Life Story: My Alcoholic Mother

The smell of vomit was another constant in our home. After she drank herself silly, my alcoholic mother would vomit into cooking pots and pans. I would wake up to the stench of her vomit, and it would be my duty to clean it up before I got myself ready for school. To this day the smell of vomit is etched in my mind. While my peers were idolizing their mothers, I prayed with all of my heart that she would one day fall and die in her drunken stupor.

Difficult childhood? Learn from people who have overcome childhood adversity.

My sister and I never had any kind of structure. We would get home from school to meet our mother happily entertaining her friends, conveniently forgetting she had small children she ought to cook for and care for. And even though we lived in the same house as our grandmother at one point, we always had to buy food from the street because our grandmother was forbidden from feeding us. If my grandmother dared go against her wish, my mother subjected the old lady to bouts of verbal abuse.

In basic school, there was never a day they sacked students owing school fees that my name was not mentioned. My mother used to dress me up in my school uniform and take me to make the rounds on her boyfriends, collect money supposedly meant for my school fees and still not pay the fees. Her alcoholism took center stage, and it drained the family’s purse. Let me not forget that while she made the rounds on her men, collecting their contributions towards my education, she wouldn’t miss a beat reminding me of the good-for-nothing man from whose loins I was spawned.

And yet from time to time, she would write a letter, riddled with lies about how I had a broken arm, or a broken foot, a tumor in my teeth and what not. Then she would make me copy the letter in my handwriting and mail it to my father in the states. She did all of that so she could take money from him to go get stupid drunk.

One childhood memory still gives me jitters to this day. Those days, we lived in a chamber and hall apartment, and we had one bed in the chamber. Now because my mother left us by ourselves every night, my sister and I used to sleep on the bed to keep each other company. It was on this same bed, while my sister and I slept, that my alcoholic mother would bring her men to have sexual relations. Don’t ask me what caliber of men those were, all I know is they weren’t the cream of society, neither was my Mama. The fact that my sister and I survived this hell without getting raped is a miracle, because the attempted assault did happen, but the actual deed never succeeded. I became insomniac because I was afraid of all the things that could happen if I allowed myself deep sleep.

My mother threw me out of her home in the middle of the night, severally, drunk out of her mind, ranting and raving, and blaming me for the fall of Adam and Eve as usual. I was still just a child. And due to her lies and abuse, family members refused to harbor me.

I managed to get to secondary school and enroll in boarding school. That moment of my life was respite and relief. My father also came back into my life and started the process of filing green papers so he could take me to the United States with him. My mother demanded a payment of one thousand dollars before agreeing to the arrangement, and my father paid her.

As part of the process, my mother was invited to the American embassy to answer some questions to allow the process to complete. My alcoholic mother decided to go to the embassy drunk out of her mind, fabricated stories and painted a picture of doom and gloom should my father be allowed to travel with me outside Ghana. The process was canceled and my father was arrested in the United States.

Believe it or not, my mother’s whole purpose for doing that was because she knew she couldn’t extort monies from my father anymore should I go and live with him. This is the level of selfishness I grew up with.

I finally left my mother’s home and went to live with my aunt. I eventually secured a job at the airport. My sister and I decided to send our mother to the UK, in hopes she would take advantage of the opportunities there and make something out of her life. Instead, she went to make friends, throw parties and continue her irresponsible lifestyle. Whiles in the UK she would call me in tears and manipulate me to change cedis into pounds and transfer it to her so she could pay her rent. I was still in denial, still pining for a relationship with my mother, hoping for a mother’s love.

I wish I could say she’s changed. She hasn’t. The latest is, she’s in competition with me. I don’t know what she wants from me, I guess I make her see herself for the total failure she was to us. And thank God I have found the heart to keep her at arm’s length.

Now I am a grown woman with two children of my own. Life has taken me through many alleyways and twists and turns. I have been thrown many curveballs. But in all of it, I have triumphed and continue to triumph.

I have two children of my own. They have not known and will never know the pain and burden of having an alcoholic for a mother. I do not go near any alcoholic drink. Though I never got a good example from my mother, I believe I got something more, which is priceless; how not to be a bad mother. 

And I can say I am a better mother to my own two children because I had my alcoholic mother’s bad examples as my guide. So I forgave her, even though has has absolutely no remorse.