SadHeart

I wasn't sure which forum I belonged in. I had an alcoholic father, two alcoholic husbands (and the second one was a huge momma's boy to a borderline/dependent personality disordered mother which raised the hell to all new levels), and the mother of a substance abuser, DOC: Adderall, then 'skunk' cannabis and alcohol. But he loves the ADD rx's, and needs the depressant,

I've resolved the issues with my father. He died 25 years ago. I still wonder why he didn't love me, but the fact is when he died, I no longer loved him, or cared. I had some contempt for him, a bit of understanding of him, some left over hurt, and a huge amount of indifference. He was wrong, mean, and weak. And he transferred his anger with himself and how he allowed his life to turn out onto his little girl. Shame on him.

My kids' dad, I've been divorced from for 11 years. He lives well off of VA and SS disability (about $5,000 a month in case you tax payers want to know). But he's drunk so much and so long, his brain has rusted out and collapsed on itself. He had 6 kids and none of them have anything to do with him. Three exwives. A brother. And he's alone. He's going to end up dying alone in his room and no one will know until the smell gets so bad. He will be buried by strangers. No one cares.

But I have a lot of issues with my momma's boy alkie husband, however, I've been working on them for four years. He just won't get out of my life even though we haven't spoke in 3 years and he lives several states away. He stalks me and my family, or gets his family to stalk us. That crazy personality disordered, narcissistic, sicko enmeshed emotional incestuous family has given me post traumatic stress syndrome. But I'm working with our former marital counselor, so she saw him in action and doesn't have to take my word for how sick and crippled he was or badly damaged I was by these people. I absolutely believe that the only reason my ex wasn't having sex with his mommy is because my XMIL hated sex. Had she wanted to have sex with her son, her son would have done it. That's how sick a family they were.

But that's being handled and I feel pretty good about my progress working through the trauma, and I'm almost there.

My son is a newer problem and very sad, but he's far away and living in a stable (altho highly enabling) situation and is in no danger. And since he's mad at me and being encouraged to become angrier and angrier, he's cut me off. Works for me. I'm confident he'll pop up again eventually.

My life is not miserable by any means, particularly since my son has left. I have a well paying job with a prestigous promotion starting next pay period. It's a 'glamorous' job that people write books, movies, and tv shows about--and I've very good at it and am recognized by my colleagues.

I have a wonderful boyfriend, who I could write pages about. The relationship's been 'vetted' by my therapist. It's a healthy happy relationship that's unfolding just as it should.

I have two more sons and they are wonderful. They are doing so well. One in ROTC Marines going to be studying nuclear engineering (maybe) in college. His package for the Naval Academy is being prepared and as I write this, he's standing in front of the mirror in the foyer putting on his class A's getting ready for a Marine ball. I am so proud I'm almost weeping to watch him. But Marine moms don't cry. He's low keyed, good natures, hard working and agreeable.

My other son is in law school fulltime and works 35 hours a week. He's also funny, agreeable and hardworking and very smart. And it's so sweet--he watches out for me.

I have friends and activities and in a couple weeks am going to start my diving certificate. My BF is a world class diver and he wants me to take it up to see if I like it. I'll give it a shot.

So there's more good than bad in my life. And the bad is behind me and I'm pretty much just doing mop up operations now. However...

I didn't know which forum to post in: Al-Anon, Nar-Anon, or ACOA. I need a forum for the adult children of codependents. But none exist, so I hope I can come here. My mother's the real problem.

SadHeart

For years I have been in the recovery community and I have heard people say, "I am more angry at my mother than my alcoholic father."

I never understood. They would always have a horrifying list of things that their alcoholic father had done: beatings and impoverishing them, and emotional abuse, and betrayals and abandonments, and just awful, awful things--but then they'd claim vehemently that it was their mother they were most angry at.

"Why? What did she do?"

And they'd struggle to explain and it would sound like she was heroic, holding together a family, giving them the little bit of happiness and pleasure in their childhood they had, working, cleaning, driving them places, arranging extra cirricular activities, scrounging for money, cleverly outwitting the alkie to give her kids something.

And I'd say, "It sounds like she was doing her best. I don't understand why you are so angry."

And they'd say, "Because she's didn't do what she should have, she didn't protect us, she let it happen."

And I'd be baffled. Surely her youth was spent dealing with a horrible situation and doing her best to mitigate the impact on her children. Surely they didn't blame her for his drinking? Surely they didn't think she wanted that kind of life for herself or her children?

