My child, my baby girl, my nineteen-year-old sweetheart—she's drinking. Our family has always been sober. I raised her alone, living with my father after my mother passed away young. She was such a sickly child growing up. While she was in daycare, I was on medical leave every single month; we even spent a year under observation at the oncology clinic, though thank God, everything turned out fine. I poured every ounce of energy into making sure she grew up healthy, strong, and well-rounded. Every weekend was a "cultural outing": the park, the zoo, trips out into the countryside.
I worked constantly, so after school, she was always under my father's watchful eye. Dad passed away in 2016, right during her senior year of high school. I saved every bonus I earned to pay for her SAT prep; she saw a tutor twice a week and spent her Sundays taking college prep courses at two different universities. She did well on her exams in 2017—scored a 1150—but she didn't qualify for any full-ride scholarships. She had such a lost look in her eyes that I made a choice: we'd pay for tuition ourselves.
I took out another bank loan and started looking for a second job. I found one. I'd leave at seven in the morning and collapse through the door at nine at night, completely exhausted. Every day, I left her money for gas and food. When I got home in the evenings, she'd sometimes be asleep, but other times she'd open the door swaying on her feet. To my bewilderment, she'd just mutter, "We just had a couple of coolers."
The first red flag arrived as a letter from the dean's office inviting me to a meeting. The assistant dean told us they'd called in the parents of students who were guaranteed to fail the semester because of too many "Incompletes," skipped classes, and lack of credits to sit for finals. I was so ashamed! I was denying myself everything, slaving away at two jobs, and she wasn't even showing up to class. I went home and lit into her. Long story short, she managed to scrape through the semester with a few makeup credits, but she forbade me from calling the school to check her grades, telling me not to embarrass her.
Winter break passed, and I paid for the second semester. I'll never forget February 8th: she called me that evening, dead drunk, and said she wasn't coming home for the night.
"Is there anyone with you?" I asked.
A sober guy got on the phone and gave me an address. Thank goodness it was only a few blocks away. I'm grateful he helped me get her home; she could barely stand and she was aggressive—it was terrifying. The next day she begged for forgiveness, but after the break, the truancy started all over again. I fought so hard to keep her in school! She promised she'd go, but the class representative kept calling me—my daughter was almost never there.
***
When she turned eighteen, it was like she'd been let off a leash. I'd come home in the evening to a house so thick with cigarette smoke and the stench of stale beer you could barely breathe, and she'd be passed out with a blanket over her head. The first time she stayed out all night without a word was St. Patrick's Day. That was her "gift" to me. I spent the whole night in a state of panic and uncertainty. Later, she told me she'd gone to a midnight movie with a boy—claiming that if she'd told me, I wouldn't have let her go.
I'm at work all day, and she's her own master. It's clear she's fallen in with a crowd of dropouts and does whatever she wants. She was expelled in April 2018. For a couple of months, she stopped drinking and grew very quiet; I started to relax a little. In June, I got her a job at a food processing plant. She drank away half the money I gave her for her background check and medical clearance. She started the job, worked for two months, and quit. As soon as she got her final paycheck, she was out partying again. I couldn't understand what was happening. I begged her to tell me what was wrong. Had someone hurt her?
"Just talk to me," I pleaded. "We'll get through this together. I'll try to understand. I love you, and I'll always forgive you."
But she would just turn toward the window, cover her ears with her hands, and say, "Again? I'm not talking to you about this."
One day I came home from work and the deadbolt was thrown from the inside, but she wouldn't open up. I called the house phone, I called her cell, I pounded on the heavy door, I even banged on the window with a stick (we live on the ground floor)—she wouldn't let me in. I ended up going to a neighbor's with my bags and sat there for two hours. Finally, she opened the door. It turns out she'd gotten hammered before I got home and fallen into a deep sleep.
What I went through that summer! She became so closed off: "Don't say anything about my friends," "You don't know anything about me." But I kept fighting; I told her I wouldn't let her drink her life away.
And once, she actually said, "At least you're still fighting..."
I thought maybe she appreciated it. In August 2018, my supervisor offered to hire her at our office so I could keep an eye on her. My daughter went through the interview, she liked the place, and even said, "Mom, I actually felt like a human being here!"
She needed to go for a drug screen and physical, and I gave her the money for it.
She called me after lunch, her voice slurred and drunk: "There's a huge storm over here... I'll go to the clinic tomorrow."
I realized then that she would embarrass me at work, and I didn't want to let my boss down—I've worked at this company for twenty-eight years. I had to turn down the position. Afterward, she actually reproached me, saying I was the one who deprived her of a job. That was the first time I felt like taking a handful of pills and just ending it.
***
I have to thank the people I talked to about it. They think I just need to hold on for another two years—that she'll grow out of it. They say she'll get older and wiser, and it'll pass. That kept me going when I felt like giving up.
First, I turned to the church. That helped immensely. I prayed and sought comfort in the services. Second, I tried not to lose heart; I started taking some light sedatives. I won't describe everything in detail. There was another college (which ended the same way) and a few more jobs I found for her, which she ran away from the moment she got her first paycheck.
When she took the family gold and silver to a pawn shop and blew the money instantly with her friends, I installed a deadbolt on my own bedroom door. I was terrified for the deed to the house—afraid she'd sign something while drunk and we'd end up on the street.
2019 went by the same way. She doesn't work, and she isn't in school. My father started working at fourteen because he was an orphan; my mother grew up in a big family on a farm—they knew the value of hard work from childhood. I started working at seventeen. But she just raids the fridge. She sits at the computer all night and sleeps all day. Once, I snapped—I started screaming at her again about getting a job.
She just looked at me calmly and said, "I'm going to call the police on you," and smiled.
On the other hand, I'm afraid that if she does work, she'll just drink away her salary, so maybe it's better if she doesn't.
Of course, I see small improvements compared to how things were back in 2011. She's started cleaning her room; sometimes she cooks. She doesn't drink as recklessly as she used to, but now it's a weekly occurrence, and she stays overnight somewhere else so I don't see it. One day, something just clicked in my chest—I felt so sorry for her.
I hugged her and said softly, "You don't even understand what's happening to you, do you?"
She went quiet in my arms. And it was as if the love between us came back. We communicate differently now; we've found some level of mutual understanding. But those nights away... when she comes back with the smell of alcohol filling the whole apartment and money in her pocket, I have a certain opinion about how she got it. She just tells me I think too poorly of her.
I've written so much, and it's probably all over the place. But this is my pain.
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