Just Like Mommy

Photo by Boudewijn Huysmans on Unsplash

Before I'd left elementary school, I realized there were polarizing forces within me. Half of me violently hoped to never be like my mother. The other half felt resigned to the same destruction she created.

My mother was an alcoholic. I hated her.

There was a time before I severed tied with her that I tried desperately to find out why, to find out how. How did it happen to her? How did she get lost to alcohol? When did it start? And why?

From the few people I had available to ask, it seemed that her drinking started in high school. She was the prettiest. She was the most popular. The alcohol amplified her glow and covered for her lack of self-esteem. She got trapped in the banal way that so many do. The path from party girl to alcoholic is imperceptibly downhill and paved with black ice. The drinks made socializing silkier. The drinks made problems fuzzy. The drinks felt warm. The drinks made her forget. Sip and swallow, then again. One day when it was too late the cod switch came and the drinks swallowed her.

I've always been good at taking tests. I scored particularly high for Adverse Childhood Experiences (high ACE scores are known to correlate to substance abuse) thanks to my mother's tutoring. Because of my high test score, I was granted acess to the the University of Coping with Trauma and earned a master's degree in alcoholism. I'm not proud, but it certainly is an impressive testament to the power of addiction that I ended up embodying the very thing I hated most.

Eventually, I gave up trying to understand my mother. I also gave up trying to have a passable relationship with her. She eventually developed cirrhosis, turned as yellow as Big Bird, developed ascites that made her frail frame appear monstrously pregnant with accumulated fluid, and drifted out of consciousness with pain. She succeeded in getting clean for nearly long enough to make it onto the transplant list. I'd always told myself that it was the disease that made her intolerable. I found out during the short time she was sober that she was just as horrible without the alcohol. 

When I realized that she was irrevocably toxic in my life, I made a clean split from her. I've never regretted that decision. Not when I found out she was dying, not even after she was dead.

Even without her presence, the disease we shared went from a shadow in my life to full-fledged monster. My alcoholism grew and raged and thrashed and nearly tore me apart, too. 

My mind can't help but draw comparisons between us. She was... who was she? She never let me close enough to know but one thing about her, and it is this. Whatever could have become of her one precious life, never was.

My mother was an alcoholic. I feel nothing for her.

I am an alcoholic. Am I capable of loving myself?

Edit: The answer to the riddle came to me in the middle of the night. Just like I don't want to be defined by my alcohol use disorder, neither was it the sum total of who she was. She was awful because she was abusive and full of anger. The alcohol simply magnified the problems and became the scapegoat within easiest reach as her kid. Perhaps writing about this really does help me sort through the most complicated feelings?