Until There Was You

Chapter 10

The night starts as it always does, with a door slamming shut and loud vomiting noises coming from the bathroom. Melinda sighs deeply.

'Right on time,' she mutters in the darkness of her bedroom and heaves a deep sigh as she reluctantly slides out of bed. She takes her time putting on her dressing gown, wanting to prevent herself from seeing the sight she's seen for the last two years. She knows it'll be exactly the same as she pads along the landing to the bathroom. It's never any different.

She takes a deep breath to calm herself before she pushes open the bathroom door, and looks at her drunken mother, hunched over the porcelain toilet seat, with a bottle of beer in her shaking hands as she continues to throw up into the bowl. Melinda waits until she's finished before she helps her mother up off the tiled floor, which she's done every night for the past two years.

'Come on, Mum,' she says, trying not to sound tired, but her mum pushes her away, surprising her. Usually when she's intoxicated like this she's hardly alert or responsive.

'Dontneedyourhelp,' she slurs while trying to regain her balance, before she goes to drink from the bottle in her hand, only to find it's empty, and she angrily chucks it across the bathroom where it smashes loudly. But Melinda doesn't jump at the sound. It's not the first time she's heard bottles break.

'Come on, mum,' she says again while going over to her. 'You need your sleep. . .'

Her mum tries to put up a fight, but all she can manage are a few swings before she gives up entirely, and lets Melinda walk her to her bedroom. Melinda tries to be gentle with her as she helps her down onto the messy and dirty, unmade bed, which is littered with various bottles of alcohol, but her mum ends up falling down onto it in her intoxicated stare, and a few moments later loud snoring fills the stale smelling room. Melinda gently brushes back her mum's once soft, golden blonde hair which is now dirty and greasy, and tries not to think back to the time when her mum was the most caring and nurturing woman whom she was always proud to call her mum. The woman lying on the bed is only a shell of that woman now, and it breaks Melinda's heart.

For the past two years, since she arrived home from university, Melinda has been looking after her and trying to help her with her chronic drinking and alcoholism, which has only gotten worse over the years. But after having to put up with it for so long she starts to wonder if she will ever have a life of her own? Despite having finally found her voice, mainly thanks to Tristan, her mum hadn't even cared when she had arrived home and heard her speak for the first time in years. And Melinda would be lying if she said it hadn't upset her, but then again she should have expected this kind of response from her mum.

She remembers the day this had all started, right after her step-dad's funeral. She had come downstairs that night to find her mum passed out on the sofa, with empty bottles surrounding her. It had frightened her at first, but instead of letting her panic consume her she had done the only thing she could after that night; taken care of her mum and cleaned up after her.

Melinda continues to watch her mum sleep, hardly able to recognise the woman in front of her. She wants her old mum back, the mum she used to know. But her mum refuses all the help she offers her. She won't even go to therapy, or let her daughter find someone to help her deal with her alcoholism, all because she naively believes she has her addiction under control.

Melinda thinks it's amazing how things used to very different long ago. When she used to speak about her family Melinda would always use the words loving, kind and caring. Now she never talks about her family to anyone. She doesn't want anyone's pity, or even their help.

She is, however, a little surprised her mum gave into her alcohol addiction now, after her second husband's untimely death. Melinda's real dad had walked out on her and her mum on her fifth birthday, after the two of them had got into an intense and heated argument. But instead of letting her emotions get the better of her, and wallowing in her sadness, her mum had focused her attention solely on raising her daughter into the woman she is today, all by herself, which is why it's so heartbreaking for Melinda to watch her turn into someone she no longer recognises.