I didn’t have a choice as a child, but I do as an adult
Growing up my mum was a well-known character around town. Everyone commented on how funny and lovely she was but behind closed doors she was anything but.
At home in bed, we would hear cans opening, wine unpopping and the sound of Celine Dion on cassette tape while mum would sit loudly sobbing and drinking. When dad returns from work, they’d head up to bed and lay there awake. the hushed and mumbled sounds of arguing would creep up the hallway into the bedroom I shared with my two sisters.
We would hear her telling him she wished we would all die and then the sounds of struggled gasps for breath and running into their room terrified to tell them to stop. Finding my mum with her hands around my dad’s neck and my dad hitting her to get her off.
I would run downstairs to the telephone to dial 999 before mum or dad could stop me. As time went on, mum would disconnect the phone to stop us calling anyone. So we would run next door to our neighbour Carole, an angel in disguise, who would console us while police took statements or while we waited for medical help to arrive.
Hushed and mumbled sounds of arguing
We lost count of the number of times we’d find a lorry driver at our front door as they’d found mum stumbling across the road or the amount of times she would run off and tell us she was going to kill herself by throwing herself off the railway bridge.
On one occasion she had got a knife out of a kitchen drawer and my dad decided to shut her in the conservatory to make her calm down, it was like watching the hulk. She smashed the glass doors with just her fists and went hurtling towards my dad.
My brother was quick to step in and push her away and she lost her balance and fell to the floor cutting her head open in the process. I will never forget the amount of blood. She panicked and got in a hot shower, appearing at the top of the stairs afterwards like something from horror film, blood pouring from her head down to her feet. She subsequently had stitches and two nights in hospital.
Like something from horror film
Another time she cut her wrists and wrote on the walls in blood ‘help me’ and ‘die’ to name but a few. One particularly night a policeman who was on call with another officer was at our house and came to speak to me and my sister in our room.
No older than 10 and 12 years old respectively, sat there in our pyjamas, he told us if our mum and dad couldn’t behave themselves, we would all be separated and taken into care. A burden myself and my sister have carried around with us for more than two decades.
I was a loner
In school I was a loner, mum would tell us to never tell anyone about what was going on at home. So, I took the assignment literally and was what my best friend later described as being like a selective mute.
Mum and dad would call us in for ‘family meetings’ in the front room and tell us they were going to get divorced. Then the next day after they had slept on it would tell us they loved each other too much to divorce. If we didn’t like them drinking, that was on us, not them, and would tell us to find someone else to live with.
Mum would say she was embarrassed to be seen with me in public as I was so ugly, so the world became a scary place. I became very insular. I was always the weird, quiet girl in school. I feel like it was a mixture of no one caring and no one knowing what went on outside the school gates. Part of me thinks surely teachers and staff must have picked up on some things and why didn’t they step in?
Why didn’t teachers step in?
Mum put on a show to make everyone believe everything was fine. Last year she was sent to prison, and I felt relief that for the first time. We found our voices. She would have curfews and ankle tags upon release from police custody. The many times she got taken in and sometimes would have to stay away from us at weeks at a time as part of her bail conditions. Usually she would sofa surf.
I am, 35 now and it has taken me years to pluck up the courage to speak out and make myself vulnerable all over again.
I decided to go no contact
I decided to go no contact in March this year, I felt immense guilt at first, but it didn’t come easy. People don’t go no contact for no reason, and I feel I can’t heal from the past while the past is still present and drinking.
I didn’t have a choice as a child, but I do as an adult. But even as an adult, I find life hard to navigate and have struggled with my sense of who I am. Something we all struggled to be due to having to always protect my mum and change our personalities to fit who she needed us to be.
Most of the time we were invisible, and it was in our best interests to pretend we didn’t exist. I feel let down by doctors, police and other professionals who knew what was going on but didn’t act on it.
Becky
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