Abort the Mission

Dear Mom,

I know we don't talk much. Your seasonal depression and outlook on life have created a distance between us, although I guess when I look back to a time when it wasn't this way, I can't because we have never been close.

Your party lifestyle, work hard and work to get back to it has caught up to you and I feel like your mind has created a prison that you are giving up trying to get out of anymore.

Ever since I was small, alcohol and drinking have been a part of my life. I can bring up a hazy memory of being sat on the counter and you bickering with someone over giving me a small glass of milk with amaretto in it and I can remember this being an occurrence more than once.

I remember waking up to loud music and wondering what was happening so late and walking into the kitchen filled with laughter while our lazy susan on the kitchen table being spun around to administer a plate and straw and what can now either remember or I have inserted as a result of knowing that drug use took place around me alot when you had friends over and being told I should go back to bed.

Once I woke to burning eyes, the smoke alarm going off, the house full of smoke and the smell of burnt tortilla chips. I walked around the corner to see the glowing red oven from failed food turned to glowing embers inside. I woke Dad up and he grumpily got up and said "Oh your mother was making nachos and must have fallen asleep.." and got you up out of bed and we opened all the doors and windows to let the smoke out and then to freshen the smell of burned refried beans.

I got to skip school that day.

I witnessed and watched as you and your girl friends would pile into the bathroom and lock yourselves in and and cackle and laugh and a couple times when armed with a battalion of their kids too, we would unlock the door and bust you doing drugs to be told that we didn't understand and that we wouldn't until we were older.

When I grew up a little bit, I was left home so you could go and do as you pleased at friend's and at concerts and in campgrounds that I was dragged along to when I was too small to have a choice whether or not to be subjected to the debauchery that matured me extremely fast. I had started to make my own friends and have my own stuff to do and was occupied with that so I wasn't a part of the party plan to be coordinated for.

When my grades slipped from my priorities shifting to my social life, you grounded me and were then too grounded to make sure I wouldn't just go to a friend's if you were out also. This created resentment I am sure because you were made to sit in the house you hated, on the street in the town you hated and instead of assuming blame of the neglect that incited rebellion in the child you had to plan for but that was an accident and the ruin of your youth and lifestyle, you sat on that couch and watched the 12 channels as they were force fed over the airways and escaped into the television.

You sat and sat and angrily stewed in your resentment, trapped in a box with this "pet" to take care of that you couldn't simply feed and water and then left it to entertain itself and ignore. This pet had awareness, feelings, and a future that you were responsible for, and now the consequences of your actions and party plans and decisions to nurture not your child, but your alcoholism were all starting to weigh down on you, but this time you had no where to run. You sat on that couch and picked at your dry hands and let resentment of that child's existence that trapped you and incredible pain and sorrow of the dead friends of your past shut you down from everything in the real world that was passing by in front of you and the only window you chose to look out of was that box.

At some point you reached the point of critical mass and had to release the pressure valve and started more drinking at home. Syrupy thick tequila in a frost covered bottle lived in the freezer and I remember you asking Dad to get you another and him talking about how you didn't need more and that you would "turn into the tequila monster" and looking at me to get validation and a laugh for his crack of wise at me and being young and not fully understand what was happening, I did.

This made you feel ganged up on and me to have a culprit for all the frustration and created my own pressure valve. Meanwhile, no one was making efforts to help each other...just more spite and anger compounded and concentrated and pressing more weight on the household that you didn’t want, my oblivious and non-confrontational father that couldn’t fix anything or know to try as doubles and overtime and shift work supported us and I was too young to understand the scope of the issue.

He would go to the refinery and work shift work and leave you home with the teen, old enough to take the narrative of the weak and monster Mom and used it against you when you metaphorically said fuck it, gulped down some of that bottle and played records to try and feel something again. I would steal your keys, grab a car load party for a sleepover at the house since I was grounded for the rest of the school year for grades not getting better.

I admit, this was a blatant selfish move by me, but I was an angry, invisible teenager and was set up to take advantage of the situation by years and years of being disregarded and cast aside for the glowing box and chilled intoxicant in the freezer. No one considered how I felt, no one asked me how I was doing through my mother’s depression.

Everyone was too scared to talk about how they felt, programmed too deep to show emotion, weakness and silent to let the problems so easily tended to, fester and compound into more assumptions and echos.

No one ever said anything of emotional intelligence to me unless they were drunk and I realized at a young age that those saying it and the person that would wake up the next day and exist in the real world were two different people. The one that was spinning a verbose fantasy of promises and a future of honest emotion wasn’t real and would vanish eventually as would anything they said would be “from now on”

The mere mention of therapy, meds or ways to fix what was wrong with me was ignored, down played and gaslit into submission.

All of this coming to a head with me running away and then moving out, living my own life rebelling against a “know it all” attitude, doing plenty of my own partying, finding myself, making mistakes, finally following in your footsteps and then taking up the habit that pressed down on you in the first place. The wheel and cycle set to continue another revolution.

Hi, I'm Billie and I am an alcoholic and addict.

I just wish you knew how your highest highs and lowest lows swallowed my childhood, making me grow up too fast and become hyper vigilant at all times. That childhood is something I am running towards every day now, sprinting to the wonderment of youth and artistic expression.

I wish I could make you see some of that awe in the world again and lift you out this swamp of sadness.

Happy Mother's Day Mom.

To the reader: I didn’t let it rule me for good. I made it to six years without a drink on March 3rd of 2022 and while I can't predict the future and things are in a massive flux as of late, I am optimistic about that.

Also, I know one thing is for sure, we will get to closeness or closure someday, so I am hoping for a longer period of the former and a large gap between that and the latter.