I didn't understand. But I do now. And I struggle with articulating it just as they did. It's hard to put your finger on what's sooo wrong. It looks good...but...

As I healed through the layers of my past: dealt with my father, my kids' dad, my ex', my son--all the obvious, overt and 'dramatic' problems--and put them to rest. There was one left at the bottom staring back at me: my mother and her problems. And my god she's got them (which she'd be shocked to hear she has), and they have been and STILL ARE very painful for me.

It's like a banana cream pie that's been left in the sun all day and is full of samonella. But you put it in the refrigerator, and it comes out tasting and looking wonderful. Mmmmm...it's so good you want two slices. And only later does the agony hit...

And it's every bit as painful as what my alkie's and addict put me through.

SadHeart

Is it okay to post adult child of codependent issues in this forum? It doesn't really fit in the other forums, and this forum mostly focuses on the alcoholic parent. There's nothing really to discuss the non-alcoholic parent.

And yet, where are you going to find a group that has more experience and understanding of codependence or dysfunctional family dynamics based on addiction than here?

dollydo

It is ok to post what you want to here...I have read your posts, however, I need to reread them ...alot going in your life and I need to digest it all.

Others will be here to greet you...and..I will be back.

cb12

Welcome!

Kialua

Hi again. Yes we have discussed our anger at our enabling parent that allowed the alcoholic/addicted parent to mete out terror in our lives because they were too weak or indifferent, to protect us. My enabling mother lived to nearly 100 and never admitted her part or apologized for what she did. You may be able to find some posts if you search under enabling mother, or mother didn't drink. I think the sanity I found was in forgiving her, even though she didn't deserve it. We had many head to head confrontations in which she would claim she couldn't remember and then made up the happy family stories. But I did my best to honor her and help when I could, on my schedule. I always protected my child from her though and never left her alone with my mom. I'm thinking you found the right forum.

Willybluedog

SadHeart welcome to you, glad you are here.

My mom is the raging alcoholic, my dad the enabler, mom cheated on ad first, dad has made a career out of cheating on mom, I think all his guilt is a huge part of his enabling and co-depedent behavior.

I have been able to forgive my dad because he will at least admit that he made huge errors in judgement along the way.

Mom is queen of the Land of Denial, she denies a drinking problem, denies verbal abuse, denies physical abuse, does not have a clue why she doe not have any friends anymore, thinks her doctors are idiots, same alcoholic just plaster on a different face!

I am in therapy working hard on the bone deep hatred I have developed for my mother, trying to figure out how I will deal with her if she outlives my father, her playing favorites with my sister and her child over my two, on and on and on......

This is a good place to vent, to ask for prayers and support, to just say, "I am having a bad day, how about a boost"

I hope you will come back often, this site is not as visited as many of the others, we are a little more close knit than other forums, but we are glad you are here.

Bill

SadHeart

So the problem is now, I have to figure out what to do about my mom. The other stuff is in the past. No contact with either alkie husband, or my son. They are all well situated or stable or whatever it is they are. In any case, they aren't my problem (my son will likely pop up as a problem but probably not for several months to several years--however, he will be bone of contention between my mother and me. She told me last conversation that she was right along side of me raising him. Huh? Really? Considering he spent almost no time ever being babysat by her and unless we were visiting out of town never even spent the night in her house--with me there too--this is really news to me).

My mother was away at college when she got knocked up and married my dad. She was 19 when I was born. He was 20. I guess they had to get married, it was the early 60's. My guess is he didn't really want to. To support his wife and two children (my brother showed up 18 months later), he worked during the day and went to school at night. And drank in the meantime.

My mother has never admitted she got knocked up, but her wedding pictures show her in a knee-length flowed dress with a very thick waist. My parents kept their wedding anniversary a secret. I once as grade schooler asked her when her anniversary was and got the answer, "Anniversaries aren't for children to know." I thought that was weird because my friends all knew their parents anniversaries, They would say, it's my parent's 10th anniversary and we are having a big party this weekend, or that their parents were going away for the weekend for their anniversary and they were having a babysitter. Other kids' parents had anniversaries, and mine didn't, so I asked. I do genealogy, and if public records are accurate, my mother was fully 3 months pregnant when she married. Not a huge scandal these days, not unknown then, but 50 years later, still a shameful secret.

