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She Taught Me Through Her Mistakes

How my mothers abuse and alcoholism shaped me into the person I am today

By Mollie HarrisonPublished 3 years ago 13 min read
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Hiking with my Mom, Brother and his friend Riley

The hardest lessons in my life came from my mother. I wish I could say that she held my hand and guided my way into adulthood, that she was my support during tough times. Unfortunately that was not the case at all.

For the entirety of my childhood and teenage years I was raised by severe Alcoholics with PTSD. I remember being seven and watching through the doorway of our kitchen as my parents hurled presents at one another, screaming obscenities, red in the face with tears streaming down their cheeks. My father got the wrong size shoes for my mom and that's all it took to trigger my mothers drunken rage. I wasn't upset, this happened so frequently that I knew my tears wouldn't help, in fact they would make things much worse. No, I was angry at my parents. How was I supposed to look up to them and trust them when they made such rash, stupid decisions?

I guess I am lucky to have realized at such a young age that my parents weren't good role models. Statistically I should have grown up to become an emotionally unbalanced addict as well. Instead I decided at the age of seven that I would learn from my parents' mistakes and plot my own path through life.

Shortly after that Christmas my parents decided to get a divorce. They had a huge fight about my mom cheating on my dad with one of her coworkers. My dad was heart broken and didn't want to leave us but he had enough self respect to walk away from my mom. He held my head in his hands and told me that he loved me and my brother more than anything in the world and he would be back for us. Then he climbed into his truck with my older half sister and sped out of the driveway. My sister remembers the 3 hour ride down to my grandmothers as a terrifying drive with my drunk and devastated dad at the wheel. I remember walking up to my mom and telling her that everything will be okay. At seven years old I reassured her and my younger brother that in time everyone would be happier this way.

In a way I was right, my parents were better off on their own. There was less fighting for a little while and they both went out of their way to try to entertain us as much as they could. My mother got custody of us because she was the only one with a job at the time but I think if the court had looked into it more they wouldn't have made that decision so quickly. Mom was a terrible judge of character, her friends were alcoholics and addicts of all sorts. They would crowd the house each night blaring kid rock, drinking, dancing naked and passing out all over the couches and floor. Getting ready for school in the morning I would have to step around the morons laying in their own vomit and covered in piss. I hated them all and never understood why my mom liked them or why she felt it was okay for her to expose us to this behavior. I wouldn't bring it up to her though, that would make her angry, instead I came to the conclusion that it was in my best interest to become as independent as possible.

As we grew older my mothers behavior got worse. We moved in with her boyfriend Eddie. Everyone in our county knew him as "Crackhead Eddie". He was well known for his criminal record and violent behavior but my mom thought she saw something in him that no one else could. Our new "Home" was a single wide trailer with plastic sheets for windows. The roof was made of tin with zero insulation, you could see the sky through multiple holes throughout the house, each one paired with a designated rain pot. Those drunks and addicts my mom befriended followed us to this house and deemed it "The Hippie Shack" trying to make light of the conditions we were forced to live in. I was given my own room at the end of the hall, often my brother and I would lock ourselves in there to escape the obscene behaviors in the rest of the house.

Eddie and Scott (drunk friend)

It was a regular occurrence for Eddie to beat my mother, hold her up on the wall by her throat and spit into her face while my younger brother beat him with his plastic bat and cried for him to let her go. When he finally dropped her he would start kicking her in the head as she tried to catch her breath on the floor. Often she would continue the fight by grabbing something and swinging it at Eddie's head, if nothing was around she wasn't above throwing fists herself. Occasionally she would drag her friends into the brawl and by the end of the night everyone was bruised, bloody or knocked out. I gave up on saving my mother after the first year, my brother Tommy thought I was heartless for doing so until another year later when he realized I did it to save myself the emotional turmoil. He eventually gave up too.

Tommy started following my lead. He and I would wander into the woods or into town and dedicate our days to exploring and enjoying the simple things in life. We would go swimming in the rivers, build forts in the woods and go fishing off the bridge. We would talk about home while walking through the graveyard and I would try my best to explain to him how important it was that he not look up to our parents as role models. He understood well enough and looked up to me instead. We dreaded going home each night.

Our mother believed that freedom to make our own decisions was very important for us, even if our decision was to stay away from home. She supported us getting out of the house and rarely asked us where we were going. Maybe she knew that anywhere was better than home or maybe she just wanted us out of her way. She never really knew what we were doing or where we were each day but honestly we never knew where she was either.

One afternoon we came home from school to one of my mom's drunkard friends at the house. He informed us that Mom and Eddie had decided to go on vacation to Laconia for a week and he was going to watch us. He spent the whole time in a drunken blur barely able to stand, never mind cooking. Our power was shut off a couple days later due to non-payment of the bill. Thankfully our school guidance counselor lived a few houses down the road from us and was kind enough to let us use her shower while our power was out. She also taught me how to start our propane stove with a match and how to make scrambled eggs to eat. That week is referred to as "the week of scrambled eggs'' by my brother and I to this day. When my Mother got home she found it amusing that we had to go all week without power and though we yelled at her for leaving her useless friend as a babysitter she kept pointing out that we survived and were being dramatic about the whole ordeal.

She was a drunk, made lots of bad decisions and brought lots of negative influences into our "home" but she still tried to be a good mom to my brother occasionally. She made sure that Tommy was able to join the little league like he always wanted to and she attended all of his games as the drunk mom screaming over everyone else. He was her favorite, I knew that because she would always tell me so. I realize now that my mother was jealous of me and her way of dealing with that was to pick out all of my negative flaws and, in her drunken rage, scream at me about how terrible I was. Tommy would always visit me in my room after my mom was done mentally destroying my confidence. He would assure me that mom didn't mean it and would start listing everything he thought was great about me.

