Leticia Placencia

Mr. Chiang-Schultheiss

English 1

May 19, 1997

People try to understand the feelings family members go through when living with an alcoholic. Family members who live with an alcoholic are affected in many different ways. The affects may range from stress to physical abuse. Those who are affected most by alcoholics are the young children. Children go through many emotional and mental stages because of living with an alcoholic. Children are fragile and confused when observing older members violent actions when under the use of alcohol.

Coming from a home with an alcohol abuser, as a young child, I went through many stages that affected me tremendously and till this day many of the effects followed. I recall many nights when I felt alone, weak, confused, and disliked from my family and from my friends at school. Many of these feelings were not normal for a five year old child to experience, a young mind was being played with by an alcoholic. All these feelings were caused by one man who was to love me and teach me right from wrong, and instead it was a man who never took the time to think of others only for himself and his drink. Many of the different phases I went through in my life were because of the emotional and metal hurt my father caused me to experience, as I grew older.

At the age of five I realized I was being raised by a alcoholic, which was never an easy moment. I never know when the harsh creature in my father would strike. There were many long and countless nights I recall my father coming home from the bar, he was drunk and never knew quite to handle his violence. My father would come home and constantly beat my mother while verbally insulting his children. Still, those terrible memories are clear in my mind, as if it happened yesterday. After the many nights my father reacted in rage, I laid in bed afraid and angry at my father for what he did. There were also nights I cried my self to sleep to sleep ashamed for living, I prayed every night to god asking if all this was my fault but he never answered. Through time I realized that I was not the one to blame, it was my father who was at fault for all the feeling I felt about myself.

Feeling alone was always a way of life for me, I felt a separate gap between my friends and I. I felt I was the only kid in school with a father who abused his family ever night he came home from the bar, and who had a father that never showed any type of love to his children. Even today I feel nothing for my father and nothing for myself, it seems that there is no way out. There are only walls surround me in every direction keeping me a prisoner from the outside world, not allowing me to leave and become myself.

Growing up, I never was myself, I really never knew the real me. I lived my whole childhood in between prison walls where no one can enter and hurt me. In this prison I felt protected from the anger and corrupt world. It was hard for me to socialize with people, even to this day I keep many feelings inside, feelings that effected my self esteem.

Because of those verbal put downs repeated by my father I always felt unworthy, I never felt I had a reason to live life. All through elementary I felt self-conscious of myself and how people felt towards me. Dressing in front of a mirror was hard, especially when I was told million of times that I looked ugly and I believed it. I never recall one moment where my- father complimented me, or taught me how to feel good about my self. Those feeling still follow me to this day.

Many of the emotional and mental difficulties I went through as a child deeply affected me but mostly to this day. Today, I go through many hard nights remembering what my father did to our childhood life and it hurts more every day. Because of my past experiences living with an alcoholic my life has gong in a whole new direction, it has made me realize how liquor can affect a persons life. I have become a stronger person and a person who is aware of the causes that alcoholics have on young children.