Another secret she keeps that has nothing to do with me, but still puzzling why she keeps it a secret, is how she met my stepfather, to whom she's been married over 20 years. He told me. One of them put a searching-for-a-date ad in the newspaper (I forget which did), and the other answered. They met at a bookstore to get acquainted and were talking marriage in about 6 weeks. My mother always said that they met in a bookstore--technically true, but not accurate. I don't understand it.

Secrets don't really work in a family. They are so pointless.

SadHeart

The most significant secret of my childhood and the one that has affected most of my life until recently is the twin fact that my dad drank and he did not like me.

I didn't catch on to the drinking until about age 6 or 7, when I noticed that he would come home from work and pour himself drinks from that bottle steadily all evening. Nobody else drank from the bottle and there was no acknowledgement of that bottle. My mom would get/bring him coffee or sandwiches or whatever--but she never brought him a drink out of that bottle. He always got it himself. I think it was scotch. I'd watch him back and forth to the kitchen cabinet all night long from when he got home from work at about 5 pm until my bedtime (as my bedtime increased and exceeded his, I knew he'd drink steadily until about 11 pm). He drank on weekends at home from mid afternoon on. Back and forth to the kitchen for another refill. I always knew there was something wrong with that bottle that nobody acknowledged since I first became aware of it.

My father wasn't a violent drunk. Not a swaggering drunk. He was a sullen, surly, glaring drunk. He just drank and simmered in his unhappiness and resentment. But he never lost a job because of it, or as far as I know, got a DUI. Until I was 24. Then he left work, drove about an hour south of his job the opposite direction of our house and crash/rolled his car on I75 about 4 and a half hours after he got off work. He was over the legal limit. My mother always blamed the car. It wasn't the car, it was him driving drunk. Again public records: death certificate and autopsy report. It's supposed to be a secret. But both my brother and I knew before I even got the records. We just knew.

SadHeart

I knew very, very young in my life that my father didn't like me. I knew before we moved from the house my parents rented to the one they bought around the time of my 4th birthday. We moved in a little bit after my 4th birthday. I remember because I'd gotten a ring for my bday, and as we were moving in, the neighborhood kids gathered around to watch and I made acquaintance with them. The neighborhood bully, who was probably 6 at the time, LOL, asked to see my ring, said it was pretty--and promptly dropped it down the sewer. WAHHH!!!

Anyway, I remember a conversation I had with my mother in the old house, so I must have been 3. It was in the bedroom as she was changing sheets and I remember having ideas I wanted to express, but struggling with how to express them, knowing that the words I was using weren't really the right ones, but not knowing what the right ones were.

I was trying to ask, why daddy didn't like me. But he liked my brother. What was wrong with me. And my mother who was generally at that point a great responsive loving mother, was cross and not answering, so I kept trying to ask in different ways. Finally she snapped at me--and her voice was really mean, different than I'd heard before, not the irritated voice of "leave your brother alone", or "knock it off", or "stop fussing and eat your dinner", or the ever irritated "just go back to bed and stay there". This was a different voice, it was mean, not the mother fed-up voice. And she said, "You're just jealous." It was like a sneer.

I was shocked. 1) I didn't understand the tone of voice, it was mean and dismissive, and 2) I'd never heard the word 'jealous' before and had no idea what it meant. But whatever it meant, that's what I was, and it was the reason I was not loved by my father.

I remember mulling it over, pondering the word: It was something to add to the list of things I was. I was a girl, I was XXX name, I was 3 years old, I was a 'handful' (that didn't bother me to know it), I was a big sister, I was XX-next door's friend, I was jealous. And I was jealous meant I was unloveable to my father. And by the tone of my mother's voice, jealous was likely something that could make me unloveable to her too. It was kind of a scary moment.

But looking back I know it was the first time I was taught 1) that we were not to discuss or acknowledge certain things in this family, and warned 2) and if I did, I'd be unloved, and that 3) there was something wrong inherently wrong with me.

And I wondered what does it mean to be jealous. Is it like being a girl? He didn't like girls, was it another word for a girl? I still didn't really know why, but I knew there WAS a reason and it was big and bad and dangerous to expose.

SadHeart

I remember a lot from my childhood. Very, very clearly. I remember the first night my brother came home from the hospital. I remember standing at the screen door of the old house looking out over the concrete steps that were tricky (you could scrap your knees on them). I remember one time when my mother was in the kitchen making dinner with my brother sitting in a high chair next to her. She was working at the counter preparing dinner and feeding him out of the little jars. He was going to be fed and put to bed and I'd eat regular dinner with mom and dad.

