Life Lessons 101

Today has been a good day emotionally. I have been quite chipper all day. Despite, the heartburn I had for hours from eating that bag of BBQ chips. I am not the least bit tired and it is currently 2:31am!

Most of the day was spent doing laundry. As usual, I had a blue zillion loads. Beau was fishing all day so it was just me and the kids here for much of the day. They were pretty well behaved and played outside for a long time with the neighbor kid, Sarah. I watched the Desperate Housewives finale and talked to Michael on Facebook for a while. We always have a comedic chat! There were some conversations of family and difficulties growing up. I firmly believe that everything that you go through you should learn from. You may not get the lesson right away but eventually you will and then use that knowledge to make you a stronger, better person.

I was reminded of how awful my childhood was and if I didn't know that my mood disorder was chemical I would have to believe that my upbringing was to blame!

Growing up my Dad was a horrible person. He was an alcoholic. No, correction he was a drunk! And a mean drunk at that. Most of the time. He also had a gambling addiction. Sometimes he won but mostly he lost big. In his world children were seen and not heard. You learned never to say anything and under no circumstances shall you have an opinion. I suspect this is why for most of my life I was someone's doormat. He was verbally, emotionally and physically abusive. I don't think a lot of my friends knew this. I tried to hide it. I was ashamed of it. My mother was not our protector as you would think a mother would be. She was on the same level as us kids in his mind. Just another person to be controlled and bullied. She worked diligently to make sure that we never rocked the boat. Everyone was terrified of him and hated being at home when he was there. I remember once Mom took us to my Grandma's when I was probably about seven years old. We slept on a fold out couch. I don't know how long we were there I just know that we went back.

Dad was more violent with my older sister and brother than with me and my younger siblings. He fought with them all the time. My sister Cherie ran away all the time. She is ten years older than me and she used to take care of me, take me everywhere she went when I was little. I remember once a baby crying in the middle of the night and Dad kept hitting it and hitting it and it seemed he would never stop. It was Charlee, my little brother. I remember he was in a baby bed so he had to be under two years. This image is still as vivid as the night it happened. Some things you just can't get out of your head.

I probably had the best relationship, if you can call it that, with Dad. I was the quiet, overachiever. I worked very hard at always being under the radar. Once I did have an argument with him where I had to leave home for a couple of days. It was the day after my Junior Ring Ceremony. He came and sat in the audience, drunk. When it was my turn to walk up on stage he hooped and hollered! I was mortified. The next day, drunk again, he said something along the lines of you don't even love me. My reply was, "not when you embarrass me when you are drunk". Not the smartest thing to ever come out of my mouth. He hurled a glass vase full of flowers at my face. He missed. I ran out and went across the street to my best friend Dezi's house. After two days I called Mom and she gave me an ultimatum. She said, "Your Dad said if you don't come home now then don't come home". I went home.

Dad liked to constantly remind me probably from the time I started high school that I was a whore and all of my friends were whores and their mothers were whores. The funny thing is I was a virgin until I was seventeen. I was criticized for everything from my grades to if I was wearing a ponytail. There was never any pleasing him. And to make matters worse he was very hot cold! You never knew what kind of day it was going to be. Was he just going to watch TV until he passed out or should we put on our body armour.

I did become pregnant the summer after I graduated High School. No one knew in my family. I was six months pregnant when I moved out. I moved out in fifteen minutes while my Dad drove my Mom to work. They didn't know I was leaving. I was so afraid that Dad would have killed me when he found out I was pregnant and I wasn't willing to take that chance. I regret that I left Mom in that situation to clean up the mess I had made. She never really went into how bad it really was when I left but I suspect that it was pretty bad.

There were many years in my adult life when I did not have contact with him. Because of it I had to sneak to see my Mom and she had to sneak to see her Grandchildren.

This is just the tip of the iceberg but it gives you an idea of what growing up with an alcoholic parent can be like. The story does have a happy ending though. God put him down for seven years before he died. He had diabetes and became bed ridden. He stopped drinking. He started listening and he stopped controlling. The fear was finally gone.

The lesson....love is not mean, fear is not respect and Karma's a bitch!