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This was all a decade ago when my mom was an active alcoholic. I was basically her caretaker, although no one 'forced' the role upon me. I made her meals, escorted her down the stairs, tried to stop her from driving while drunk, and generally watched over her to make sure she didn't die in her sleep or slip in the shower. Oftentimes I'd even GO with her while she went to get more booze, while she was absolutely shit-faced. We got into 4-5 small accidents over the three years she was really actively drinking; I'm amazed nothing worse happened. She'd usually go to a drive-thru booze 'barn'. I don't think I even knew that she was getting vodka, then; all I saw were the paper bags. Haha, I usually got Gatorade and Doritos when we went, actually.
But some of my worst memories are of laying on my bare bed at night, listening to her in the bathroom - whose toilet was right up against the wall where the head of my bed was - slamming her shoulders and head back against the wall and the water tank, sobbing and muttering about all sorts of things. This happened constantly, and it never failed to scare me so bad I couldn't move. Sometimes I'd knock on the bathroom door to see if she was okay, but she either wouldn't respond or yelled at me. She actually broke the toilet tank three times and flooded her bathroom; twice it dripped down into the fan, and once it produced so much water damage on the downstairs ceiling that it had to be replaced.
I was so terrified of her taking the stairs. She fell down pretty often - usually onto her butt, or tripping down the last couple of stairs. One time though, it was really bad. She fell down a whole flight of stairs head-first and slammed into the railing. It was awful. She didn't open her eyes for like ten seconds while I shook her. The cheap canned pasta I'd heated up for her spilled everywhere, all over the stairs, the wall, and her. It made such a huge mess. And then she just got up and it was like nothing happened.
I specifically remember all the caretaking beginning with her having an ankle cast. I forget why (according to her it was surgery), but regardless she moved up and down the stairs way too often. Even after she was healed, though, I kept taking care of her. I missed over a month of school one year in 6th grade and was almost held back because of it, just to better look after her. Oh man, and she was - and IS - an amazing liar. I have never met anyone who can lie as well as she can. It's actually scary. She struggled with relapses for quite a while, and I almost always knew when she was going out to get a drink...but I was too much of a trusting coward to stop her. I'd ask pressing questions, but I never actually got the balls to take her keys or check her purse until a couple years ago when I finally learned to not trust her words. I wanted to believe her so much; it honestly really, really hurt me that I couldn't just take what she said at face value anymore.
My dad did nothing during those years. He slept, and he worked. And now that I'm older I appreciate that he put food onto the table, but for a long time, I hated him because of his absence (well, and because my mom hated him; they got divorced shortly after she went to rehab for the first time). And my siblings! Somehow I was more annoyed at them, even though that's not at all fair - they were kids too. Regardless, I saw very little of my family outside of my mom for three years. I felt abandoned by them, sometimes, although that's also not their fault - they'd invite me to go out with them to eat all the time, but I always said no because I 'needed' to look after mom. I was so ANGRY that no one else was contributing to 'mom watch'. I seemed to be the only one who gave a crap about her; I felt like it was me and her against the world. If no one else was going to look after her, then it had to be me, right? And eventually, they stopped asking. It'd turn out later they'd go to dinner to discuss mom more often than not, and as a result of me not going, I'd get left out of 99% of their conversations. That made me so mad for a while. But even besides not going out with them, my brother usually holed himself up in his room or was out with friends, and my sister would be out of the house more often than not, frequently sneaking out to walk around at night. It was all very lonely, and scary. Apparently, my sister would sometimes go into my mom's room and dump her alcohol. I never noticed, though.
My mom got sober(ish) when I was 14, in 8th grade. I fondly remember the summer I spent with her down at her parents' house. I threw a fit and refused to stay home with the rest of my family for the summer; instead, I lived with my grandparents and mother. We went to so many festivals...and it was amazing to not have to really look after her anymore. Things finally felt good after such a long time of being bad. Unfortunately, that didn't last. When we went back home and I went into the 8th grade, I had a melt-down. I had long-since started disassociating (derealization/depersonalization) as a defensive mechanism, but when she got sober and my life didn't revolve around her as much....I totally broke down. I had to drop out of middle school. My depression and anxiety hit a new peak, I started getting more panic attacks, I couldn't cope with ANYTHING. I was always a mess, but never THIS much of one. Eventually, I got a tutor to catch me up on what I missed and entered my first year of high school a year late. And then just a couple months into the year, I had another breakdown. This time I started online school, and well, I feel like I didn't learn much during those years, but I eventually managed to graduate. After another year hiatus, I started online college...and managed to finish a year and a half before having yet another meltdown. I've been out of school since, just lazing around every day, doing nothing. I've never had a job, and I'm 22 years old. I can't drive, and cars terrify me. I'm so afraid of being outside I have panic attacks, and I'm in so much pain when I move that even walking hurts.
I feel very....stuck.
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