Feelings are the human's worst enemy, having heavy feelings and not knowing how to express yourself especially when the ones around you are invalidating those feelings that you have.
love isn't insecurities so how can somebody claim to love you and...
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"I'm Beyonce," I stated, my nerves getting the best of me, causing me to twirl the ends of my hair.
Multiple judgmental pairs of eyes stared at me. It felt like they were judging me, but nine times out of ten, they weren't. Half of the people in this meeting have been through what I've been through or worse. I'm only here because I want a better future for my child.
"Hi, Beyonce," they all said in unison. A set of eyes particularly caught my attention. She was the most excited out of everybody, smiling widely, showing off those adorable dimples. Either she was high or just plain crazy, but she was a little too enthusiastic to be here.
"Tell them why you're here," Mrs. Carol said. I was uncomfortable; I had never once in my life told so many people my business.
"I struggle with alcoholism," I said, twiddling with my fingers before quickly sitting down. She looked at me with an indescribable look; it wasn't sympathy or guilt, but something I couldn't explain.
My alcoholism stems from having a present but absent mother. My mom was too busy knocked out on a couch from alcohol that sometimes I didn't eat. When she was sober, I avoided her. Her words cut deep, affecting the core of anyone's heart. She knew how to hurt and how to heal.
The scars she left on me were not physical wounds but emotional and mental ones. My grandma used to say, "Trauma and sadness are one and the same, like a substance in a container. The container is the vessel, and the vessel is trauma or sadness that needs to be full."
I used alcohol to fill myself, to keep my container from being empty of all the love I should've gotten from a mother who ignored me my whole childhood. I remember going to friend's houses and resenting them, even getting them into trouble out of spite and jealousy for their relationships with their parents.
Me not having a mother or father figure is exactly why I get mad when an adult, especially an authority figure, tells me what to do and become overly happy when they praise me. The worst is the guilt I feel when I disappoint them; none of these emotions were ever there with my mother.
She wanted a perfect daughter, but as an alcoholic, I just wanted a mother. I didn't care that she was drunk; I cared that she used me. She invalidated my feelings to make herself feel better, using me as a pawn in her life.
She made me feel abandoned, like New Orleans' Six Flags. Waiting for her to come and use me again, to have fun with me, to gain profit from me, but instead, she left, leaving me to rot.
She wasn't a mother; she was a person I lived with for free. She never was my mom. I wanted a hero, not a perfect mom, but she wanted a perfect daughter, not a daughter. How do you expect perfection from an alcoholic mom?
I heard a girl once say in a joking way, "I'm the child, but I'm the parent, I'm my mother's mother." I agree with every waking second of that. I'm not her mother physically, but mentally, I felt like it every time she was sloppy drunk, passed out in the front yard, to the point she pissed or soiled herself like a newborn baby.
