Dark Cloud

My Mother's illness brought two things into our home once she was discharged from hospital, a dark cloud of unhappiness which rippled through my whole family and medication, Oxycontin to be precise. As I explained before the Mother I had going into hospital was very different from the stranger who left.

She turned to alcohol to to cope with the pain and I turned to her medication to deal with the loneliness. Her fits of anger, an obvious side effect to the pain and distress she felt, isolated everyone in our family until eventually it was just her and me in this house. Both of us so desperately unhappy and me really to young to bear the burden of the residual fall out of her illness. My siblings had all left me alone in this house, with a volatile time bomb which would explode expectingly and often without reason, this meant that I was often on edge constantly. I really felt I had no one to turn too.

I had my school friends but I could not talk to them about what was happening and because I wasn't going to school most days, I began to lose contact with them. They had all but given up on me, sometimes they wouldn't see me for weeks on end. Something came along, something which would help ease the pain and the loneliness I was feeling. Oxycontin.

These little white pills were all I needed to take my mind off all the things going on in my house. I would take one every couple of days at first, mostly going unnoticed by Mother. But eventually it grew and I would be sometimes taking 80mg in one sitting. When she did notice, we would have massive arguments but I would never feel guilty about it, obviously I blamed her for bringing this monster in our house. I lay the blame at her door.

The pressure then led me to suicide, I remember the day, so clearly. It nothing major had happened, it didn't have too, I knew there was another outburst or attack on the way. My Mother went to work and I swallowed 10 Oxycontin pills and 40 Neurontin and then I downed a bottle of wine. I passed out within minutes. I woke up a few days later, being shaken by my Brother and my Mother before an ambulance was called. In the days that passed I was too much of a coward to explain the real reason I had tried to take my life and instead told everyone I was being bullied, the irony being I hadn't had a full day at school in weeks.

Things did start to get better but by then the hold that opiates had on me and my body was too strong. For years I would take them whenever I could. I became an expert in getting as high as possible, I was able to sniff out any hiding place my Mother could think off, I would shrug off worried relatives. I just wanted the pain and loneliness to stop and they made me feel normal again. It was no contest.

When I finally left home and moved to Manchester I was free of both the environment and the drugs, I didn't go through any withdrawals and I was happy. However I haven't had any closure in regards to what had happened and this sometimes forces me to move home in the hope I will get the answers I have been looking for. My Mother claims to not remember any of this, a symptom of her brain injury, alcoholism or as a coping method, I don't know. However it is frustrating and I can't help but blame her for everything that went on. This may seem selfish and uncaring off me, but I can't help how I feel and I do feel that even though she was ill, she did lean on me too much even though I was just a child.

I love my Mother very much, don't mistake that. But I am still very angry at her for all that has gone on. She has stopped drinking and couple of glasses of wine will usually finish her off. She has lost tons of weight and looks great. Unfortunately she is still in a lot of pain, something which I sometimes think she has succumbed too and it has stolen her light away, from her children.

I still takes drugs socially with my friends but also privately, It is a hold that I have not yet been able to get away from. It will happen some day....