you might read this and get grossed out or think what does this have to do with alcohol. it all ties together and some of it doesnt its just about me and my beginning of my journey to get to the root of my problems so i can deal with them and find the real me.there are so many freakin things running through this crazy head of mine i am just gonna sit right here and get them all out so i can get on with this day. i will hop from one thing to the next in my head and i cant stand it but i want to be a good mom and take my kids outside after this instead of having it all on my mind and not being fully here when they need me i get aggraavated at some things in my life and i dont have the patience to deal with them as i shoul. no i dont abuse them or neglect them i just feel like if i didnt have all the shit going on in my head and some emotional things right now it would be a better day for them and me.so here goes. i just got done doing the questions for step one. the majority of it wasnt even about controlling my ah. it was about my daughter and my ex. now i have always sort have known in the back of my mind that i havent been normal since my father passed away. my life ws pretty normal non dramatic hapy go lucky blah blah blah. till he died. i was nine. have two younger brothers. had to be on valium after that. it wasnt my choice . maybe mom had a hard enough time dealing with losing her love of her life she didnt want to have to deal with me. i didnt stay home after he died. i know i spemt a lot of time at my aunts and uncles house after he passed. i dont remember telling her it was her fault but i have been told i blamed it on her. i was nine. he died in a deer hunting accident. if it was anyones fault it was his own, i have been mad at him forever as i grew up. that my family was torn apart. that my mom had to have me go live with an aunt and another brother go live with another aunt while she moved to another state with her boyfriend (not right away but it seemed like it) and she took my youngest brother with her. i saw her once in a while. when she did come around i didnt see her for long and i dont even remember her taking me aside to spend any quality time. i only remember her speaking with my aunt and leaving . iwas angrythat our lives were torn apart. i am so angry as i type right now. i am pissed off.  somewhere there we ended up moving to the other state with my mom, i dont know how that happened. but i look back and remember  only bad times. the alcohol and drugs (pot) who knows what else i was young. i think my mm was just a drinker though. she became an alcoholic after my dad died.she met some biker guy at a job she got to support us (before we all split up and moved) he had his own family and he left them for my mom. karma is real though because he took my moms money in the long run to go open up some business that was supposed to be ours (all of ours) and her vintage car and he was never  to be seen again. i never  liked him anyway. when me and my mom and brothers were split up, he was with her. he stayed with her in the old house when we werent there. dont ask me where i lived because i cant remember. mostly everything was out of the house except bedroom furniture.....radio blah blah blah. anyway when i got to stay with my mom in that other state, it wasnt even her own place. we lived with her sister and husband and three kids. they would go out to the bars and we would be home with whoever. (myu older cousin, an uncle, whoever.) i would worry about my mom that a bear was going to get her if she ever did get home ( iwas nine!) bears are still a big fear for me.) i remember one christmas, i asked for some clothes that were in style. i got a shirt that said in style. while everyone else around the tree got presents galore, i got one thing that was crap. i wouldnt wear it. what a devastating day that was. it wasnt taken lightly i dont know how i reacted, but i know my uncle (god rest his soul)  took me out the next day and told me i could pick out anything i wanted in a store he broght me to. i got a bike. one of the coolest bikes going with disks on the wheels instead of spokes. it took my mind off of the fact that i had no presents, and that i had worn my older cousins clothes and shoes (toooo big) it was like i was neglected. i remember that i itched in the genital area, and i took it upon myself to tell my mom. she didnt really bother so i took a maxi pad and put it on. i self diagnosed my slef. i had chiggers. they would get attached to the pads and i even showed her. she did not do anything about it. should have taken me to the dr or get something over the counter i think. i even started to pull out the hair on my head. i would do it som much that other people noticed the bald spots i would give myself. by the way i self diagnosed myslef there too. its called trichotillamania.its a ocd thing. i also read about how some animals if feeling unloved or neglected would start pulling out their hair. and now that i look back its probably where it all stems from. this is all very bizarre to be telling anyone. only a selct few have known about the hair pulling and i dont think anyone knows about the chiggers. i had those chiggers for a few years by the way. dont ask me how i ever got rid off them i would sit in the bathroom and pick them off i think. i have probably made more than half of the