and everybody deals with things differently.  Some write, some fight.  Everyone in my family seemed to drown their problems with alcohol.

 As a six year old, I didn’t’ see the problems that my family faced.  My world was big and full of wonder in the eyes of a curious little boy, but having alcoholic parents made my world a lot smaller.  I could never put into words how scared, embarrassed and annoyed I was at their drinking.

 I learned quickly to figure out what my parents were thinking and feeling.  I needed to know what I was coming home to.  At some point, my parents split.  I stayed with my dad most of the time because my mom’s drinking was really bad.

 One time though, my dad left me and my friend on a Friday night to go out and didn’t come home.  We went to my friend’s house; I remember his mom was real nice about it.  My dad didn’t come home till late Saturday; he didn’t leave me any money or anything.  He came to pick me up at my friend’s house and I knew he was hung over.  He didn’t talk at all on the ride home and he went right up to bed as soon as we got home.  The next morning he acted like nothing had happened.  The thing he really forgot about though was that day was my birthday – he never even mentioned it.

 Daniel

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            My parents would fight almost every day when I was little.  I was afraid of my dad because he drank a lot.  I never knew what he would do to my mom or me or my sisters.  I always felt like he might hit her or one of us.  On those few occasions when he did actually hit one of us kids, I would tell myself we deserved it because we had done something wrong. 

            I was young so I really had no clue what was going on with him.  I just knew he would come home drunk every day, fight with my mom and ruin everything.  I always tried to keep the other kids out of the way.  I would make dinner for them and then take them upstairs to do homework – out of sight, out of mind kind of thing.  The fighting would go on until he eventually fell asleep.  I would hear my mom on the phone with her sister afterwards, she would cry and swear she was going to leave him, but she never did. 

            In the morning, the house would be very quiet.  My mom didn’t get out of bed so I would have to make breakfast, pack lunches and get everybody out the door on time.  All this while trying really hard not to wake up either my mom or dad.   This went on for years.  My dad never did quit drinking and my mom never left him.

             When I grew up, a friend convinced me to go to an Ala-non meeting.  I really didn’t want to go and didn’t think I needed to talk about any of this because my dad was no longer around.  Boy was I wrong, I had a lot to say and a lot of feelings about my having to pick up the slack for my parents. It really did help simply to tell someone else my story.

 Anonymous, Ohio

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I got everything on my list for Christmas after my parents were divorced when I was 11 years old.  My mom would spend the rest of the year paying off the debt.  Christmas gifts were so important to her because when she was a child she got next to nothing.  She didn’t want to let that happen to her children.  After the divorce my dad didn’t see us much except for at the holidays but he usually didn’t get us anything. 

My father was what some would call a “raging” alcoholic, hitting my mom, swearing at everyone, picking fights.  We learned early on to try and stay away from him when he would come home drunk.  There were times when I just wanted to take care of him, make him something to eat or help him get out of his work uniform but he would just get angry, swear and yell and chase us away.  We never really talked about all this.  My mom would just beg him to stop drinking and threaten to leave and eventually after many years, she did.  She would say that the happiest day of her life would be when “the old man is six feet under”.  I couldn’t believe she would wish my dad dead.  When my dad did die, my mom was a wreck, it turned out not to be the “happiest day” for her.

 I mostly just remember always feeling afraid 24/7….what would happen next.  I still feel afraid a lot of the time for no special reason.  You just get use to feeling that way.  I feel sad a lot too especially when I think about growing up in that house.

 Suzi

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