You Will Never Forget, but You Can Always Forgive

Alcohol is one of the biggest problems society faces. It is a problem among all age groups from college students to high school students and adults. From experience I know drinking can be hard to stop. It is considered a depressant, which is why many people become addicted to it because they think it makes them forget about their problems. My mom has alcoholism; I will never forget what she has done to me. But I always have and always will forgive her when she makes mistakes because no one is perfect.

There are many dangerous effects on the body caused from drinking too much alcohol such as anemia because it makes blood cell count low. Cancer can be caused from drinking too much and is known to affect the liver. One other dangerous long term effect is cirrhosis. When this happens the liver cannot function; it can also cause epilepsy which can trigger seizures. There is also a disease called fatty liver disease, and that is currently what my mom has right now.

It is more harmful to the body if drinking is started earlier in life. A young person’s body cannot cope with alcohol the same way an adult’s body can. Drinking is more harmful to teens than adults because their brains are still developing throughout adolescence and well into young adulthood. As long as I can remember, my mom has drunk alcohol. She told me she started drinking whenever she was in middle school. She has not stopped since then.

Binge drinking is the most common pattern of excessive alcohol use in the United States. Whenever I used to see my mother drink, she would start when she woke up and drink all day long. Sometimes she would not be able to pick me up from school because she was so wasted she would forget. So I had teachers or the principal take me home every once in a while.

My mother’s drinking has always caused issues in my life; some things I remember well was the time the police had to come for me because she was having sexual intercourse with other men that were not my dad so I called the cops on her. After this happened the child protective services were involved because my mom was drunk and on drugs whenever the cops came. Another incident caused her to hit my dad in a hotel because she was drunk and wanted to have sex, and I was lying in bed with them. He ended up pulling the phone socket out of the wall and throwing it across the room because he was angry. He did not want to hurt her; he was bleeding from his nose where my mother’s wedding ring took a chunk off of his nose. This all happened when I was about five.

Alcoholism is a chronic and often progressive disease that includes problems controlling drinking, being preoccupied with alcohol, and continuing to use alcohol even when it causes problems. After everything that happened when I was a child and after multiple attempts to send her to the best rehabilitation centers all over the country and having an intervention, she still left me and my dad. She left us because she was not allowed to drink anymore, or child protective services were going to take me away.

Most alcoholics are afraid to admit or see that they are addicted to drinking so they never think they have a problem. My mother, still to this day, says she never was an alcoholic, and it does not hurt her to drink even though she is killing herself. People cannot change for other people; they have to change for themselves, or they will never become any better. I learned that my mom did not want to change for herself. She wanted to change for my dad and me, and she tried over and over but she kept failing over and over. I could not imagine having a disease like alcoholism and not being able to fix it and letting people down over and over.

Counseling and therapy will not always work when people are alcoholics. It is one of the worst addictions someone can have, and one of the hardest to overcome. They might fail at it many times until it finally hits them, and they change for themselves because they know it is what is best for them. Sometimes it is easier for alcoholics to change if they have something to motivate them, but even then it might not help. Like my dad always told me, alcoholics have to hit rock bottom, and once they hit that point they will want to change. Rock bottom to me is where the person has nothing left; that person lost their loved ones and are going nowhere in life anymore and that person finally decides she wants to change for the better.

I do not understand how people can put their loved ones through so much pain and how they can handle watching their families go through heartbreak. Sometimes people can really fuck up and ruin everything they have going on. And after they mess up, it is really hard to forgive them. And sometimes when you do not want to forgive them you have to; someone has to be the bigger person. Especially if that someone brought someone else into the world. I did not talk to my mom for a few years until she brought my brother into this world, and once she did, I slowly started to talk to her so I could see my brother.

I have a beautiful five-year-old brother that I would do anything for in this world. He means more to me than anyone; I think about him all the time because I know he does not have a dad like I have. So it must be really hard for him because he is at the same age I was when I started realizing everything that was going on.

My mom left me when I was in second grade; we did not talk for about a year after I went to counseling and therapy because I was so upset. And in therapy children draw pictures about how they feel, about memories they remember, about what happened, and about what makes them upset. They also say to forgive and try and move on from the past, but that is the hardest thing in the world, especially when that person and yourself were so close. Drinking can lead to many things. While my mom was drunk, she overdosed once on some pills and ended up in the hospital. It can make your mind do bad things especially when blacking out and having no remembrance of what happened. But I do not agree that blacking out is an excuse to mess up because knowing how drunk you are could stop that, and you know your tolerance level; you should never acquire to that point. And she did almost every day before it was even twelve o' clock.

Alcohol overall is not good in any way shape or form. Never can one win with it; no good comes out of it. People use it as an escape from their feelings or to have a good time, but people can have a good time without drinking and can escape their feelings other ways like through seeing a counselor and talking about your feelings. Instead people drink to feel numb and to run away from their feelings, but when drunk it makes people even more upset at first. It takes many times of drinking to be able to block things out, and even when you do, they can sometime slip through.

Because of everything my mother put me through and still does now, I learned a key quality to have that most people do not have, and that quality is forgiveness. I would forgive almost anyone for anything. Because holding something against someone will not do anything for you but hold you back from happiness. When life becomes rough and people mess up, there is a choice to forgive them and be happy, but still know that they did wrong and not hold it against them. Or one may not forgive them, but that will not help anything because undoing what that person has done is not an option. You cannot unsing a song that is sung. They cannot forgive themselves, and you will never forget, but can always forgive.

By Tayler Resuriz

Tay, Wrestler, Texas > Illinois

Forgive, but never forget.