What is it like growing up in a family with not one but two parents that are alcoholics? Very difficult I would answer it makes you grow up far too quickly and mentally you are scared for life at the things that you witness.
As the eldest of 3 children the first memory that I have is of being locked inside my home with my younger sister who was only 12 months old at the time and we our grandmother come to the door and she was knocking and through a locked window I was crying as I couldn't open the door and she couldn't come in.
I saw her sit on the back steps and she was crying too as you see both of our parents were at the local pub.
From there on it was endless drinking sessions after dinner, yes they did remember to fed us but if they got into the bottle too early it was to shout drunken instructions to me to cook the dinner for the kids.
The trouble with alcoholics is that they are just consumed with their own needs and their needs only.
With the drinking sessions that would go on and on and we kids would go to bed only to be woken with screaming and violence against each other.
I would have the kids in my bed and cuddled them both as they would get upset as well.
We dare not go out of the room to see what was happening less we got bashed too.
These sessions went on day in day out with one memory in particular being quiet frightening our mother was inside and locked the back door with my father on the outside demanding to be let in, there was silence for some time then he came back with an axe as he began to chop the door down.
We were all crying and then the chopping stopped and my mother yelled out that he was trying to come in through the window she began trying to shut the stuck window screaming for the kids to help her.
We were about to do this when dad latched on to her wrist with the hedge trimmer, there was blood everywhere I can remember this clearly like it was yesterday.
As a mother of children today there was no way that I would ever subject them to the physical and mental abuse that I was put through.
The embarrassment that I felt growing up as I would never invite people around as all the money we had would be consumed in alcohol there was nothing left to spend making the house a home and everything was either run down or had holes punched into the walls.
The witnessed effect of alcohol turned me against drinking for life.
I have seen the damage it does to lives of families and kids first hand.
And it is with sadness that I see the youth of today stagger around the streets after coming out from sessions at the pub, they are either sick from the effects of too much alcohol or they become aggressive.
I wish that I could show them what the end of the road looks like when you have had years of abuse of the demon drink.
I can tell you now..
..
it's not pretty.