Ghost Of The Future
Ghost Of The Future
I am 19 and have three beautiful children. I just got married one month ago to their father. We have been together since we were 14. I love him ever so dearly, but he is an alcoholic. I don’t know what to do. I know in my mind it will never work out because of his addiction.
He is starting to get bad with the verbal abuse, and he is starting to get mean with the children for no reason at all. My son is only three, and my twin daughters only a year and a half. My family despises him, but they are unwilling to help because they would feel obligated to help support me and my three children.
I understand it is not good for my children to be in this environment, and I understand it will only get worse from here. One of my biggest fears is raising my children alone. I just need help figuring out how to get my mind and my heart in one place.
My father was an alcoholic, and I know what it is like growing up walking on pins and needles all the time. I don’t want that for my children.
Katrina
Katrina, one of our favorite lines in literature is from Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol.” Near the end of the story, Ebenezer Scrooge says, “Men’s courses will foreshadow certain ends, to which, if persevered in, they must lead. But if the courses be departed from, the ends will change.”
That is the essence of your life as well as Scrooge’s. It stands to reason your family will not help you, when it is their lives which put you on this path. You married an alcoholic. At 15 you were pregnant with your first child; at 17 or 18 you had two more. Your parents don’t want to involve themselves in your life, because they will feel it is a judgment upon them.
They won’t face that reality. They won’t admit they let a fermented beverage ruin lives. They won’t admit their behavior has been contrary to rightness, correctness, and compassion for children.
Now you must do for your children what your mother did not do for you. As a woman with children, married to an alcoholic, she may have thought she could not take her children away from their father. But that was the easy course. The inevitable question of adult children is, how could you not protect us?
We are not asking you to judge your mother, and we are not asking you to hate your father. But we are asking you to acknowledge the difficult spot you are in is a direct result of your parents’ behavior. You need to fully understand that, just as you fully understand, when you see your children cringing before their drunken father, that you must leave him.
You needed a wedding to be able to move on. You could not leave until you saw marriage wouldn’t fix anything. Now that you have achieved that ideal, you are left with nothing but the reality of life with an angry drunk. At least the wedding will give you more standing with your children and legal protections you would not otherwise have had.
Today, make a list of anyone who can help you. Your list needs to include government agencies, women’s centers, and domestic violence shelters. List every organization you can think of, public or private. Tomorrow, you will be contacting everyone on your list. From those contacts your future course will emerge.
In Dickens’ tale, Scrooge begs the ghost of the future to assure him he can still change the outcome of his life. That is your question to us. Our answer is, you can. It will be hard. But if you stand up to the hard challenges of your life, it will be the making of you as a person.
Wayne & Tamara
Authors and columnists Wayne and Tamara Mitchell can be reached at www.WayneAndTamara.com.
Send letters to: Direct Answers, PO Box 964, Springfield, MO 65801 or email: DirectAnswers@WayneAndTamara.com .
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Posted on Dec 17, 2007 by Site Admin
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