Beneath The Bottle

Tag: addiction

  • You Can Just See The Love

    You Can Just See The Love

    Do I believe there are days when you need something, need to hear something that helps you?

    God yes. Today was one of those days.

    I took my four younger boys to the beach. We devoured fish and chips, ice cream, and time together. No pressure to do anything extraordinary, just the quiet beauty of being with each other. Talking, listening, relaxing beneath the burning sun. It felt like a pause from everyday life, a breath of something lighter.

    We were sat on a bench. I closed my eyes and let the sun wash over me. One of my sons stood behind me and began to massage my shoulders whilst the others sat talking beside us. Then a lady approached. She looked to be in her early sixties. She asked, “Are all of these your boys?”

    I smiled and said yes, they were.

    Her expression was soft, warm, reassuring. There was no judgement in it, no edge, no slyness. So I told her I had another three sons and a daughter too, but that they were all adults. She smiled and said, “Oh, that’s absolutely lovely.”

    And it was one of those small moments that did not feel small at all.

    No judgement. No nasty comment. No assumption. Just kindness.

    Then she said the very thing I think I needed most to hear.

    “You can just see the love between you.”

    And it filled my heart.

    Because I can feel the love I have for my children. It lives in every part of me. They are my reason for living, my hope, my resilience, my determination, all wrapped into one. I like to think my love is plain to see, and after the week I had had, her words were far more than a passing comment. They reached somewhere deep.

    My youngest son had been in hospital just days before, for four days. I had rung an ambulance the Wednesday afternoon because he was seriously unwell. After twelve long hours in A&E, with numerous tests, he was admitted to the children’s ward at the RVI and placed on intravenous antibiotics.

    I did not leave his side.

    When my children are poorly, nothing else matters. There is no other focus in me but them. But those twelve hours in A&E were mentally exhausting. I had reached twenty four hours without alcohol, and I knew withdrawals were likely going to become part of the problem. I told the nurse that I had issues with alcohol and that I was under services for help. Other than sweating profusely and feeling my anxiety climb higher than usual, I did not expect much else. So I rode it out that night.

    They offered for me to check into A&E myself so they could prescribe something to help. I refused. I would not leave my little boy.

    People see alcoholics as selfish. But even in the grip of addiction, I am not selfish. My instinct is still to put my children, and everyone else, before myself. I cannot not do that.

    Whilst we were on the ward, a nurse made an internal safeguarding referral. I was never informed of it and only read it in the paperwork when my son was discharged four days later. But clearly, they saw that my parenting was not in question, and that the care my son received from me was unwavering.

    My children adore me. They tell me often that they do not know what they would do without me, without me being the one who picks up the pieces and solves the problems. It is not a superpower. To me, it is the bare minimum of what a mam should be.

    Alcohol or no alcohol, I will always put them first.

    They are my entire life. My soul. My heartbeat.

    And yet sometimes, I do wonder if there is something almost supernatural in the way I feel them. There are moments where, minutes before one of my sons rings me, I already know something is wrong. I feel it. I have some kind of inbuilt radar that alerts me to danger, hurt, illness, or trouble without any obvious clue at all. I do not know if there is a name for it, or whether it is a recognised phenomenon, but I know it is real. It has happened too many times not to be. I have woken moments before one of them has come into the house, or moments before they have woken and told me they were unwell.

    So when I heard those words from that lovely woman, they stirred something in me. Pride. Warmth. A quiet ache too.

    Because I do adore my children.

    They want for nothing material, but more importantly, they want for nothing emotionally. And maybe that is why, by the end of the day, I have so little left for myself. When you spend your life pouring into others, your own cup can sit empty for a very long time.

    Would I change that?

    No.

    Because I believe my purpose on this earth is to be a mam. To do all I can to make sure my children reach adulthood with a solid foundation, with emotional safety, with regulation, and with the deep knowing that they are loved unconditionally.

    Things I never had.

    It takes courage, strength, and bravery to break the chains of abuse and generational trauma. And whilst I have no ego in saying it, I know this much is true. I have only ever wanted to give love, even though I received so little of it myself.

    Because passing my pain down to my children may have been easier on my own wounded mind, but it would have destroyed me much sooner.

    And maybe that is what healing really looks like, love given freely where pain once lived.