people reading this leave along time ago when i brought up itching in the genital area anyway but if you got this far i guess i cant gross you out anymore than i already have. so thanks for hanging on.... what im getting at is before i got involved with my ah or even relationships  before that i have had issues. and they are unresolved obviously. like ocd and neglect and resentment. i cant blame my mom for my dad dying. how can i? it must have been an overwhelming<--underestimate experience for my moms life to be ripped out from under her. but life happened and i am who i am. but i know from reading in alanon literature that this is going to be a finding my self and dealing with issues situation and i believe that this is the root or start of where my unresolved issues comes from. does that mean i have to confront my mom about not taking care of clothing medical necessity and the fact that i felt so unloved and neglected that i started pulling my own hair out and still didnt get any attention? i really dont want to! we work with what we have and go from there as moms. i was her first and i sure did a doozy with my first child as you will read later. she just lost her own mom like 3 months ago. and we get along fine. we really do. i dont want to bring up some old shit and cause a family crisis becayse that is exactly what it will do. in resolving old issues is getting it all out for myself (without bringing it up to my mom) and realizing where it all started for me (my issues) enough to get it rolling for me?>finding my true self) some of you might not think alanon is about finding yourslef but from the things i have read i feel that i have to really got to who I am before i can really get to some work on my life. or not even that. i think it will be a combination of finding my self and healing together over time. i dont really feel the need to bring a crisis into my life with my mom. she isnt gonna be around forever and we are fine now. i know that when i had my first child, she would complain about her teeth hurting and things here and there that didnt get taken care of right away, and i know that alot of her emotional unstability probably has to do with all of my unresolved issues from my upbringing, me trying to stay with her father to have a little family while he ran around cheating all the time and was never a consistent in her life., from birth, even when she was inside the womb, he abused me. i know its my fault i allowed it to happen now that i look back. i was desperate to have some one back then who loved me. and i got pregnant and thought that we should be a family., he didnt see it that way till years later when i had alrady moved on with my current husband and was pregnant with our 1st child. the timing was bad there. he wanted to get together for good he said. no more running around and cheating. he had money i could stay home and raise our daughter. she was 6 at this time. all those years it took him to finally come around. anyway she (my daughter was there for the years i tried to have a  family. she was there when he threw me down stairs and gave me somekind of football player injury they call it, she was there when he would do all that crap to me. she was there when he wasnt even doing anything and it was just me and her., but she saw me depressed and angry all the time. if i had known what effect all of that crap was going to have on her, then i would have dropped his ass like ahotcake. i admit that i have something to do with her emotional disturbance, he on the other hand wont put his two cents in when it comes to evaluations and family back greounds. like how his dad used to beat him when he couldnt do the alphabet and he stuttered, how his dad would beat his mom, cheat on her, beat him, all the drama that happend when he grew up. all the problems he had in school to the point where he had to be homeschooled (just like my daughter is now) i am the brutally honest one here and no i dont want any credit for that. i am disgusted with my self for allowing these things to happen in my life. and for anyone who is actually still reading this and wonders how my daughter came to live with her father i will tell you now. otherwise this is just going to be cut and pasted into my journal. this will be the first page. nothing like starting from the drama to get out of it. anyway. i tried to have the family for years he always cheated, i always got heat broke and my daughter  got the shitty end of the deal. i didnt really bother with any other men but him, till i started hanging with one of my friends who had kids and dated. i said if she can do it why cant i ? so i called up one of my ex's friends who i thought was hot and asked if he wanted to go out. revenge AND a man in my life right?? ha.  i have had somerelations from there, i wont get into this is long enough. they were all from one to the next, one prince charming or night in shining armor   to the other. i didnt have tons of men in and out of the house., i think 4- including  my husband. over a period of years. anyway my ex finally started taking a sincere interst in our daughter after i had or even while i was pregnant for my 2nd child. it was wonderful. i was at my wits end she was kicked out of every school in district, i couldnt get a baby sitter and had to keep working as long as i could to support us before i had the baby. in june of 2002, he decided that he wanted to take her for the summer. i said go ahead i look back and want to kick my self in the ass because i never got her back. she did have a little trouble coming back and forth for visits and it was a little more that of a normal child since she had emotional issues. so he would say it was my fault the way that she acted and all the other crap. i backed off a little bit thinking maybe it was my fault and lets see what happends when im not in the picture. in the meantime we had agreed to go to court for joint custody. well in the day of the custody trial, i had a life and death situation on my hands. this was all proven in court. and if i could go back to that day, i would go to court instead.  