When my father split from my mother It was around that time that we started the "cycle" as I like to call it.
My mother for all her faults was a great mother the best i could have hoped for really,
.. but ..
her choices during my childhood left a profound mark on my life.
when the cycle started my mother was just a newly single mom with 3 children and a 4th on the way, so to try her best to take care of us she started working 2 jobs and sometimes of she can handle it a 3rd
she was a staunch supportor of the strong independent female movement but honestly looking back I can see how it all took a tole on her.
she believed that she should be able to take care of her kids without outside help.
But because of that when no one was looking or when she saw that she was alone, I saw the tears...
I saw the frustration.....
I saw the helplessness...
a saw her pick up the bottle for the first time...
I saw a lot too much for my age yet I couldn't look away.
I should also mention that I am my mother's only son, out of 4 kids and while my sister grew up with everything they wanted from their fathers I had none off that so everything I had came from her sweat and tears.
While my sister's father provided everything that my sisters wanted they never provided with what they needed.
so while they showed off there new electronic and toys my mother was in the background on the phone with the landlord begging for an extension on the rent, or while my sister would be gone with their father's for the weekend I would sometime sit with my mother in the dark.
While she was on the phone with someone and for them to show up only to ask me to please play outside, and when the guy left a few hours later I would see the power back on but my mother in the shower for and hour and half steamed billowing out from under the door and music turned loud
But between the songs, during that little break I would hear the soft crying.
I didn't now at the time back looking I really wished I could have done something anything to stop her from going down the rabbit hole that led to her lifestyle and chioce later.
But to support and take care of us we moved. a lot..
at first with was just to find more affordable housing on her income while taking care of 4 kids but as we grew older the demands and expenses kept coming to the point that little by little I saw my mother had become a shell of her former self and I had no idea on how to stop it because by this point I only knew her love as a parent and I clung to it like a lifeline.
Seeing her become like that hurt more than a little bit. we moved around so much that it seemed like every year or ever 2 year we would need to move again.
I not talking and moving to a different side of the city. no I mean move to entirely city's miles away or to another state.
It was increasingly hard on me to make friends because after my 2nd move I knew deep down what was the point in making friends if as soon as we became friends I would have to move again.
So with each move I became more and more closed off the everyone who wasn't my immediate family, and even then it really only extended to my mother as by the I held resentment for my sister for always flaunting there relationship with their fathers in my face and all the thing they bought them.
Really in my opinion when though things was not really all that great... this one man changed everything.
To this day I honestly don't know how my mother met him all I know was that from day one he was no good.
He was just a little to close to all my sisters and for some reason wanted to be my friend. But than the drugs started and everything changed.
back than he was some low to mid level drug dealer and he would always have different drugs spead around the house,..
it didn't matter in what for he did it all and he made it all.
right there on the family living room.
But it was want he would do while on those drugs that help shape me.
He had somehow got my mother addicted to a certain drug and in her state at the time she clung to him and that "release" of all her life frustration and she fell hard.
Not to the point where she lost her job or nothing.
But at home she just wasn't "There" anymore.
It was also during this time that the guy made his move.