I have a lot of titles: Esquire, daughter, dry martini drinker, friend.
Today I finally accepted and entirely new one: Daughter of an Alcoholic. After denying it for a long, long time, I couldn’t keep ignoring all of the empty bottles hidden around the house. And sweet Jesus, there are a lot of bottles. For the past six months, I kept wishing that I was exaggerating the problem….that my mother couldn’t remember anything because she’s stressed at work, or she falls asleep in the middle of a Saturday afternoon because a cool breeze is blowing and it’s glorious to be that lazy or that the hidden bottles were merely the first part in a massive ship-in-a-bottle project.
But no, she’s an alcoholic. And at this very moment I completely hate her for it.
I hate finding an al-anon meeting near my house. I hate figuring out the difference between a “closed” and an “open” al-anon meeting. I hate being the one to tell my father about the bottles. I hate that he doesn’t know what to do. I hate that he expects me to take the lead. I hate that I totally need a counselor of my own. I hate that I don’t have the insurance for it. I hate that she’s drinking super-cheap liquor. I hate that this means I’ll never have a glass of wine in my house again. I hate that I poured a bottle of my own scotch down the drain. I’m furious that it didn’t make me feel better.
