Kidhood of a clown

I grew up with an alcoholic mom and a dad who pretended there was nothing wrong.

I don’t remember much of life back then, but there are two images that haunt me that I would really love to get rid of – the first is of my mom stumbling into my room at night and waking me up.  She told me she was leaving us, and then vomited on my bed, all over my teddy bears.  She collapsed into tears and appealed to me for a hug but all I could do was hug my knees and wish the monster would go back into the closet.

The second image is of me and my sister being hugged by my dad while my mom screamed and smashed the furniture downstairs.  She came upstairs and found us, then accused my dad of being a paedophile because he was squeezing us so tight.  We listened to the endless confusing words… sex, under-age, abuse, prison… and through the tirade my dad just hugged us tighter.  Mom called the police that night but I can’t remember what happened after that.  There’s other stuff too that I will never talk about because it’s locked away and at the bottom of a deep deep sea of level-headedness.

It’s so increadibly fucking hard to have two sets of parents like that.  One set is wise and caring and loving and the other is evil and violent and spiteful and so so passive agressive.  Me and my sister tried to change things but we were told we were only making things worse so my sister left as soon as she hit 18.  We don’t talk much now.

Nobody knows about this side of my parents except for very close relatives, it was strickly kept behind doors.  It still is.  There is no getting the subject out of it’s cage so it stays inside me and it festers.

I give it up to you.  Sorry you had to read it.

Last night I learned…

…she’s definitely an alcoholic. I had to carry her out of the pub. She’d missed my calls, despite the phone sitting beside her on the bar. She was supposed to text me when she was finished her pint.

I’d made her promise not to drink shots anymore after she was assaulted on her way home, a night I wasn’t with her, after shots. It was only a little scuffing of the eye though. The gang were really after the guy that had walked her home thinking his luck was in; they only threw her to the ground. I think I might actually owe that gang a debt of gratitude.

When I arrived last night she was sitting chatting to a guy she’d just met and her friends were gone. She’d been drinking shots. She was legless.

I put her to bed. I put her to bed twice actually, picking her up after she’d rolled onto the floor. I slept in the spare room. She was suprised to wake up alone. She wept when I told her she’d chosen the company of a stranger over me. She’d really chosen another drink or several over me though.

I told her to stay in her place tonight. Tomorrow I’ll meet her. She has another chance.

Thus far the language of apology already sounds

a little too practiced.