Low and behold I’m walking to the kitchen to get a late night snack because my tummy is rumbling and I run into my mother stumbling not over her feet but her words. I know this may come as a surprise but I, “Jayquan” have an alcoholic parent. Now seeing my mom fumbling over her words isn’t something new to me but it’s something I haven’t had to go through in a long time. Let me set the record straight, as long as I can remember my mother has always had had a little too much to drink. Growing up I thought this was normal behavior and dismissed it as normal adult activity. When I saw her it shocked me. I hadn’t seen her in this state for quite some time. I was on vacation for two months, relaxing and enjoying my life away from home. I hadn’t had to think about my mother and her alcoholism for almost three months. Mind you when I came back home she seemed to be doing well for herself and still seated on the sober train.
When I saw her, the way she talked and moved, instantaneously unpleasant memories flooded back to me. Without a seconds notice I was enraged at her behavior but also hurt that she would put me through this again. I know alcoholism is a sickness, a disease of the mind and I’m sympathetic to what she has to go through but I’ve gone through this whirlwind of emotions and disappointments countless times before. I get exhausted at her empty apologies and her crocodile tears. What angers me the most is the nerve she has to expect me to be emotionally available to her after everything goes down. I feel its completely selfish in every regard.
After confronting her and calling her out on her shi* for lack of a better word, she asks me if I can give her a hug. How do you think I responded? Of course I told her no (Its not that I didn’t want to but It’s my way of showing her tough love) but, I emphasized how much I loved her for fear that she would direct her guilt and pain on herself. I could’t bring myself to her aid. I couldn’t do that favor for her. How was I supposed to comfort her when I was hurting. I’ve always been a person who has been quick to forgive but when It comes to my mother It’s another story. When a person hurts you time and time again it’s all you can ever expect them to do and you become closed off, protecting yourself the only way you know how.
As I lay in my bed typing this, relieving myself of the hurt and pain through these words, I can hear her emotional tirade/escapade in the living room. She’s crying and moaning; something similar to a scene straight out of a movie. Lets just say my mom has a flare for the dramatics (I mean, where did you think I got it from). She knocks on my door and peeps her head through, tears staining her cheeks and asks me to give her a hug again. She says to me “you have no idea”. I can’t bring myself to hug her, not yet, it’s too soon and I’m still wading through my emotions to be of any comfort to her. I can only respond by saying that if she’s going through some sort of emotional torment that she should call someone, particularly her wife. “She can’t solve my problems” my mother says, and herein lies her issue. She realizes that others can’t solve her problems but, my question to her is why doesn’t she take action to solve them herself? In my mind I’m thinking "Hmmm. You’ve been alive for forty-three years and you still expect other people to baby you and your issues to make you feel better. Who is who’s child here. I thought I was the child and you the parent yet I’m supposed to take care of you. “NO!”, I can’t do it anymore. Im too old (twenty-two by the way) to still be taking care of my you”.
What I should do moving forward? Should I go to counseling? Should I move out? Am I the reason she drinks and resorts to pills? Is there something I can do to make the situation better? Is it me? Am I the reason? These are all questions I ask myself. They burn in my mind. Yet, I know that it isn’t me and it’s my mind reverting to that of a helpless child watching his mother in pain and wondering if it’s something I did. I’m thankful for this keyboard and this platform where I can escape to, for without them I might thoroughly be lost.
I’ve wanted a tattoo for quite some time, most people my age (22) have already gotten their first tattoo and are looking for more. I on the other hand have always wanted one but never found something that represented who I was. One day it just jumped out at me and I finally figured out what I want and where I want to get it. 
