My moms ex husband is a police officer though, and he was there, so that might have had something to do with that.
My now-daughters aunt watched my mom hit me, black my eyes, etc, she’d stand there quietly, and we’d run out together as soon as my mom turned around, she’d take me home with her, where I’d stay a week or two.
My mom would throw me out of the house pretty often too, by the time I was a teenager it was pretty much a daily thing.. If we argued there was a pretty good chance I was getting ‘one way bus fare’. She’d give me bus fare to get to school, but not to get home.
Oddly, that usually meant I was getting one bus ticket, and $2 for lunch. Generally, I spent a few cents on milk, and saved part of the $2 for bus fare to wherever after school.
A friends house, my uncles, my cousins. My uncle had custody of me off and on, my cousins too, they’re a lot older than me.
I lived through black eyes, and yelling, and drunkenness, and craziness, not the worst that’s out there, but not the best.
Ha, I remember once considering calling CSD, my behind was all bloody from a leather belt, but.. I was mortified with the idea of having to show them my rear, so I never did.
My dad used to worry so much when I wasn’t home, my mom always told him I’d run away, and I think for the most part for many years he believed her.
I was a virgin with a yeast infection when she drunkenly called all of my friends and told them I was a slut with an STD. My cousin tried explaining to her that you didn’t have to have sex to get a yeast infection, she never even bought the medicine for it.
Anyway, my dad told me once that he’d gone through the neighborhood on his bike yelling my name until he didn’t have a voice, he said he’d cried, and he made me promise never to leave without telling him where I was again.
So one day when my mom made me leave, I walked to the neighbors house and told her what had happened, and that I was going to a friends house.
When my dad got home from work, he and my mom came to get me, my little sister was with them.
My dad came to the door and I came outside, I thought we were going to walk the few blocks home, until I saw the truck, dad didn’t drive back then (10 y/o DUI that he’d never taken care of).
I refused to get into the truck with my mom, if she was drunk and mean when I left, she was REALLY drunk and mean by now..
My dad and I walked home. It turned out that the neighbor didn’t tell him where I’d gone, and again he had worried, and searched before going to my friends later after he talked to the neighbor.
He hugged me and told me how worried he was. My mom came in while he was hugging me, and she mouthed the word bitch behind his back, and I started crying more. He asked her what she’d done, and he said she didn’t do anything, so he turned back, and she’d flip me off, or mouth the word again, or stick her tongue out.
All of these crazy mean things that moms just don’t do.. And I just cried, I didn’t tell my dad what she was doing, but he knew she was doing something.
Every night my parents went through at least a fifth, usually 2 fifths or a half gallon and a fifth. Every night they argued over who drank more than their share.
My dad drank as much, and probably more than my mom, the difference is that he’s a happy sloppy drunk and she’s a mean vindictive drunk.
This letter is already much longer than it was intended to be, I wasn’t sure you’d read it at all, so I’ll try to tie this up before it’s just to long to read.
I went to job corps when I was 16, I got married when I was 17 (in Washington).
I went to the house one day and watched my mom reduce my sister to tears in front of a house full of people, I told my sister to come with me, we were leaving.
The truck I was driving was my dads, so it was legally their’s, my mom ran down the street screaming that she’d call the truck in stolen if we didn’t stop, we couldn’t just walk away while she was talking, etc. etc.
That’s when my sister moved ‘in with me’. We struggled for the first few years.
I knew nothing about budgeting, or being a wife or a grown up, we got evicted, we learned to be adults.
My sister could have gone home anytime, but chose to live with my in my mother in law’s garage instead of at home in her bedroom.
When I took her that day she told me she had to go back, that my parents needed her to take care of them.
It took some time before she realized things should work the other way.
During one of those times when we’d been evicted, I went to stay with my mom. She invited us there, and we weren’t really sure what to do. It seemed like all that stuff from the past was so far away..
We were there about a week.. My daughter was about 3 years old when I heard some very familiar words…
“You’re ruining my marriage!” I don’t even remember what she was talking about, or maybe I never knew, I just knew she was drunk and telling my daughter that she was ruining her marriage.