the life and death situation was that my husband ws bleeding in his brain and he had to be flown to a better hospital immediately. i called up my ex and said i cant make it(of course i called the courthouse first but they didnt care. i shouldnt have either. i should have stayed and went to court for my daighter) anyway i called him after the unwelcome response from court told him that my h might die and i couldnt make it in to court. he said oh dont worry i forgot all about it and i can t go anyway. i was so happy he was inderstanding and not going anywayn. UNTIL i was planning her birthday party soon after that for my sde of the family and he wouldnt let me take her. before that i had visisted her at his house or his parents, and didnt really take her anywheere.  when he told me that he had full custody and i couldnt take her anyway i didnt beleive him. he wsa a manipulative liar. always. well i took the day off of work tht monday and went to the court house. sure enough, the clerk handed me a piece of paper saying that he had full cistody. also that i had abandoned my daughter and by the fact of me not showing up, the judge gave him full custody. so thats how all that happened/. it did comeout in court that he lied to get custody. my lawyer tricked him into admotting that he knew i couldnt make it and he lied about all the other stuff. and the judg e told him the way he got custody was underhanded and that would change. so me and my daughter were assigned to get some intense therapeutic visitaiton with a counselot to get back on track and then we would go back to court and soon after be having sleep overs  from what my lawyer said. i paid fifty dollars every time we went to this woman, my lawyer swore by her and she didnt take my insurance but i wanted to use her. well she ended up writing a five page reprot on him and his mom, they would come in and harass her, beating on her car window when i wasnt there one day, telling her they wanted me out of the picture..... all this stuff. she also told me she was putting in there how he was slandering her and threatening her so bad after 6 meetings and also trying to control her (timing and nasty notes and answering machine messages) she had all that ready for the court. and by the way. she said that there was clearly a want for my daighter to have a relationship with me but it was being sabotaged and manipulated by her granma (who actually sat outside the door and interupted during one of our visits) because she didnt like how my daughter responded to something. well i thought after all that eh ball was in my court and i was gonna have her back in my life. i have been in and out of court since then , the judge threw out a petition i had done it wasnt filed or worded the right way, and my ;awyer hadnt shown up. the issue now is the money since i am now an at home mom and my h us on unemployment and we still make too much money to get legal aid. but my ex owns 2 companies and lies through his teeth and still gets legal aide. honest people seem to get the short end but i would rather be honest i know karma is real and in due time it will conme. the other issue is its been since 2002 this has gone on and  my daughter  and i no longer know each other anymore. she will tell me to my face or a judge for tht matter that she doesnt want to see me and she is old enough to make that choice now. so i lost/ and it has broken my heart every day. but going through it all, i know that the lord has a plan and i feel that once things start getting better around here, maybe he will make it so she will want to come around. there wont be any drama around her to upset her, and if there was i would be better well equipped on what to do before alanon. and my alcoholic has affected this custody issue in a way that if he hadnt been drinking and gotten hurt ( idnont know what happened for him to be bleeding in his head to this day) i would have made it to the custody hearing. no i do know from alanon that i allowed this to happen to myself and my daughter but at the same time i feel i was wronged by my ex. i have made some very bad decisions and i am willing to fix them just dont want to jump in and do it all. i will do the steps and work from there.  i admit that my life has become unmanageable, and i cannot control the behavior or actions of others. what i can control is myself and my reactions. anyone who has read this far, thank you i feel alot better even though i didnt get it all out. i have one more issue which isnt as graphic but im gonna go take ashower before my 2 year old gets up so we can go enjoy the rest of the day without my head in the clouds.