My name is Tonya. I am now twenty-three years old, but I have found that abuse does not get easier with age. Abuse is abuse, no matter who is to blame.
Growing up, I had an alcoholic mother and a workaholic father. I know that there are many issues that arise from this combination.
My father would be gone for eighty or even one hundred hours every week. When he was home, it was long enough to sleep before his next scheduled shift. He would wake up, shower, and go right back to work. I know in a lot of ways that he was doing it to support us… but especially to support Mom’s habits.
My mother was what is considered a functional alcoholic. That means that she can still have a job, but she would get home from work and immediately start to drink.
My mother did not realize what she was doing, but she would do this almost all of the time. Once she was drunk, she would find almost any excuse to lose her temper. Maybe she didn’t like how a chore was done, or maybe she just did not know what day it was.
She would also have issue with anything I would do.
I study and make A’s and B’s on my report card? She would throw a fit over everything that was not an A. She would get furious and start telling me how stupid I was. She’d proceed to ground me and then raise her hands to me. I always made an attempt to block her from hitting me, but those attempts would usually fail.
My mother thought that it was funny to have her drunken friends get into wrestling matches with me. I would do whatever I could to keep from getting pummeled by them. In most cases, I could not hold my own.
One of the days that she decided focus her anger at me, she had had a party the night before. She punished me for not cleaning up her empty bottles and glasses that were all over the house. She held me against a wall by my throat and told me that I would grow up to be nothing. She said that I was stupid and did not deserve to live. She said I was worthless, fat, and ugly. She wanted me to know just how little I actually meant to her.
My life felt like I was watching a horror film. I was waiting for the moment my mother would turn into some hideous monster. I felt that no human could have a dark side that was that dark.
If I did not know better, I would have said that I was living inside of someone else’s nightmare.
I did know better though. It was really my life. Every damn day.
My mother thought that it was aggravating if I asked questions or mentioned her drinking to her for any reason. She would make sure that when she hit me there would be no bruises left.
My mother would go as far as to show up to my work and cause a scene in the drive-thru, just because I had to work late. Other times, she would do it when she was mad because I did not do something extra that she had wanted me to do. My mother would find any excuse that she could to be able to show me how much she disliked me.
She would ground me during my birthday parties and make me watch as other kids were having fun. Then she would tell me that it was my fault, because I did not make her a drink.
Then the times that someone called social services on her, she denied and would wait in the room with me while they examined me. This made it impossible to say anything about what had happened.
She thought that I deserved what I got. She did not think that she could ever get caught for the horror that she put me through.
My mother also hated anyone that got between her and my father.
I was her first child, but I was not his first. He had a few children from a prior marriage. She had made their lives hell and made it look like my father did not love or care for any of them. Sadly to say, my father did love them, but he loved her more. He loved her unconditionally.
Whenever she got mad at my father, she would beat me, because she loved him too much to do it to him. She would tell me that I was the reason for the argument between her and my dad. She did not love me, and sometimes I felt like she did not even know what love was. I thought that she lived with my father to be able to be with someone.
One day, when I was seventeen, I brought it to my mother’s attention that I wanted to move out.
She said that it was my choice. But she would not help me with the move, nor would she allow me to walk out the front door.
I had to have a taxi park in the back parking lot of the bar behind my parent’s home. Then, once I was done putting what she would allow me to take of my things into the taxi, she told me to never show up around her house again.
That weekend, my parents sent the police and my father to make me go home. Apparently, because I was still under age and did not have the proper paperwork to live alone, I was listed as a runaway.
A couple of months later, I left their house again. That time, I made sure to fill out the paperwork to become an emancipated minor.
This still did not stop the horror that was my mother.
I would get threatening phone calls at work. She came into my job and harassed me and my coworkers. Then there were the times she invited me over only for her to turn around and get drunk. As soon as she had enough alcohol in her, she would become physically and mentally abusive all over again.
A few months after my nineteenth birthday, I had tried to get into the military. I had health problems, and couldn’t join. I had to have my mother and one of her friends pick me up and take me back to my apartment.
When we made it to my apartment, they came in for a few minutes. It was then that I realized my mother had already been drinking.
I went to my room to change my outfit, and she came up behind me. She grabbed me by the throat and went to throw me through my mirrored closet doors.
I thought that was the end of my life, right there.
The only thing that stopped my mother from hurting me further was that her friend stepped between the closet and me. The friend pulled my mother off me, granting enough time to escape.
I thought I was going to be dead that night. Thankfully, someone else was around that time.
That made me realize my mother had a problem. That night, I learned there was no stopping her from what she was going to do.
My mother acted like everything she had ever done would always disappear. No one could stop her; no one could hurt her; she was invincible and could do what she wanted.
I stopped talking to her. I stopped visiting. I cut that cancer out of my life.
Even though it has now been a couple of years since I have seen her, I hear from my father that she blames me for all of her alcohol problems. She also does not think that the alcohol is or ever has been the problem.
I did prove her wrong on one thing, though: I am three years into my college degree. I am working towards helping others that are victims of child abuse or the children of alcoholics and addicts. I plan on taking my negative childhood and making it into a positive for the life of someone else.
I would say that the one thing all victims of abuse need to know is that abuse is real. The effects are real. The way it makes us feel is real. But the words of the person behind the abuse are not. Real.
Just because someone says that you are stupid or will not amount to anything, do not believe them. You are the one that decides what you want. You are great and will accomplish anything that you want to.
I do not know for sure what this life is going to hold in store, but I can say that my mother was wrong: I am something, and I will accomplish great things in my life.
I survived. I know you can, too.