What Lies Beyond the Lies

What Lies Beyond the Lies
A Memoir

I was twelve years old when she gave me my first beer.  I was fifteen when she encouraged me to get regularly drunk around her.

I was eighteen years old before I realized that she was an alcoholic. 

I was twenty-one when I realized that I needed to grow up, and that she never had, and was never going to. 

I was fifty-seven years old before I realized that I'd had enough.

This is a story about growing up, and growing old, with an alcoholic parent. It's a story about watching her always make the wrong decisions. Of watching her systematically take advantage of, and losing, everyone who loved and supported her. And no matter what, watching her always choosing the bottle over all others.

It's a story about no matter how hard you try, support, or want someone to change, you can't force it to happen. And in some circumstances, that change will never come.

It's also a story about how others exploited her condition and attempted to take advantage of not only her, but also others, and how the system failed everyone that it shouldn't have.

What this story isn't, is that it isn't for everyone. It's not a story about the individual with the substance abuse being treated as the victim, or about society failing them, or about others being to blame. 

And most importantly, it doesn't have a happy ending.