Chaos: It's All You Know

On some level, I think I always understood that I was different from my friends.  Some of my earliest memories in elementary school were moments in which the harrowing fact that I was unlike them hit me like a knife twisted in my gut.

My classmates did not share the same experiences, the same fears, the confusion or the disenchantment that enveloped my childhood.  Most of them went home to a mom - and maybe a dad, too - and siblings in a quaint little house in the suburbs.  They had parents that would care for them, pack their school lunch, go to their sporting events or recitals, play with them, make them do their chores, but also give them a sense of stability.  I, on the other hand, went home to a chaotic environment where I never knew quite what to expect.  There were few things that I could count on, but my mother was not one of them.

"Home" was rarely just my mother and I.  Sometimes we would live with my grandparents, other times we would live with her various boyfriends.  I couldn't always count on her being there, but I could count on the fact that if she was there, she'd be drunk.

The environment that an alcoholic creates in a home is one of chaos and toxicity.  It's not really a home with an alcoholic, it's more like a battle ground.  My mother's drinking led to massive blow-outs of screaming, fighting, and physical altercations.  She would fight with her parents, her boyfriend, and with me.  There was nothing off-limits, no sacred line drawn.  An alcoholic will do anything to fuel their addiction, regardless of how it hurts other people.

By the nature of the fact that I lived in constant chaos and turmoil at home that my friends didn't seem to understand, I knew I was different.  But at a tender young age, I had no idea what to call it.  I didn't understand how to communicate at all, and I only knew my frustrations and insecurities at being unlike everyone I went to school with.  I was terrified and alone, just longing for someone to help me understand what was happening and how to make it stop.