Did We Need to Go There

My blog has never been one for controversy. I leave controversy to many face-to-face communications. Body language can be read and understood, as can eye movement, facial expressions, tone. Tone is often hard to communicate in writing. One must be a skilled author to have the finesse to emit tone in the conversation. So controversy as I said is left to the true verbal arena so as not to encounter miscommunications or to misunderstand.

So my tone is about to go to a beaten path NEVER taken before. EVER. I will probably lose blog followers and I am deeply sorry. I will not yield nor apologize for my personal life, my personal decisions, something that completely affects me, with the exception of my husband as he was a very intricate part of my life in this decision.


Once upon a Thanksgiving in 2009 a young woman who spent two days prepping, cleaning, cooking and baking, not to mention caring for her three children. Might I add, two of which are twins in case you are just tuning into the Fish Film @ 11, and I work a full-time job, a real. full time job. Not just the job of mom, you see that is my first job, my real job is my third job, my second job is wife, and my fourth job is business owner. So you see I truly have FOUR FULL time jobs....ah hell five if you add all the housework. So back to it, I was cleaning up after a much enjoyed pie hole stuffing event. Family was gathered on my couch, every seat taken,  reading Black Friday ads, friends were conversing, laughs shared abound. As the crowd began to simmer and disperse I thought I need to call my dear friend who so lovingly called to share in her thanks and love on this day. But in addition to the love to be shared was the hate that this ugly world can bring. Not hate by my friend, the hate of strangers, the hate of those who put up a loving facade to avoid confrontation, the hate spewed behind anonymity to win out in some delusional war of words.

Please be advised that the images you are about to see are repulsive, obscene, disgusting, and horrid. All directed AT ME. I debated on posting these images and by rehashing information I so prayed to disappear, but the glutton in me took pictures of the proof of hate generated by people.

For privacy reasons the images were removed and can only be viewed by invitation only. 

As I said. I apologize for any and ALL of you to read this ugliness. I was so physically ill on Thursday I could barely sleep. I was shaking, I was borderline inconsolable. My husband, bless his heart, reassured me to ignore this. It would go away. It did not. The pain did not go away. These people have NOT. GONE. AWAY! The Twitter account STILL EXISTS!!! I thought the account had been deleted, however, I was wrong and hatred breeds and multiplies and yet another account can be created in anonymity so as to further the cause of hatred.

Now here is my beef. I have no problem with someone gossiping at or about me. Whatever, sticks and stones okay. But a FULL ON CHARACTER ASSASSINATION will make this Lionesses blood boil! My sweet little guppy fish exterior will molt into the full on lion bitch I am! What else....NO ONE. I do stress NO ONE has any of this information in the blogging community...oh wait. With the single exception of my sister.

YES. You know her. Brittany Greer. Brittany Hudson Greer over @ The Greer 5.

My flesh and blood. I had attempted to try to keep this between the family. A family feud that she clearly took too far in divulging my personal information to sheer strangers for their personal use to attack me. To belittle, to judge, to bring me shame, to destroy my character, to inflict pain, I can go on and on. Clearly a reprimandable offense correct? One might think considering that a third party went so far as to assassinate my good character, to attempt to destroy my friendships, my networkings, or maybe because the cretin who created this account thought it may be funny to bring pain to someone such as me. If you believe in this.....keep on being a subscriber to your community that is "generously" run and operated by Mom Dot. Because my information seems to have been so "generously" shared and detailed...although I will state that the details in these tweets are clearly misinformed, out of time line, and clearly NONE OF ANYONE'S FUCKING BUSINESS. I also encourage you to continue to be a member of a community that does love to breed controversy as my personal life so clearly became a hot topic in a forum for enjoyment. Or hell maybe just in an email but regardless, the two involved ARE members, very active members of that community. Which further suggests that the negative behavior of public humiliation, belittling and degradation is A FUCKING OKAY with these people. I would love to publicly humiliate...man...I would be such a big girl to do that.

To post pictures of random strangers and discuss their situations may they be unfortunate with other random strangers and call it "fun" or "comedic" hell albeit fucking hysterical right...just a joke.

FUCK YOU and you know who you are. Are those tweets a fucking joke to any of you? If so....I dare you to leave me your FULL NAME to leave up for public humiliation. I also dare.....no....I challenge the lowly individual who so PROUDLY created this account with the original intentions of bashing MY friend Kristin, whether you like her or not, who then decided to turn the object of their desire to me...I CHALLENGE you to come to my blog and apologize to me. Furthermore I CHALLENGE the cretin and or CRETINS who acted in such a distasteful, vulgar, unbecoming, and plebian manner to PUBLICLY APOLOGIZE to myself and Kristin on Twitter and on a blog post that shall stay posted for AN ENTIRE WEEK. To allow those who read it to show their disdain to you. To show you how much of an uncouthful coward you were and are for hiding behind anonymity, your keyboard, and indecency. I also challenge Miss "I am the Community and this is my blog" so shoot me an email...we'll discuss the details like adults.

Dirty Little Secrets

Families are KNOWN for dirty little secrets. All families. No family is without secrets of some sorts. My family by far was and is THE. WORST. Before anyone thinks I am going to post anything awful....put your pistols away and read with a VERY open mind.

I am an Adult Child of an Alcoholic.