I'd been banished from the kitchen to play in the living room and I was tired and crabby and being a brat. I knew I was being a brat, but being tired and hungry I didn't care. I wanted to be in the kitchen, clinging to my mother's leg, and that's probably why I was put out into the living. There was one of those wooden gates where the slats make a diamond pattern. I considered crawling over the gate. I KNEW I could do it. I knew I could crawl over that gate and get into the kitchen. I also knew I'd pay a price. I KNEW my feet would be pinched in the bottom of those diamond-slats, but I also knew I could tolerate it--although it was pretty unpleasant. I KNEW the gate would bow outwards--but it wouldn't break or spill me off. I KNEW what the top the gate would feel like in my hand. And I KNEW rolling over the top on my stomach would scrap and hurt and punch in, which wasn't something to look forward too but was doable. And I knew the fall on the other side would be unpleasant too, but I KNEW I could get over that fence. (I have no memory of having ever gone over the fence, but have a very clear memory of knowing I had done it before).

So I looked at that fence crying and whining and shaking it a little--and remember deciding not to do it, not because it would hurt, but because I'd get to the top, and my mother would come over, lift me up (and if I held on would somehow unfasten me), and just plop me back into the living room and go back to working in the kitchen. I remember consering It would be a lot of pain for nothing. I knew if she were watching I'd be defeated, would probably hear an exasperated word (which wouldn't bother me) and maybe get a gentle shake or a mild swat on the tush (which also wouldn't offend me--it wouldn't be like the scary voice above. I knew I was acting badly and it was fair enough to get a little roughly handled and a swat).

I can remember things from early in my childhood, so I remember the next thing well. And nobody--meaning my mother--will ever convince me that I didn't remember this correctly. Because it was scary--twice.

And telling me I'm wrong about this makes me angry.

SadHeart

This happened in the new house and I must have been 4 because I had to do a nap time every day; and I hated nap time. I didn't need it my mother did, but I didn't. Once I went to kindergarten I didn't have to do nap time any more, but there was quiet time.

It was in the new house and my parents had a converted attic upstairs bedroom. My brother and I had the two bedrooms downstairs. I don't remember why I was taking my nap upstairs, but I do remember the house was tense and mom was withdrawn all day. Not mean, but withdrawn. I'm thinking I was having trouble staying in my room or was calling to my brother preventing him from sleeping, but going upstairs for my nap was supposed to be an honor.

I was wound up, but not excited wound up; tense wound up. My parents did not fight a lot, but they had fought the night before, and I'd laid in bed and listened and cried. Now today mom was withdrawn and maybe short. She was very VERY seldom mean or non-responsive, so this quietness was different and worrisome and I was probably acting out a lot that day.

The bed was made and I crawled up on it, dragging a book with me. It seemed like a large bed. And then I crawled like a baby across the bed to decide whether I was going to be on my mom's side of the bed or my dad's side of the bed to look at my book. I crawled all the way over the other edge, to check for alligators or something (the room was dark panelled and dim, and the only light coming through a glowing drawn shade at the ends of the room). I was always worried about alligators under the bed, but was resigned to the fact that no one else took them seriously and half suspected everyone else was probably right, but I always checked anyway.

I peered over the side of the bed on the floor, next to my mom's dresser and I saw pictures torn up. I laid on my stomach to reach for them, but couldn't, and I slithered down on the floor, my curiosity greater than my worry of alligators, and I picked them up. They were 8x10s torn in about 4 or 5 large pieces--and they were my parents' wedding pictures.

I was shocked and frightened and looked at the dresser where the pictures should have been and they weren't there. Because they were torn on the floor. I remember feeling like my world was falling apart. I was very frightened. What did this mean? I couldn't imagine. But I knew it had to do with the fight the night before.

It's hard to describe how frightened I was. It was like I'd witnessed violence. I had no idea about divorce, but I feared something that bad. Or worse, or who knew what. I just knew it was bad, very very bad. I looked at those pictures lying there a long time, scared even to touch them.

SadHeart

I didn't say anything about the pictures. And when I checked a couple days later they were gone and other pictures were on the dresser, and nothing happened and everything went back to normal. But I never forgot.

About thirty years later, my mom and I were going through boxes of old photos and I came across the torn up wedding pictures taped together with yellowed tape. And I remembered finding them during that long-ago nap time, and how scared I'd been to find them.

