Saturday, August 13, 2011

What you gonna when you are sick and tired of living with an alcoholic parent?

My dad is an alcoholic way back when he was a teenager. My mom left us when I was 6 bec. she couldn’t handle their sick marriage life anymore. She is now in Germany with her new family. My dad usually gets drunk at night and becomes wild, angry & would really turn the stereo’s volume to the max that our neighbors in our apartment get disturbed. I can’t do anything but hide in my room bearing the tremendous hurt & shame & cry when it seems too much already and just wait for the nightmare to end and that everything will be well and peaceful again. Sometimes he promises not to drink anymore and he tends to quit for a few weeks or months, but then he would later go back again to his habit. I have been living with him for 21 years together with my grandmother & caregivers/househelps. After graduating College, I accepted the graveyard shift cashiering job offered by my aunt who owns an Internet Café. I chose the job even if I am underemployed in it just so I could escape the troubled life I experience everytime my dad comes home drunk at night. It’s almost a year now in my present job that I tried to live a peaceful and normal life since I can avoid sleeping at home and endure the painful situation cause by my father’s drunkenness. I just go home during the day to sleep and go back again to work at night. But the pain is not yet over when I thought I have escaped it already bec. these past few days I come home and find him having a drinking spree with his drunkard friends early in the morning or afternoon with the stereo blasting out so loud. I really don’t know what to do but to walk away so hurt and ashame. And I feel so afraid for fear that he would humiliate me & create havoc in my workplace. It’s really a miracle that I survived and finished College despite my miserable situation which gotten worse during my first years in College since my grandmother had a stroke and would cry also during the evenings or late at midnight bec. of her arthritis. I really don’t know what to do anymore. I wanted to run away and live a new life own my own but I feel that if I leave and turn my back on my dad, it gives me a deep sense of guilt for not being there to help him esp. that he is jobless and sooner or later my aunt would quit supporting him financially. He never wanted to work to earn a living bec. he was totally dependent on my aunt and grandfather. In our country, children still have a great responsibility over their parents even if they are beyond legal age due to close family ties culture. When my dad is sober he is a great person but a totally different & mean person when drunk. The next day when he wakes up everything goes back to normal. Sometimes I think that he is not really my father and that I am not his daughter bec. he never worked even once to feed his family or send me to school. It was my grandfather and aunts who supported me financially and meet my school needs. My dad neither care or even interested with my studies or helping me plan for my future. He says he is proud of me but he didn’t do anything to prove that he is. I am so sick and tired of this kind of life that I feel I am cursed or something. I tried my best to live a good life and strove hard to be a good Christian. But life is like forcing me to be insane,mean and angry with the world. Life seems so unfair to me bec. I was deprived of parents who should be nurturing and supportive but it’s painful to think I was left to stand on my own. For me, even if I finished College, I still feel like my future is so dark and that I am going to live in misery for the rest of my life. I still keep praying and hoping one day he would change. I still don’t know if there are Al-Anon meetings in our area. But I feel that Al-Anon groups wouldn’t solve the problem.I am 21 now but I don’t know if life would be better when I find a new job and rent a space to run to in case he is drunk again when I come home from work. But I feel life would still be the same bec. I think he still wouldn’t change. How can I really avoid living the pain of coming home and frequent worrying whether he is drunk or sober when I cannot dare not to return home as much as possible bec. I don’t want to neglect my father and grandmother? But living in such a depressing experience is affecting me that lowers my self-esteem so much.I didn’t went into any relationship bec. I am ashamed of my life. I seem to be always living in anger and fear everyday of my life. How am I supposed to live a good life and finally find happiness having an alcoholic dad?

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