To lose a parent at any age is devastating, but to lose them as a young child brings its own level of grief. You see, as difficult as it may be for me to admit, I never truly knew my mother, and I don’t believe that she knew me either. Though my age was a major contributory factor to this, it was also her behaviour and addiction that overshadowed our relationship.
I was a people-pleasing child, and it was this which she used to her advantage. She knew that I would keep her secret because I didn’t want to upset her. So, it became another elephant in the room, hidden from view like her bottle of Vermouth and mouthwash beneath the kitchen sink.
When she was in a good mood, my mum lit up a room: her wit and dry sense of humour making her very popular amongst locals on our housing estate. In a bad mood, though, her outbursts had me walking on eggshells: her sharp tongue enough to leave me visibly shaking as I tried my best to avoid another telling off as she screamed and hurled insults my way.
Her addiction and unresolved trauma not only impacted on me, but it also changed me as a person, and I have since spent the years wondering who it is that I truly am because of this. Though there were large parts of being a typical child that she encouraged, such as playing with toys, reading my books, and playing outside with my friends, there were equal parts that she suppressed to suit her, and it is this that I still struggle to comprehend.
In primary school, I was “shy and polite”, and, at home, I was “Moya’s polite daughter”, setting an example for her friend’s children as their parents jokingly wished that they were as well-behaved as I was. Hearing this made Mum happy, proud to have me as a daughter, so I kept up the pretence, questioning my every word and movement because of it.
And then when addiction took hold, disease permeating every fragment of her fragile being, I became the carer: the 9-year-old who just got on with it without complaining, ever resilient as children are.
Are children actually resilient, though? Or are they expected to be so? Is it not just a form of masking as their young minds cannot comprehend the trauma that they are facing? Though not a parent myself, I have often heard accounts of children either being told or sharing something serious, and then doing a cartwheel to vacate the room.
Attending my mother’s funeral at the age of eleven brought about a whole new identity: the orphan. Though my father may not have passed, his refusal to undertake the parental role meant that my brother was left to take over legal guardianship of me. As I walked through the church doors, I could feel all eyes on me, my head bowed by way of suppressing my anxiety. I was no longer Belle, or even Moya’s daughter and Matthew’s sister: I was the fragile child who had lost her mother, approached with tears in their eyes and a sympathetic head tilt.
So now, at the age of thirty-five, I still struggle to know who I am, aside from being a good person who wears her heart on her sleeve. My mother’s addiction, her death and the mental health issues that have since followed, each breaking away another piece of the person that I should have been: leaving a shell that I now have to rebuild on the foundations of pain and grief.
I still have hopes and dreams for the future, but I am navigating these as two different people: a bereft child and a lost adult. One thing that I can say with great certainty, though, is that I am no longer the vulnerable, yet eager people-pleaser that I once was. I have lived through one of the worst pains imaginable, and yet I am still fighting, still standing. If you wish to be a part of my life then that is brilliant, but I will not beg you to do so.
My memoir, Mother’s Ruin: A Mother’s Addiction and her Daughter’s Survival, is now available to purchase in ebook and paperback.
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