This poem... hurts. A lot. I thought long and hard about whether I felt up to sharing it with you all. I have deep feelings about it, and very complex ones that still remain unresolved in a lot of ways...
My mother was an alcoholic. I discovered this at the age of 12 or 13 (I think - my memory of exactly when is a little hazy). I discovered hidden bottles of rotgut in plastic water bottles one day when mum and dad were at work. This put me, a child, in a very difficult adult position. Would I tell my mother of my discovery? Even worse, would I tell my father? What was I to do?
I had noticed my mother's behaviour had been "off" for a while. Little "tells" that I picked up on. I was a very observant and sensitive child, and could pick that my mother would say certain phrases only when she was stonkered.
For several years, I kept the secret hidden within my heart, and watched helplessly as my mother continued to drink. Then, it all came to a head one morning as my mother was driving to work. She was stopped by a random breath test unit and blew 0.208. At 8:15 in the morning...
Obviously with the loss of her licence, the truth came out, and I no longer had the burden of this terrible secret. What I did have, though, was much worse...
I had strong feelings of anger that my mother had abandoned me for the bottle. She had semi-regularly been driving me to school, risking both our lives on many occasions.
My father and I nursed her through the cold turkey withdrawal - a weekend of bedbound vomitting, cold sweats, shakes, DTs, screams and pain.
Then the rest of our lives played out thusly - my father held the purse strings tight - if mother had no money, she couldn't buy grog, right? Wrong. There were always ways to sneak money, and addicts are very good at sneaking and lying to get at their poison of choice.
Again and again, my mother would fall back to the bottle. Again and again, we would... well... yeah... you get the picture...
Every 2 or 3 years, she would go back to Denmark for 3 months to see the family. She would return each time, totally addicted to alcohol once more. Her own younger brother had died from multiple organ failure as a result of being an alcoholic. Her father had died from kidney failure as a result of being an alcoholic. But this doesn't stop a person who is too weak to fight their addictions.
I wrote this poem on the occasion of her 65th birthday. There was hardly anything left of her, after a hard alcoholic's life. At the time I didn't know it, but less than 4 months later, she would be dead. As it turned out, it was a lifetime of smoking that got her before the lifetime of drinking did - she died of pulmonary fibrosis - a terrible way to go...
I feel bad for the anger towards her that I had in my heart. That is why this poem, and the next one I am going to share with you all, hurts so much. It's complicated...
Alcoholics Unanonymous
Like a bedouin has sand
An alcoholic needs a hand;
Mine got slapped away
As they walked their stuporous sway;
Meandering from spirit oasis to spirit oasis,
Sinking whatever they can of piss,
A bleary-eyed camel filling their humps
Heading inevitably down in the dumps.
My name is (Silenus) and my mother is an alcoholic;
Not much left of her – she’s drunk herself sick.
Forty-something k.i.l.o.s and a badly shaking head,
These days she spends most of her time in bed.
I was there for her birthday to help her celebrate,
I think I may just be a couple of decades late.
The celebration’s over, and I could see only regret
For life and potential wasted on an alcoholic’s debt.
