Growing up, I watched helplessly as my mother got punched, kicked, and choked.
One night she was thrown down a flight of stairs.
Sometimes we would leave. But we always went back.
I was often left alone.
Some days there was no food in the house. I remember being eight or nine years old and putting myself to bed. Or boiling beef bouillon cubes for my dinner.
But the one thing we never seemed to lack was alcohol. It was everywhere.
If you’ve ever watched that TV show Cops you’ll notice that wherever the cops go, inside every house they respond to looks the same: chaos.
That was how we lived.
As I got older, the violence got worse.
Until one night, after having her head beaten against the living room wall, my mother went to the doctor.
A brain tumor was discovered. After a year of treatment, she died.
I was 15.
My life became a mess. I quickly descended into drugs and alcohol. As much and as often as I could.
In February of 1981, at the age of 18, I decided that I had enough.
I checked into a motel, consumed a ridiculous amount of booze and pain killers and lay down on the bed waiting to die.