My wake up call

Adults have always considered me mature for my age since childhood, therefore my true coming out of age happened at twenty-three years old. I had despised alcoholics my whole entire life. To me they were despicable especially drunk parents. An alcoholic single mother of two raised me triggering me to swear off alcohol at the age of ten. I promised myself that I would never be like my mother. Then came my twenty-second birthday. My roommate offered me a margarita, “Drink this Leslie, its your birthday and its only a tiny bit of tequila. “I felt the heat down my throat, it had been a cool icy slushy with a bitter hint. I stopped soon after but I felt myself giggling a bit. This had been my first time getting drunk. I felt invincible and unlike my mother, I did not become violent or bully children. I made everyone laugh and have a good time.

I moved back home from college after running out of money and not finishing my degree. I fell into a pit of depression, my mother had been diagnosed with ADHD, and bipolar disorder. She could not hold a job the older she had gotten. Therefore, the house responsibilities fell on my shoulder just as they did in my childhood. A twenty-two-year-old woman supporting financially her entire household and self without any help. I had no friends and no escape. I cooked, cleaned, paid everything. I would get home at four in the morning after working all day, and I became an insomniac. I couldn’t afford to see a doctor for my sleeping disorder. I paid all of my mothers’ expenses out of pocket that included her medication. Then one day I walked to the Walmart liquor store, looked at the cheapest vodka in the bottom shelf at the only one I can afford, the $6 bottle.

For the next five months I would drink a $6 bottle every day. It started with insomnia, then daily problems. I could not confront conflict until I drank. My normal state of being became intoxicated. Once my brother left for bootcamp, I hit rock bottom. My mother cried everyday missing him, and I could not cope with myself any longer. She would break into my room threatening to call the police on me for drinking. Then one day I snapped. I drove away from my house. I went to my workplace (there was a bar), and I mixed vodka and tequila on an empty stomach. After that everything went dark.

I woke up in a turtle suit on suicide watch in jail. While blacked out, I had hit a car coming out of the movie theater. I left the scene, then I proceeded to hit another car running away from the police. The police car hit the front side of my vehicle in order to stop me. I had no recollection of any of this happening. I could have killed someone. My mother had been an alcoholic but she never drove, nor was she ever arrested. I had become my worse enemy. I cried silently. I could not bail out of jail, so I sat there for almost two months. It could have been years. I did one year of probation, then later had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder. This became my wake-up call.

I judged my mother harshly my entire life only to become a worse reflection of her. I became that which I despised. I sought out help, and today I am sober. Today I discovered the affliction affecting my family, undiagnosed mental health. I should have sought therapy instead of running away, and refusing to accept that I could have also inherited my mother’s mental illness. Today I hope my story serves, as an example to others. Do not judge the servant of another as the bible says. Confront your problems, do not run away. My story could have had a more tragic ending.