Erin - "This is the world I live in"

 

“The thing I remember most about my childhood is the smell: stale cigarette smoke and alcohol.  My mummy was an alcoholic.  I loved her and she loved me.  I was her baby, her blue-eyed girl.  The problem is, alcohol can be stronger than love.  So when it took hold, as it always did, I was locked in my bedroom while mum drank with strangers in the next room.

 

I don’t like to think about that.

 

Then suddenly I wasn’t the baby anymore.   Mummy had more kids.  She wasn’t really able to be a mummy, not properly.  So it became my job to clean the house and do the shopping and look after the kids.  If anything went wrong and it often did, because I was only a kid -   I’d get beat. Properly beat.  But getting beat was better than what happened when my mum left me alone with my dad…  That’s all I’m saying….

 

You can only take so much and everyone has a breaking point.

 

I broke.

 

I ended up homeless, sleeping on the streets.  I’m not going to bang on about it, but it’s terrifying.  The town is a very different place at night.

 

I am still on my journey, working through all this stuff that has troubled me since I was a child. Maybe I always will be. But now I’ve got a friend on my journey and that’s the Welcome Organisation!

The best bit was telling people at The Welcome Organisation my problems and knowing that they would listen and not judge.

 

Some knew from their own similar experiences. At last I felt like I belonged somewhere and that I wasn’t alone any more. “