And I help up the picture and said, "Oh what happened to this", already knowing the answer: they'd had a fight and one of them tore the pictures up.

And I was absolutely shocked when my mother said, "You did that. You tore them up."

I DID NOT TEAR UP THOSE PICTURES.

My mother lied, even though she was talking to a grown woman with 3 children of her own who understood about marital fights (being married to an alkie), even though she was now married to someone else, my mother lied about those pictures, and lied to BLAME ME.

I didn't even know what to say.

But I did not tear up those pictures.

SadHeart

I've gone over it and over it in my head. Why did she lie?

Of course the answer is simple, I know it now, but didn't then: I was the family scapegoat, I was assigned blame for things I didn't do.

I tried so hard to excuse her. I thought. Well, the bed was made, dad never made beds, she had to have been the one to make it, and she was a tidy person and wouldn't have left them there. Surely when she made the bed, she would have seen them and picked them up?

But maybe she couldn't bring herself to pick them up. Or maybe she meant to but forgot, or maybe she made the bed from one side and didn't notice them on the other. Or maybe after she made the bed she tore them up and left them there and forgot when she sent me upstairs (and her excuse to my dad was that I tore them up, and the lie then became the truth). Or maybe my dad tore them up after she made the bed (altho he usually went to work so early, she didn't make it until after he was gone.

I try to figure out something else that she isn't lying. But I know: I did not tear them up.

I would admit that I tore them up. I remember a lot of my misdeeds during my detested naps. I remember swinging off my canopy bed and breaking it. I remember cutting my ponytails off at the scalp leaving me two bald patched over my ears. I remember creeping down the hallway and spying on my mother in the living room. I can tell you what I was thinking before, during and after, and how I felt and what the room looked like and all sorts of details. I would have no problem admitting I tore those pictures up if I had.

I don't even think I could have torn them up. They were in picture frames that you have to slide the backs off of, the ones that fold like a book without anything to grasp onto and pull. And if I'd somehow gotten them out and removed the glass without cutting myself, I don't think I could have ripped that paper. I was little. Photo paper is tough, not easy to rip.

It's so hard to accept that your own mother would somehow just designate you as the family bad guy, and would do it so young--and hold you to that role for so long. If there was any plausible excuse, I'd believe it. But there is really none. She lied.

And the thing is, when she lied I felt a little voice in the back of my head, even as I was processing my shock say, "Of course she blamed you; still and again."

SadHeart

There were so many ways my father had to let me know he disliked me, that he actually had contempt for me and just wanted me gone. I can tell dozens of stories, they are all alike. Here's one.

It's Christmas day and we are at his mother's house. My aunt is there with her two babies. The older one is a girl about 2 or maybe a few months less. Very young. I must be about 11.

I'm sitting on the floor with her in my lap and we are bending our heads over a picture book and I'm reading her the story and discussing the pictures. (Do you see the doggie? Where's the blue doggie?). My father is sitting in a chair with a drink, his legs sprawled out in front of him and his arms crossed across his chest. He's glaring at me, a hard steady glare. It's like there's a sneer on his face. Every once in a while he says something to the adult conversation and his face changes, regular, agreeable. Then he goes back to staring at me.

I look up at him trying not to let him know I'm looking up at him. I don't want to make eye contact. I'm so tense and brittle I could shatter. I'm near tears but pretending to be friendly for my little cousin. I'm desperately going down a check list. What am I doing wrong? Am I too loud? No, not at all. We are quietly murmuring and my infant cousin and grandmother are making a lot of noise and my brother is playing with something loud. I'm the quietest and I'm keeping a toddler quiet. Am I saying the wrong things? I can't see how anyone would object to what I was saying to my cousin. Am I not sitting properly, not sitting like a lady and my underwear is showing (we wore short skirts back then). I check, but no.

What am I doing wrong! What am I doing wrong! It's Christmas, and we are at his mother's house, and I'm being nice to a little girl and causing no noise or commotion or controversy. And he's furious with me, just staring, and I am near tears trying hard not to crying because that WOULD cause comment and I wouldn't be able to explain what I'm crying about and then I'd be in worse trouble.

To this day, my default posture is to hunch my shoulders up to my ears. I work at consciously relaxing them, let them down, there's no threat. It's okay.