  • When I Need To Be Held

    When I Need To Be Held

    a small confession about comfort and longing

    Alcohol still knows how to comfort me.

    It wraps around the ache,

    soft and familiar,

    like arms that don’t ask questions.

    It’s the only thing

    that feels like a hug

    when I’m falling apart.

    The warmth never lasts,

    it fades,

    leaving me hollow and heavy.

    But still,

    in the quiet that follows,

    beneath the guilt and the noise,

    one truth remains.

    I just want to be held.

  • I Have A Confession

    I Have A Confession

    I have a confession to make.

    I’m actually quite scared to divulge this really quite petite fact that holds little significance in the grand scheme of things.

    But I need to make it less powerful, to reduce the imaginary pull that seems to reel me in to the hold it has on me.

    Under my desk is a bag, and inside the bag is a can of lager. The bag is covered with my blanket. It’s a safe space, one nobody in the house would dare to go near or touch, and I know this. The place was chosen to keep it safe, hidden by choice. If I had wanted it to be found, if I had wanted sanctuary from the mental battle currently engulfing me, I’d have put it in the fridge where everyone would see it.

    The deviousness of hiding it somewhere nobody goes is a choice. There is always a choice.

    That solitary can is my get out of jail free card. For me, it’s how I move around the board when everything becomes too impossible to handle or cope with. I’m still trying to decipher whether I’ve kept it as a deterrent, a safety net, perhaps; a reminder that the choice is there but I choose not to take it.

    Or whether it’s actually there as an emergency, like a defibrillator placed perfectly.  Just in case.

    Alcohol has become my “just in case.”

    It was my crutch. My reliance. But I’m tired of the monotony of drinking to excess and the downward regression into anxiety, pain, dread, and shame. Yet I’m also painfully aware of my inner need to survive, to survive to raise my children, to survive to simply exist. Alcohol, in a twisted way, allows me to survive.

    It destroys me, I know. My drinking crushes me. Mentally, it pulls me under. I isolate, I hide, I retract from a world that feels too loud and demanding.

    But the noise. The endless noise; it stops me from seeing clearly. Everything becomes blurry when I’m sober. I hear too much, feel too much, and my brain can’t keep up with the incessant waves of fear, panic, and expectation. Alcohol dulls it down.

    Because the withdrawal from society in active drinking gives me peace; but the withdrawal from alcohol in sobriety terrifies me.

    To others, it might look like oversensitivity.

    To me, it’s survival.

    I know alcohol won’t solve anything. I know it doesn’t fix the pain, but do they see me? Do they feel the ache that floods every nerve? Living hurts, and there’s no softer way to say it. The pain may change form, but it still exists. And it can be utterly debilitating.

    So this can of lager, this confession, I need to take the power out of it.

    Perhaps binning it would solve everything. But it would also take away my safety card, and sometimes, holding onto something, even the wrong thing, feels safer than letting go completely.

    I know my thinking is flawed.

    I know that the problem isn’t the can of lager. It’s me. My inability to cope without something that helps me to breathe through the pain.

    Because right now, I feel like I’m sinking, and there is no anchor.

    If this were anyone else, I’d know exactly what to say.

    I’d tell them tenderly that alcohol doesn’t heal pain; it only mutes it until it comes back screaming. I’d remind them that what they’re really reaching for isn’t the drink; it’s peace.

    But when it’s me, everything changes.

    Logic becomes fog. My own advice turns to whispers I can’t quite hear over the noise.

    Because I know what it’s like to sit in the dark, heart racing, eyes burning, wanting the world to stop spinning for just a moment. I know the exhaustion of surviving when every breath feels heavy.

    I know I’m damaged. I know I’m broken in ways that words can’t capture. I see it in my shaking hands, in the silence that follows my tears, in the way I pretend strength to protect those I love. Some days it feels like I’m hanging on by my fingernails  and they’re bleeding.

    That can under my desk isn’t just alcohol.

    It’s a symbol. A promise of escape. A threat dressed as comfort. A reminder that control is both my safety and my prison.

    I tell myself I keep it as a choice, that as long as it stays there, I hold the power. But maybe the truth is this; the real power lies in not reaching for it.

    Maybe one day I’ll throw it away. Maybe one day the pull will fade.

    But tonight, this confession, these words, are my first step.

    Because saying it out loud, admitting that it exists, that I exist like this, is me taking the power back, even if just for a moment.