finding confidence in music

It was like being engulfed in a different world where

music exists and food was a fun part of it

Towards the end of the year I spent many times up at Fiona and Vicki’s. Harley usually accompanied me in my backpack and I left him in a quiet room at their house. We played our instruments for hours, then would stop for a lunch break. I actually did
eat lunch, and I enjoyed it. I think my body was wondering what on earth was happening. We got into playing Christmas carols then I got brave and suggested we go busking down in the main street. Vicki nearly fell over in shock wondering if I was serious or not. Because they were who they were I felt confident in going out and strutting our stuff. We played outside some little shops and people walked by stopping briefly to listen then throwing some coins in our case. On our first day out, playing only for 2 hours, we made $180, and got asked to play at a wedding. On the day before Christmas we played at Nursing Homes too. It was quite sad, but it was nice to know we could do something for the elderly people here.
It was from that when we decided to form a quartet of our own. Jess (from Les Mis) joined us so we were now officially a quartet. I was spending more and more of my time up at their house, and mum began to have an objection to that. If I wasn’t at their house I was at our house writing out music for our quartet. Mum also had problem with this saying they were using me and taking advantage of me. She couldn’t understand why I would put so much time into writing all this music. My only reasons were that I offered to do it, I knew I was capable of writing music, and I enjoyed writing music and feeling useful.

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Mum was still playing her games of trying to make us feel guilty if we wanted to do something or go somewhere. Quite often we went into town for her to do the grocery shopping, or pay bills. We knew that during this time we were out mum would drive to the shops and buy her stock of alcohol for the next dew days. Sometimes she could go through a 6 pack of beer with in one to two days. She also had her glasses of wine on top of that. Sometimes she cried about it and said she wanted to get help, other times she was so spiteful and bitter towards us. Mum often “reminded” us that we caused her problem. She said that we prevented all potential relationships because of the way we were and acted. We also didn’t treat her with any respect and we neglected her. That is why she turned to drinking. We made her do it. Once my secret of my eating disorder was in the open she really liked to use that as her excuse. I drove her to drink because she was in so much pain as to what to do about me. She said that while I was at high school she knew there was a problem there with me but didn’t know how to cope, so that’s also why she drank. There were endless pathetic excuses about her alcoholism. She refused to acknowledge she was alcoholic, therefore did absolutely nothing about it. I hate to think that in some ways I am so like her in characteristic of not doing anything about my problem. I often admit it’s there, cry about it, then the next day I do nothing about it. It’s only now that I can understand that mum probably really did need and want the help but was too afraid to let go of what she knows, and her “safe” way of handling problems- through alcohol. I can only imagine how frustrated people are with me at times. I really regret that I didn’t think to even offer mum the proper support and encouragement she needed. Instead I showed her anger and hostility, probably adding to her problem.