This was my childhood. Impossible to say what's wrong, but very very wrong, nonetheless. Hidden hatred, plausible deniability, the knowledge I better not draw attention to myself when he's around. Being stared at. Glared at. Nothing to really complain about. It's not like being beaten or molested or so many other horrible stories you read about from children of alcoholics. Easy to dismiss, it's all in your head, you are jealous, you are just looking for trouble, you are never satisfied. What's the matter with you? What are you complaining about? Nobody's doing anything to you. You have nothing to complain about.

I was very afraid of my father.

SadHeart

My mother likes to talk about how teenagers 'hide' in their rooms, and maybe it's common. But I hid in my room to avoid my father. If he were traveling or had a hockey night, I wasn't in my room. But if he was home, I hid. He got home at 5 sharp and my mother about 6-6:30. That was the danger hour. That's when if he saw me he would complain about stuff I'd have no control over or complain about what I was doing. I was reading when I should have been doing homework. I was on the chair when I should have been on the couch. He'd make a point of walking into me or bumping me into walls. I better not have a friend call the house when he was there and my mother wasn't; he didn't like it. And if I watched tv, he'd change the channel without a word, sometimes just change it and go out--not watching the tv himself.

So I hid in my room. I was so quiet until my mother came home. When I was fifteen, we moved to a 2 story house with a bathroom and bedrooms upstairs. But before we moved the bathroom was near the living and I would not leave my room to go until my mother came, because i didn't want to get called out.

Again, not beatings, not gross neglect--just constant stream of rudeness and dislike and him making sure i knew I was not wanted, didn't belong and had no rights and shouldn't enjoy myself. Nothing to complain about.

SadHeart

Two things happened when I was 13.

Shortly after my birthday, I joined my mother in the kitchen where she was making dinner. I was in a convivial mood and had been contemplating my birthday and the changes in being the big 13, a real teenager, you know--a hot shot. She was always good for listening--or at least pretending to listen LOL--I remember her listening to my explanation of infinity with patience and understanding. So she was always good for a talk.

So I was talking about being 13 and I said, "Just think you only have to put up with me for another 5 years, only 60 more months and I'll be gone and you won't have to bother with me any more." There was a long silence and then that mean, tight voice. "I don't know why you are always causing trouble". And she wouldn't talk to me any more.

I was shocked. What was wrong with what I said. I fully expected her to say something like, yep, that's good news indeed. I went away and thought about what I'd said wrong. I didn't realize that my second class, unwanted status was a secret or something that wasn't to be discussed. I thought it was as clear to everyone and accepted by everyone as my gender. She's not wanted in this family and it will be good news when she's gone.

This is the first time I realized that I was not supposed to acknowledge this. That not only was I not supposed to acknowledge it, but in addressing what seemed so obvious to me, was in fact, 'causing trouble'. I didn't know this was a secret we were supposed to hide. But hide from whom? I knew. Mom knew. My dad knew.

And you know I would have been happier had she agreed with me. I thought getting rid of kids like me was the goal of every family who was so unfortunate to get saddled with one.

The other thing happened about 4 or 5 months later. I didn't often have friends over and if I did I made sure they were gone when my dad came home. So I'd go over to their houses. I was late coming home by about 10 minutes. I was carrying a great big huge Barbie's Dream House back from my friend Elizabeth's house. Had my dad looked out the front window at 6--and it was a large window covering most of the wall, he would have seen me coming across the park and would have known I was on the way.

I got in the house and he went OFF on me. He hit me and I fled to my room to cry. My mother had gone out after work with some of her friends and came back about 9. She peeked in my room when she got home and saw me crying. I told her, 'he hit me'. She said, 'ok', and while I started to explain, she shut door and left.

Nothing was ever addressed about it; but I did notice gratefully that she never went out with her friends after work again.

It was the only time my father ever hit me.

SadHeart

I did what I could to get out of that house as soon as I could. When I was 16, I did the summer between school years as an exchange student. I went back the next summer. I went to college out of state.

When I got out of college, there were no jobs, so I joined the army. I joined in March but they weren't going to take me into Basic until September. I moved back home and got a babysitting job. I tried to make myself as invisible as I could, but I'm sure I was messy and not as invisible as I thought. But I didn't run around, I didn't drink and do drugs (unlike my brother), I wasn't causing trouble. Still my mother would take and open my bills (I had a visa and maybe something else) which made me angry, and about two weeks before I was scheduled to go into the army, my dad told me to get out.

