It was when I was younger like 14 or so but I had to fed the dogs. I had 2 dogs one girl one boy and I forgot to fed them one night and they got out because the female was in heat and the male dog followed her out, they returned later the next morning and my male dog got attacked by two German shepherds and he got hurt real bad and he had maggots all in the wounds, I was a lot of them out I couldn’t get them all out but they would crawl out because I put alcohol on the wounds he started making a recovery but he ended up starving to death. I felt like he was one day from being able to eat again and I can’t help but blame myself for missing that one day.

My mother is an extreme alcoholic. There aren’t many days she isn’t highly intoxicated and on those rare days that she isn’t, she tries to make up for the fact that for a majority of my childhood and now teen years she’s been absent by acting more like a friend then my own mother. She never apologizes and she blames her alcoholism and other issues on me and my dad and my brother even though we’ve done nothing but try to support her, and In doing so my family has lost so much especially financially because things like detox programs and rehab are really expensive. I want so desperately to look at her like a mother figure and to take the advice of the people who say things like to “support her because it’s just a disease” but the things she says and does to my family and me specifically when she is under the influence is absolutely unforgivable. Most nights the things she’s said to me give me nightmares. I also can’t get over the fact that she claims it isn’t her fault and that she’s perfect and it’s the reason she refuses to go back to rehab and AA because she’s “so much better than everyone else there” when in reality that just isn’t the case at all and also the fact that when she’s sober she’s the one that makes the decision to put the bottle to her lips and to drink knowing that Every time she does so her family dies a little.

• June 1, 2023