Today is the day. Today is the day that our family has looked forward to with equal amounts of joy and anxiety, actually I think the level of anxiety far outweighs and overshadows any element of joy. It’s strange to be anxious about a loved one coming home. We want to be joyful, we want to rejoice and really believe that our home will once again feel like a home now that mam is coming home. A home is just not a home without a mother. When your mam goes away, the soul of the house leaves. There is emptiness in a home without a mother.

Our mum left our home 28 days ago today, the soul in our house however left over 8 years ago; in its place an entity came that turned our home into hell on earth. The soul in our house left and the soul of the devil took its place. The soul in our house abandoned us and left us in darkness, an empty space with closed doors, an empty space with no escape and the walls day by day began to close in on us. The soul in our house which was once filled with love was replaced with a house filled with lies, deceit, hurt, pain, fear, frustration, hatred, anger, remorse and a toxicating air that could be felt as soon as you walked in. Our home was now just a shell hiding within its contents deep dark secrets. Home was no longer home.

Almost like the guards outside the gas chambers, unable to do anything out of fear and forced to listen to the cries from within as the occupants died a horrific death, we have been bystanders witnessing the complete and utter destruction of our mother so loving and caring, the centre of our family. We have watched our mum slowly and progressively give herself up to the all encompassing, all consuming, all powerful death hold of alcohol. She battled, but she lost, everyone lost.

Today is the day. Today is the day, day 1. 28 days later. What lies ahead?

I am using this blog to document my family’s attempts to cope with the return of our mother/wife from a treatment centre for alcoholism. This is Day 1, and I will focus on the next few months, but I am sure I will slip into describing what it has been like living with alcoholism. I hope that what I write may strike a chord with people who have gone through this or are going through it at the moment. Im not claiming to be an expert on alcoholism, im not a counselor, I am just a daughter of an alcoholic mother who is taking those shaky first steps towards recovery…