wanderer-nbc-blog

[wanderer-nbc-blog]

Wanderer, Not By Choice

I’m starting this blog in the midst of some desperation. For almost 20 years, I’ve carried on with an alcoholic mother. I am now a working professional in my mid-20s but find myself having the same thoughts I’ve been having sporadically since elementary school. My hope is that these posts will resonate with someone, somewhere and comfort me & them knowing that at least this struggle has been felt by others.

I am a teacher at a wealthy school with at least one student who also has an alcoholic parent. I look at this child with such empathy and feel the pain in their eyes when the disease is impacting them and their family. I don’t doubt that there are other students at my school who also have parents with abuse issues.

I am writing this from a twin-sized bed in my parents’ home. It’s not my childhood bed—we switched rooms so often that mattresses have come and gone. I did sleep in this room for several years, though it’s now imperfectly painted with a deep purple color instead of what I thought was a cheery yellow and trendy coral when I was a teen.

So we switched rooms. A lot. Part of it was due to having a large family but another part of it was likely due to my parents “project” mindset. They never quite learned how to take care of themselves or a house or children, for that matter, but we always had projects going on that eventually went unfinished. I think house projects and personal projects and career projects were easy to start and give up on, giving my parents and especially my mother the false hope that many abusers thrive on since their lives are otherwise in shambles.

So I guess that’s where the wandering started. Every few years, we would clean out our rooms completely to get ready for the swap. Some of us would get new “roommates” and others, finally, a coveted single bedroom. I was always so obedient as a kid, no doubt in the hopes of pleasing my parents and ending my mom’s need for alcohol, that I would even scrub the baseboards of my old room. In the spirit of my parents stress and misery, I would deem trinkets and trophies as useless—tossing them into the trash as if those trips and triumphs had no meaning to me or them. It worked as I undoubtedly established a disconnect between my memories and my emotions. I became a dark and analytical child which ironically was interpreted as unmatched intelligence by my family and peers.

The wandering continued when I applied to colleges, insisting that I avoid any schools in my home state despite the fact that the majority of my high school classmates wanted to stay close to home. I ended up at my “dream school” about an hour plane ride away, which ended up being too far yet not far enough.

With extreme social anxiety and an inability to take care of myself in the simplest of ways (eating, sleeping, stress management and sometimes even just hygiene), I quickly started to struggle. My perfectionist stemming from pleasing my parents pushed me into a deep depression as I became a B student. The issue here was actually that no one saw my grades but me and no one felt my pain but me. I kept it to myself and ignored calls from siblings & parents in an almost morbid limbo (or so it felt).

It’s probably important for me to note that I had not told a single person about my mother at this point. I hadn’t even discussed it with my siblings, though we all knew to run up the stairs when mom got home from the bar up the road. I do remember telling a boy I was involved with as a freshman that I “didn’t want to be at school or at home or anywhere.” As a happy kid from a seemingly incredible family, he understandingly didn’t get it and our somewhat-of-a-relationship ended shortly afterwards.

Scarringly, he was the only person I had felt myself around in a long time. His siblings shared the same humor my siblings & I had, and he wasn’t caught up in the image or prestige of our university like so many were. This is where I collapsed, as I was now truly alone and had no where to go (or no one to be with).

It got better. I leaned on friends more heavily who proved their weight in gold and sought out professional counseling. Even though I only made it to a couple of appointments in undergrad, the first was life changing. Finally, I was forced to recognize that my childhood was not normal: nor were my parents, nor was I.

Fast forward to finding a full time job, for which I insisted moving cross county to escape the reach of my social but still-alcoholic mother. I found somewhat of a home there among the trees and fresh air but experienced the return of the depression as I realized my social anxiety was maybe at its peak. There were no more absurdities (or abundances of alcohol) to cover up my lack of social skills and I quickly had falling-out’s with several of my first cross country friends. I have since moved but feel the same oddity with my community in my new town—as if I don’t belong there, but am forced to embrace the positive as I clearly don’t belong anywhere else.

The holidays were always the hardest which brings me to my current state of mind. Holidays are time with family, positive or negative or usually a mix of both. My confession is that my holidays more often than not consist of oversleeping and overeating, as my alcoholic mother either works or drinks. My siblings who are home are typically also depressed or disconnected from that pain so nothing is discussed or addressed (will it ever be?). I am laying in my childhood bed with the same loneliness that has plagued me since the age of 8. I have no where to go that feels like home for me. And to be honest, I’m not even sure if I even know what that feels like.