Nothing preceded it. It was like he'd been thinking about it all day and just came home and told me to get out. The next day I put my stuff into storage and went to visit my aunt, and then the army put me up in a hotel for the weekend before.

Then I was off.

I never saw my father again. I'd called home to talk to my mom and he answered the phone and said she was out. "Ok by." And that was it. About a year later he killed himself in his drunk driving accident, probably while visiting his girlfriend (which is why he probably was so far from home).

Ah yes, that was another secret. In that hour between when he got home at 5 and my mother at 6, he'd talk to his girlfriend on the phone. It wasn't intense, but it was clear. It was back before cell phones and phones were attached to kitchen walls. Is that why he threw me out, he knew I knew. For the most part my parents got along okay. When I was 15 I saw them taking a walk in the neighborhood holding hands. But when I was about 10 I heard them fighting: she was crying, "You never say you love me." and he sat there, "What can I say?"

I don't know if my mother knew or not. Either way it was another family secret.

So i don't know how the girlfriend fits in; I doubt she was a threat. My brother and (now) sister-in-law knew about it too. My brother also told me that before my father died, he was really hard on my brother. I'd always thought he treated my brother well, but maybe I was wrong, or maybe once I was gone for gone he had to find someone else to pick on. Who knows?

All I know is when he died, I did not care, I was almost relieved. I'd always wanted my parents to divorce. All my friends pretty much had divorced parents. I longed for a safe house and never really felt comfortable or safe in my house if he was in it. So when he died I was relieved and really and truly didn't much care.

SadHeart

About 10 years after I left home, I married. He was a really nice guy. But a few years into our 14 year marriage he developed alcoholism. He has a long, LONG family history of it. In the 1880 census, his grandfather was in jail--for mutilating a cow while drunk. His father died in a drunk driving accident and was one of those drunks who was wonderful and charming throughout the week and on the weekend turned into a raging drunk worthy of Joan Crawford. He'd burst into the kids' bedrooms in the middle of the night screaming and in a rage, shooting guns, chasing them outside into the snow in their underwear. And beware not moving fast enough and getting caught. You'd get beaten.

His mother no one knew had a drinking problem until she broke her ankle and went into the hospital overnight--and went into DTs and had a stroke.

I was the classic daughter of an alcoholic who married an alcoholic.

We had 3 sons, and his drinking got very horrible.

SadHeart

I knew I was going to divorce him, but I had little kids and wasn't allowed to move outside a 25 mile radius of the marital home with them, and the skills I had in the army couldn't be used in the state in which I lived. And day care for 3 little kids would be prohibitive even if I could find a job.

I was trying to keep my marriage together long enough to get the kids in school and figure out how to support us.

Enter my mother's sister.

My aunt is 5 years older than me and 14 years younger than my mother. She grew up about 2 miles from me and had been a babysitter when I was younger. When I was real young I adored her. She taught me to sew. We shared books. We went to Europe together. After I married and had kids we shared books and emailed often. She was single and was never going to have kids, but she enjoyed mine. I'd invite her over and my middle son was particularly devoted to her. He was going to marry her.

Then she had an affair with my husband. And my marriage was over before I was ready leaving me very vulnerable with those small children. My alkie ex was angry with me. Once I found out, my aunt disappeared from all our lives--just made herself scarce, went undercover and left it to us to fix.

My XAH was furious: "You made me lose the best friend I ever had".

I was devastated. I was ready to divorce him, so the hurt he provided was just sad and humiliating--but it didn't break my heart. However, I was completely financially dependent upon him. It was very scary; I needed his cooperation and to work well with him for a few more years until I could get back on my feet.

But I was beyond devastated about my aunt's betrayal. We'd been together since I was born, she was like a sister, and we were so similar in so many ways (except she was quiet and self effacing, whereas except with my father, I wasn't). I can't even begin to describe my devastation. Just the thought of her name--I couldn't get to the second syllable, I'd just freeze, my brain would stop working and I'd stop breathing.

It's been twenty years and if I think about it, I still cry, it can still keep me up all night.

It wasn't just a betrayal. It was a rejection. She just walked away. No apology, no explanation, or regret. Just, "Oops, got caught" and ran away leaving me to clean up the mess of my marriage and wonder how I could mean so little to her that after decades, a lifetime together, she just walked away. None of our relationship ever mattered. I wasn't worth apologizing to and the relationship meant nothing; thrown away with a used condom.

I'm still horribly hurt by this.