How It Is to Be a Child of an Alcoholic Parent
A short story about me and my alcoholic mother
I have been to therapy for two years now and I am yet to learn the valuable lesson of “you can’t save someone who doesn’t want to be saved”. But you must agree with me that it is hard to understand that when the person in question is your mother. Right?
My mom. The person who gave birth to me. The very first home that I knew.
It all sounds very poetic, but the reality is not that beautiful. Don’t get me wrong, I love my mom, but our relationship is kind of tricky. At least that is the way I see it, for her, I supposed, it is all good.
Therefore, you must know: my mom is an alcoholic. She doesn’t know it or doesn’t want to admit it, but she is one. And if you are a child of alcoholic parents you know how hard it is to grow up in a house like that. It affects you in a lot of ways and I know everyone has their own experience with it, but we share the common trauma and its repercussions in adult life. I’m not trying to speak for every child from alcoholic parents here. Everybody feels things in different ways and should have the right to say how things affect them, but I hope my words resonate with you if you have been through the same thing.
If I’m being honest here, I don’t know much about how it affected me, I’ve experienced other kinds of trauma and I don’t think I talk a lot in therapy about my parents. But the thing is: until this day the alcoholism of my mom affects me because she stills drinks and I still live with her (pandemic, hello!) so it is an endless childhood.
For me, the thing that bothers me the most is the shame. I love my mom and I’m so proud of her when she is sober but I’m very ashamed of her when she is drunk. She gets irritated easily, she has the power to say the most horrible things when she is annoyed so she easily gets into fights because she will just say mean things to people, she sleeps in every corner you put her, sometimes she will even pee over herself.
I hated it to see her doing it when I was young, to have to pick her up in whatever bar she was. To have to look at people and see the pity in their eyes, to have to hear them say things about my mom that were not necessarily true. I still feel ashamed of it just remembering. I wish I dared to ask her if she ever felt embarrassed by it if she ever hated herself for it. I don’t know. How do alcoholics think about it? I feel silly thinking about it because they are addicted, and I’m worried about how they will think about the things that affect me. I should be worried about her but then again who will think of me?
I always think that I could have dealt with the shame. You outgrow it. But the anger and how it just destroys you… I don’t think so. My mom, particularly, has a way with words that I find remarkably interesting.
She has a way to use her words to hurt you emotionally and psychologically. She loves to play the victim, she has a hard time admitting when she is wrong, and she doesn’t know the weight her words have (or she knows and she’s just cruel?). I grew up in a house where fights were constant, my mom and my dad and later, my mom and my sister. I hated it. I always thought that if I have never been born then they wouldn’t fight as much. My therapist says that my parents fight because they have their own thing going on, nothing to do with me.
Do I believe in her? Not so much. It is hard to. I always thought that I was that unwanted baby that glued together two people that hated each other. I don’t know what science says, I’m tired of reading articles, the only thing I can say is that growing up in a house where fights were constant made me a scared person. I hate fights, conflicts, discussions, basically every scenario where two people disagree with each other and it doesn’t end amicably. I also don’t like when people yell at me, it gives me war flashbacks. Likewise, I fear abandonment and I’m a people-pleaser. Basically, I suck at being a person.
Sometimes I think she loves her drink more than she loves her children. Or even herself. Actually, I don’t think she loves herself that much. I’m a suicidal-ish person (I tried to kill myself once, very poorly, and I think about doing it all the time but as you can see, I’m still alive) and I know the signs.
I know when a person doesn’t dare to kill themselves so they will just live life as careless as possible when they will not take care of themselves even when they obviously need to. It hurts me to know my mom is that person. Has the addiction made her like that? God knows what goes on in her mind. I can only imagine. Now as an adult I try not to be too judgmental, I know her addiction still affects me, and it sucks but it must be hard for her, and I want her to be healthy. I have my experiences with benzodiazepines and if my doctors weren’t as good as they are, I would be now addicted because these pills are heaven on Earth.
God knows how good it is to just be off from all the pain and stress that follows you daily. And I supposed that’s why my mom drinks as much as she does. I don’t know what she’s trying to run away from, but I can empathize with the feeling. It doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt me every time I have to hear mean things coming out of her mouth, or when she sleeps in whatever bar she’s on, or when she almost puts fire on the house because she’s so drunk, she doesn’t remember the oven is on. But it is life, isn’t it?
Without a doubt, what hurts me the most is the fact that she doesn’t care for herself as much as she has to. She’s always postponing her trips to the doctors, she’s never taking her medications (and if she does, she drinks afterward, so what’s the point?), and as she gets old, she does things old people do, like falling all the time.
Recently she was diagnosed with high blood pressure and that is bad enough on its own but of course, the alcoholic is also a hardcore smoker, so I spend all my time thinking she’s going to have a heart attack or an AVC at any minute. And she has other health issues that she deals with drinking and smoking more than usual. And it amuses me how she still has lungs. Or a liver.
They say having children is hard. Have they ever heard about moms?
Every day is a day I spend thinking about ways that I can make my mother realize what she’s doing with her life. Everybody that we know already talked to her about her drinking and she listens, she recognizes she has a problem, but she doesn’t change because in her mind she has a right to drink because her life has been hard and is hard to live.
How you fight with that? The woman is right! Her life is hard, and I can’t blame her for trying to run away from it. I only wish she would take more care of herself because she will end up dead if she doesn’t stop drinking. And she knows! And she doesn’t care. And again, I can’t blame her because I too don’t care if I end up dead. Life is hard and I don’t want to live it.
How you make someone see the destruction they are doing to themselves?
How do you accept you can’t save someone who doesn’t want to be saved?
I wish I had a good conclusion to all of it, but I supposed there is none. Addiction isn’t forever but it doesn’t go away that easily. It’s hard for everyone involved. I don’t like the idea of thinking my mother has already given up on her life and is just waiting for her disease to take her. I’m familiar with the feeling but I don’t like to think she is too.
Is it a hypocrite of me being suicidal but hating when the people I love are too? If the answer is yes then I’m ok with it, I don’t mind. Some part of me knows you can’t save people, but the other part is willing to do crazy things to try and save them. But in reality, I only can sit and try to love them as much as I can, be there for support. And at the end of the day, that’s all I really can do.
