Mel Of Bacchus

I very rarely speak about my traumas but I think that if I’m going to be completely transparent about my life for my son here on my new blog, there should be a section on my traumas because it’s also a part of me and what makes me – Me.

This trauma is one my son doesn’t know about and one I have only told my bestest of best friends about.

I don’t even think I have shared this with David.

One of my traumas is Coffee.

To understand this, I have to take you back to where this trauma stemmed from, and this is not an easy place to go back to.

I was 12 years old, living in Drouin with my Mum and her brand new husband at the time.

They were newly married and had a unit in Drouin not far from the shopping centre.

Mum seemed to be happy and when my brother came to live with us it felt like a happy little family.

But that didn’t last long.

There was something off about her new husband Troy, my new stepfather.

I met him around a year prior and knew he did jail time before he met my Mum and in less than a month of them meeting he moved in with her and us kids in Mums house in Moe.

Since then though, Dad had gained custody of us as within a year it was my choice to go back to Mum, eventually bringing my brother with me.

So our new little life with Mum and Troy in Drouin was going well, they enrolled my brother into the local primary school and tried enrolling me into high school but couldn’t without my birth certificate.

Because my brother wouldn’t go to school unless I did, my mum bought me a second hand uniform for the Drouin secondary Collage in which she made me put on each weekday morning before I dropped my brother off at the bus stop.

I’d then head home or sometimes spend the day at the library before I would again put on the uniform to pick my brother up from the bus and talk about his day at school as we walked home.

One night, when my brother went to bed, I stayed up with Mum and Troy watching NCIS.

Troy asked Mum if she wanted a coffee and not long after she said yes, he handed her one.

Within 5-10 minutes of drinking the coffee Mum said she started feeling strange.

She told me to call the ambulance and she started fitting.

So so scared, I called the ambulance and looked over at Troy.

He was still sitting on the couch watching NCIS.

When the ambulance came, they took her straight to the hospital and I followed on my bike.

When I got to the hospital they charcoaled her and I stayed with her all night as she made all sorts of strange noises in her sleep.

The next day Mum woke up and was so weak. But she pulled me close and told me that she thought Troy had drugged her coffee. She told me to go home and get my brother ready for school and come then back. She told me to say nothing to Troy.

I promised I wouldn’t but as I rode home, I felt all kinds of emotions. I remember crying and being mad and just wanting revenge.

But I did what Mum said. I acted as if it was a normal day to my brother, got him up and breakfast, put on our uniforms, watched some dragon ball z and took him to the bus. Troy wasn’t there.

When I got back to hospital, Troy was with Mum crying. I looked at Mum who gave me a faint smile. He was holding her hand and saying “I thought I’d lost you” and “You really need to count your tablets out properly next time”.

Mum looked over at me again with a faint smile and I just left.

They released Mum a few hours later and she came home via taxi.

She went straight to bed and just begged Troy to stay with her and hold her.

He Did.

I picked my brother up in the afternoon and when we got home Mum was up making my brother’s favourite dinner as if nothing ever happened.

I tried getting Mum alone to talk to her about what Troy did but he was always there, he was always around. My mum couldn’t even pee without having him in ear shot.

Whenever I tried talking or whispering she always said “not now” and so it wasn’t spoken about again.

As the weeks went on it happened again. This time I walked out of my room to find Mum on the floor having a seizure.

Again I called the ambulance, and again Troy just sat on the couch unfazed.

Again I watched my Mum be overdosed by coffee but this time Troy acted like the concerned partner holding her hand and telling her that she has to stop doing this to herself as the paramedics put her on the trolly and wheeled her into the ambulance.

I again took my brother to school, told him Mum slept in (as her bedroom door remained closed) and went to the hospital.

And again Mum stayed with this man!

This happened 8 times in a three month period that he overdosed my mother.

And each time I either told my brother mum was sleeping in or stayed at a friends house and took him to school and bought him home again to where Mum played the perfect wife and mother each and every time doting on her boys.

It made me sick.

The last time stayed with me. I was there. Up late with Mum when Troy came out of their bedroom and asked if she wanted a coffee.

He made it for her, looked me dead in the eye, smiled and walked back into the bedroom.

Before I could tell Mum not to drink it and take it from her hands she’d already drank half of it and dropped to the floor.

I just cried, calling an ambulance for the 8th time. I just felt defeat and really thought I’d lose my Mum.

Again she pulled through but this time when I went to the hospital to see her when she woke up, she pulled me close and whispered in my ear “We need to get away from Troy, he’s trying to fucking kill me”

These words of pure fear in my mother’s voice still haunt me to this day.

And because of these events, I have never been a coffee drinker and would never let people make me a coffee.

But again, that night we went home, sat at the table together with my brother and asked how his school day was..