Although I did get knocked down, I did get back up and fight back. It was a long haul to say the least. But right now I can say that things that pretty much are back to their best. I mean can you give me one reason why it’s good to mope around and feeling sorry for yourself? No. I didn’t think you could. That’s why you have to try and claw back what you once had. When your family is the most important thing to you, to see that gradually fall apart is the worst feeling of all. You cannot just watch it fall apart. It’s like being at the highest part of the highest building and falling to the bottom in an instant. It’s not nice.
I was around 9 when I noticed that things weren’t as they should be. There were disagreements in the past of course. What marriage doesn’t? But it’s about compromising, finding a way to get around the problems together. This wasn’t happening anymore. My Dad was perfectly prepared to just that and so was my Mum. But it wasn’t my Mum who was arguing with my Dad. It was my Mum who had a little too much to drink, who decided to pick a fight over the smallest and irrelevant of things. It would be a simple mistake like saying the wrong thing at the wrong time that would be turned into a full blown argument.
This created a problem for my Dad, as he realised this. He knew that this wasn’t the person that he married. You could say it was my Mum’s fault. But I don’t see it that way, it was the fault of alcohol. I see alcoholism as an illness. And my Mum had the illness very badly. All people are affected in numerous ways. The alcohol seemed to give my Mum an aggressive side more than anything else. My Mum is not an aggressive person by any stretch of your imagination. She wouldn’t harm a fly, because it would have been cruel in her eyes. I see it as getting rid of another one of the annoying bastards but that is me, not her. And when she has had a bit too much drink, she would probably slaughter the fly, stamp on it a few times and think ‘well done’. She would then move onto the next fly that passes her by. But only when she has had a too much to drink,
I can tell you now, when she is sober she isn’t like that at all. This change is what confused me. Being only 9 or 10, I didn’t really understand fully that it was the drink. So seeing my mum like this scared me. In fact it terrified me to see my mum like this. I kept asking myself, why? Why has this happened to her? As the days and months passed she didn’t get better. The addiction grew. I look back now and my Dad was doing all he could, trying to get her into alcoholic clinics and anything of that sort. He would have run the marathon 100 times over to help my Mum. She was in desperate need of help and he was desperate to help her. But although my Mum needed help, when she was drinking she didn’t want the help. This was the focal reason why we couldn’t help her.
Living through this is virtually impossible; you do not know what to do with yourself. You know you should do something to help, but what? I knew it was bad, but the way I coped with it was going out with mates. When I was out with mates, everything was OK. It wasn’t as enjoyable as it once was. I was scared, that something horrible would suddenly happen again. But with mates I knew they would look out for me and I looked out for them. They were such good mates, and are still great mates now. There is no way I can repay them. Although, however much I trusted them, I could never bring it to myself to tell them what was going on back at home. I believed that they would see me differently and we wouldn’t be as good mates as we were.
I was always brought up to believe that school and my education were imperative. I still believe this now. It is top of my priorities, I want to get through my education and come out with options. My older brother went to grammar school, and I looked up to him. I wanted to be just like him. But with things like it was at home, it was difficult. But that was no excuse for me. I wouldn’t let that spoil my dreams. Although my life at home had changed, my school life was as good as it always was. This is mainly due to being with my friends. It was a second life.
When you are going through bad times, like when my parents were splitting up, I believe that you need aims. I set myself some goals. With these, it helped me get through it. Trying to achieve these took up my time, and when I completed them it gave me extreme satisfaction. Getting into grammar was one of my aims; I had to look in the long term. I had the belief that life will get better. If I did not have that thought, I do not know how I would have coped. Everyone wants to be happy don’t they? Well that’s all I want, to be happy.
Living through what I did back then, was difficult. In fact it was more than difficult, it was near on impossible. But now I look back, I can be proud that I survived. I learnt one big lesson that will stay with me for the rest of my life. And that is, I learnt to be happy. It’s the key to all things good, if you ask me. I had to go through a very hard period in my life to realise how important it really is. But when you have got it, you really shouldn’t let it go. It’s precious. Even when things are going bad, you should make the best of it. It worked for me.
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