I ran down the steps to get my daughter and I couldn’t find her. I searched everywhere downstairs for her, but she was gone. My moms door was locked, and I beat on the door over and over, asking her if my daughter was there.. She just kept crying, saying leave her a lone.
I was so scared, scared to call the police, because my mom nearly always had drugs in the house, scared not to because I couldn’t find her..
I finally heard her hiccup. She was hiding behind a rocking chair, with bruises on her arm. My mom had grabbed her and said those mean things to her. It was my fault too, I brought her there.
I didn’t even wait for my husband to come from work, I just packed my kids up in my car and took them to my mother in laws. She didn’t like me to much, but she loved my kids, and she didn’t drink.
My husband doesn’t drink either. I actually do drink, but very very rarely.
My dad’s still an alcoholic, so’s my mom. She’s a flight attendant, they’re aloud to take water bottles on flights with them, and you’d be flabbergasted if you knew how many of those water bottles were full of vodka.
My mom verbally abuses her friends and the occasional bar tender, and the rest of us are almost free from her. Oddly we don’t want her to grow old alone, we’d actually like to come out of this divorce with a mom… in small doses.
I guess I didn’t really go into to much detail about my moms abuse of my father.
So dad always worked, for the first 25 years of my life he had a job or two. Mom stayed home with us, in all fairness she cooked dinner from scratch every night. We never ate tv dinners we VERY rarely ate out.
“Out” was McDonalds, and we visited there less than 20 times in my life. I don’t think that was that uncommon during that time though. My half sister had D.Q almost nightly, I remembered thinking that was great, and weird.
Dad signed his paycheck over to my mom every week. She cashed it at a bar in NE that was at that time called the table. My mom and dad lived super broke, which is really sad because they weren’t.
They thought they were, but my dad made about $25 an hour back then, which is really good money for the time, in fact, he makes less than that now.
My mom drinks Jack Daniels in her coffee every morning, back then she had that drink at the Table. Then she came home, cleaned house, and went back to the bar.
Many of their very frequent arguments were due to the fact that she was ‘unfairly’ drunk before he got home from work.
My dad got $20 a week in allowance, and 2 sandwiches and a hostess pie for lunch. $75 a week went to my half sister for child support.
The rent on the house they now own was about 200 (The current mortgage is $308). We had a phone and water and electricity.
Once my dad came home soooo proud, he’d bought an $8 hedge trimmer at a garage sale. My uncles were there. My mom lambasted him in front of them, telling him he’d better march that hedge trimmer back to that yard sale or starve all week.
When she was mad she’d attack him, slap, punch, etc, and then she’d cry.
If she got mad at a neighbor, she cussed them out, and then she went to the bathroom and she cried.
She once dumped a plate of food on the head of the owner of the Table, because he embarrassed her telling her a buffet she’d been invited to was employee’s only. In fairness, my dad was really proud of her for that.
She threw more drinks in his face when she was mad than I can remember.
My dad did spank us, he just didn’t beat us. He doesn’t really yell when he’s mad either. He did break things though.
Not super often, but he did do it. When my mom got mad, that was an excuse to blow all the money they had, bill money, rent money, whole paychecks, etc.
We’d go to the coast and hang out there with her friends for a few days. It was actually a blast, my mom was a lot of fun when she was getting revenge by spending the money. So was spending the money. We were always a little sad that my dad didn’t know where we were, but it never dawned on us to call and tell him either.
While we were gone, dad broke things.
The house would usually be ransacked before we got back. Broken dishes, broken things, a mess.
There was a cupboard that lved in the living room that was always full of junk, tons of paper and junk, that’d always be dumped everywhere.
The 2 junk drawers from the kitchen would be emptied everywhere..
I don’t know why they stayed married. My mom took money from men for sex, she took me and my sister with her to sleep with men, they argued, they never were great for each other.
It’s sad that they put up with 30 years of each other’s bs, and then just when they oughta get old enough to settle down they broke up honestly.
My mom demeaned my dad for years, usually he was to drunk to care I guess.
