Children who become ghosts
There is something strange about growing up in a house where you learn to listen before you learn to speak.
You memorize the weight of footsteps. The way doors close. The silence before anger. The sound of bottles touching each other in the kitchen at 2am.
People talk about alcoholism like it is loud all the time, but sometimes it is unbearably quiet. Sometimes it looks like pretending everything is normal while your stomach turns itself into knots over a single change in someone’s tone.
I think children of alcoholics become ghosts without realizing it. We learn how to disappear. How to stay small. How to lock ourselves in our rooms and become experts at being “easy” and “low maintenance.” We become careful with our feelings because someone else’s always took up all the space in the house.
Even now, i still flinch at certain sounds. I still apologize too much. I still feel guilty for being upset, as if sadness is something i need permission to have.
And the strangest part is that sometimes i miss the version of him that only existed for a few hours at a time. The softer version. The one that laughed normally and spoke gently and made me believe things could still change.
That hope is probably the cruelest part.
Living with an alcoholic parent feels like mourning someone who is still alive. Every day becomes a cycle of tiny funerals nobody else can see.
Some nights I wonder who I would have become if home had felt safe instead of unpredictable.
But maybe this is why I write.
Because paper is quieter than screaming.