What the hell does that mean to you? My dad is an alcoholic. Was an alcoholic. Probably always will be an alcoholic. For the families that hold secrets they called their dads or moms or whomever the family member is and was, "a drinker." The "drinker" was the socially acceptable term for the alcoholic, because everyone is/was in denial. Which is A-OK, I was in denial, I was clueless, I also suffered from the secrets, the disease and the illnesses that accompany alcoholism.

My dad is/was like any other dad. He was good hearted, loving, smiling, a provider. But his nasty illness to binge on alcohol, drugs, women, everything is/was addicting to him. My mom, she was/is like any other mother. Heart of gold, will do anything for her kids, loving, happy, a provider. But my mom did a very good job of hiding what my dad was doing. His late nights. His hangovers where he was ill and puking from mixing booze with drugs. His illness because he is probably intolerant altogether to alcohol causing him migraines and physical illness. His cheating on my mother. His lack of concern for his children.

These behaviors went on for MANY years. So many years so that I began to be the caretaker in my family. My dad checked out after the birth of my brother, was unseen with my sister, and my mother began working full time to help pay the bills that my father racked up from unnecessary purchases. Oh and did I mention his bipolar disorder too? Friendly combination, addiction and mental illness. The behaviors went on. I became Mom. At the ripe age of EIGHT. I was dressing my siblings for school, feeding them, and caring for myself because my father was still passed out drunk from nights before, or flat out failed to come home. My mother worked nights as a nurse, her ability to be there full time for us kids was obviously limited as my parents were a two parent income household, they both had to work. Finally after two years of the continued misery of my fathers black hole spiral my mother threw in the towel and they got divorced.

Lots of parents get divorced. But I never knew why. I thought, they just don't get along anymore. Not until I was old enough did the Big Pink Elephant finally receive recognition for being in my life. My dad is an alcoholic. His illness and failure to accept his illness killed my family. A lot of my family was lost because of his illness. My siblings, we rarely speak. Because of so many hurts within a dysfunctional alcoholic or addiction ridden family. We have pains from the family unit and so we turned in on each other, we would fend for ourselves. Not full time, but when we would visit my dad we would. I remember a time when his first wife, whom he began seeing while still married to my mother, came to visit. My father locked myself and my younger siblings out of his apartment with just a few dollars so that we could walk a mile or so to the local Circle K to buy candy and a Thirstbuster. Because he needed a fix.

I am 100 times more likely to become an alcoholic. I choose not to be. I watched my father tear me to pieces like a lion to a lamb. I was called every curse word you could think of.....I can recall and cite verbatum those words, those comments. They sting. They pain. That the one man in my life who should have been my TRUE knight in shining armor was the root of all evil. His secret. His illness. The illness that would tear me to pieces name by name, inch by inch, until my self-worth lay in a puddle of tears. The illness that led me to believe I was the fattest and ugliest person on Earth. The illness that led me to believe I would never be smart enough. His illness, his drinking said those horrible things. The illness he once attested to having. He came to grips with his addiction, his illness. He was sober....for a year. I lived with him during that time. I got to know a bit of my dad. I had someone I could talk to without being called names, without the condescending tone, the belittling, the pain, the sting. But it all changed. I moved out because I was 19, I had a boyfriend (the now hubs), and his divorce became final.

My Dad died to me that year when he began drinking again. He still calls me to this day and I resent him. I am indifferent to his "love" and affection because he sacrificed his sobriety for a woman, for lack of control over a situation. A woman that will never love him again. Will never marry him. Will never speak to him casually. That woman was not my mother. He even told me once that he only truly loved this woman, as if he had forsaken the other woman he was once married to, my mother. My family still does not talk about my dad, his addiction, the pain he causes our family because he chooses to drink, the destruction he causes emotionally and at once physically because of the alcohol. Because his drink means more than the love and respect of his children. His drink is more important that to live his life sober, for him, to enjoy that natural high of life. He is so fully operational as a round the clock drunk that he is delusional, half demented, and quite literally the saddest person ever. I never talk about the truth of my dad because dirty little secrets suck. They are painful. They are damaging.  But I talk about them because alcohol touches all families, somehow, someway, with someone they love. Secrets hurt families, and so we talk about them to put an end to the cycle of hurt.

What I do know is that no matter how damaging and painful those secrets may be, I want my kids to know.

I want my kids to know that I am an Adult Child of an Alcoholic. I had the worst teachers for dealing with pain, emotion, anger, rage, hurt, disappointment, fear, sadness, jealousy. These feelings were never dealt with in my family because we could never show people that anything was wrong with our family. That we had a secret to keep. So we kept up the perfect front, the perfect life, perfect feelings. I want my kids to know that being sad, mad, jealous, angry, feeling rage for a short moment is great! Embrace it.  I want my kids to know that I drink once in a blue moon. Having an alcoholic beverage is okay. Having one everyday is not okay. Feeling you need one everyday, every few hours, ALL day, is not okay. The same can be said with drugs. I have had my bout with addiction, its not pretty. I will also share with my kids this bout. I want them to know that they will make choices on their own. I will always love them, just as I do my father. But I will not follow that path. I will share with them that I do not blame my parents, I blame the illness, the lack of knowledge about how to work through the illness, I blame the lack of will. 

On the outside you would never have known my family was sick. That we had secrets to keep. That the secrets were killing our family and little bits of our souls. In the end...I turned out to be a stronger, knowledgeable, more compassionate and empathetic person with the drive stronger than anything a human can describe, and a will and spirit that will never be broken.