After seven years of surviving with Eddie in the hippie shack my Mom finally broke up with him and moved on to date the man I currently consider my step-dad Mike. He was a millionaire, that's why my mom started dating him. He had a beautiful huge house in the middle of the woods with a barn and pool and river in the backyard. He was very kind and generous, took us into his home and made sure there was always food and fun to be shared. Though he spoiled us by bringing us out to dinner and on fun adventures regularly he was also a severe alcoholic and enabled my mothers terrible behavior.

On several occasions Mike had to call the cops on my mother for her abusive and destructive behavior. She sliced the tires on his BMW as well as busted all the windows and the headlights because she found an old porn magazine in his garage. As the police tried to put her in the back of the car she smashed their headlight and headbutted one of the officers in the jaw. Mike never pressed charges on my mom, just let her spend the night in the drunk tank and then picked her up and brought her home. Within a week she would be breaking my bedroom door off it's hinges, locking me in the closet and screaming at me about how fat and stupid I always have been. I started prepping for these times by hiding my headphones in my closet with my laptop and a selection of books so that I could stay occupied while stuck in there. Tommy or Mike would let me out of the closet when they got home. The longest I was stuck in was around six hours.

My brother wasn't treated much better by my mom. She still kept up with his sports events and always spoke so highly of him but when she did decide to fight with Tommy she always threw punches. My brother was a young teen by this point and Mom would get offended by the fact that he was getting so strong and could hold his own. Tommy would always try to just dodge and avoid my mothers physical attacks but sometimes she chased him in a blacked out rage leaving him no option but to fight back and eventually restrain her. Sometimes she would redirect her anger towards other things, smash every piece of glass in the house. Every cup, dish, window and door smashed to pieces, leaving the place looking like it was hit by an earthquake. Most of the time this rampage wouldn't stop until the police showed up or until she got injured and the EMT's showed up.

When I was 17 I got myself emancipated from my Mom and went to live with my friends' family. I knew it was in my best interest to get away from her, learn what a family is supposed to act like, focus on my studies and figure out who I wanted to be in this world. The hardest part was leaving my younger brother behind. I remember the fear in his eyes when I first told him I was leaving but his words were nothing but kind and supportive. He saw what she did, heard what she said to me and told me it was best for me to go. This hit my mom harder than I thought it would. It woke her up enough to check herself into rehab. Thankfully she managed to stay sober for three years after I left. Those three years my brother was safe and life was better for us all. I moved back in with my family when I started attending college, that's when she started drinking again.

Mike ran out of money so my mom left him and moved into her own apartment a couple towns over with my brother. I stayed with Mike and helped him the best I could until I found my own apartment. He would always be my step-dad despite my mothers decision to leave him. Eventually Tommy got sick of my mothers drunken antics at the apartment and decided to move in with his friend's family, Leaving my mother on her own.

My Mom went back to "Crackhead Eddie" for company. We never heard from her unless she was completely wasted and called us to tell us how terrible of children we were. I would argue with her on the phone for hours about her life choices and why she did the things she did, she never listened. One day I stopped answering the phone and went almost eight months without talking to her. It wasn't until I got a call from the local hospital that I saw her again. Eddie had kicked her head to the point of cracking her skull and causing internal bleeding of her brain. This wasn't why the hospital called me though. My mother thought it would be a good idea to deck one of the nurses in the face and try to attack the hospital security officer. They called me and demanded that I come pick her up immediately before they called the police. The police were already there before I showed up, they knew my mom and were fed up with her behavior. They pulled me aside and told me they were putting her into my custody and I needed to figure out what to do with her, I objected, they didn't care.

I put my mom up in a hotel for two weeks, bought her groceries, took her cell phone away and made sure she stayed sober while I figured out how to help her best. It was clear to me that if she had access to her drunk friends then she was never going to change. I was still trying to figure out how to become a successful adult, having Mom around wouldn't make that any easier for me so I called my Grandmother, her Mom. I sent my mother over 850 miles away to stay with Gram. She was not excited by the idea but went fairly willingly. I must have made the right decision because she has been sober for almost 10 years now.

Mom and I in NC

I think the biggest lesson I learned from her was forgiveness. I never wanted to have a bad relationship with her, she is my mom after all. When she called me crying and begging my forgiveness for all of her mistakes I gave it to her with the condition that she stays sober. She and I have a new relationship now, we go thrift shopping together, craft regularly and keep bees together. We talk honestly about life and she opened up to me about her childhood trauma. Occasionally she apologizes when she thinks about how she acted in our childhood and thanks me over and over for forgiving her. I remind her that the past is over and all we can do is focus on the present and continue to make good memories to outweigh the bad. We went rafting as a family the other day, laughing, loving and enjoying the time we had together.

Rafting with mom (and her non-alcoholic beer)

My mom may not have been a good role model but she is the reason I am who I am today. I recognized her mistakes and made sure I didn't follow the same path as her. I was forced to educate myself, figure out how to live independently in this world and pay attention to how my actions affect those around me. She made me strong and brave, led me to the realization that there is no hardship I can't overcome and taught me that life is full of surprises.

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About the Creator

Mollie Harrison

Almost thirty and I think I have finally found myself. In the past few years I have gone through a crazy variety of experiences. Between getting married, divorced, The Appalachian trail and hitchhiking the US, I have stories to tell.

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