Writing Project

In a addition to my time spent in Bloggerville, I've also started writing bits and pieces elsewhere in hopes that it will amount to something. Someday. Maybe. I thought instead of an actual post,  I would share a piece of that here today. So...here goes...


"Did you get hit often? Witness a lot of violence?" , the doctor asked. It wasn't exactly a question per se. Not the way he asked it. It was more like a confirmation.

I was used to this kind of assumption, yet still, I found it slightly annoying when people looked at me with sympathetic eyes and spoke in an understanding tone, when they rarely understood anything at all. 

"No." I answered. "My mother never laid a hand on me." This was true. Never. Not even once. There were fights, of course, and some of them violent. There was a lot of anger when my mother was drinking, but none of it was ever aimed at me.

"Really?" he asked, almost disbelieving. "What kind of violence did you witness and who was the anger aimed at?"

"Boyfriends mostly." I replied, although really I should have just said Men, as none were boys, and none were friends, and none ever stuck around long enough to be. "There was a lot of yelling. Once one of her boyfriends took all of our clothes out of the bedroom, threw them in the bathtub, and then lit them on fire."

He let out a laugh. "He did!? Why did he do that?" Shit. He's laughing. How the hell do I know why he did that, I think, and why is that funny? I decide, once again, that I will never understand people. 

"I don't know." I answer. And our time is up. Thank god. It wasn't my idea to dive back into the past today. I had assumed after my brief but factual outline we would be done, but for some reason he wants to keep going back. 

He's looking, I suppose, because that's his job. Again, I suspect he's looking for something that isn't there. If he wants the truth he doesn't have to look that way. I can simply give it to him in words. These words. Yes, my mother was an Alcoholic. No, she never once hit me. Yes, she neglected me and exposed me to situations and people I should have never been exposed to. My adoptive mother hit me and called me a bitch. My alcoholic mother called me the most beautiful girl in the world. Who was right and who was wrong? It's doesn't matter, because that's not the point.

The truth, if he wants it, is that she drank to cope. She quit school at the age of sixteen because she was incredibly shy and unable to relate. When she was sober, she was quiet, reserved, lost, and hardly ever smiled. She suffered from seizures as a child. She trusted no one and spent most of her time alone. She didn't like loud noises or commotion or things that stunk. She never came to the amusement park. She never got her drivers licence. She had horrible nightmares. 

The truth is that the real problem lies so far beneath the stereotypical "Alcoholic Parent" that everyone keeps missing it. The truth, is in the pattern.