Looking back, I believe that both my parents suffered from depression. While my father turned to alcohol to medicate, my mother’s escape was church and prayer.
My father was like a ticking time bomb when he drank; there were days he’d pass out in a drunken slumber, and then there were days where he would become angry and would begin assaulting my mother and sister both verbally and physically. I was spared from my father’s wrath, but just watching the fights and arguments left me in a state of panic and fear. Growing up in a conservative Latin community, I was taught not to discuss family matters outside of the home, so for the longest time, I thought the way we lived was normal and that it happened in every home.
Most nights, I would wake up fearing for my mother’s life I would walk to my parent’s room to hear if she was breathing, and come up with an excuse to sleep in their bed so that nothing would happen to her. My mother’s health was always compromised from the stress she absorbed, and she would slip into depressions that would leave her bedridden for days.
After years of this vicious cycle, it finally came to a tragic ending when I was 12 years old. I remember that someone from the school’s main office came and pulled me from class during a final exam, and I instantly knew something terrible had happened and that “the something terrible” had happened to my mom. A couple that was from our church were the ones to pick me up from school that day and told me there had been an accident involving my mother and father. I later learned that my dad shot my mom and then turned the gun on himself on the ledge of our front door, all the while, my sister bore witness to the tragedy.
The days, weeks, and months that followed were a blur. My sister, brother, and I talked very little about what happened, our grief, or anything related to our feelings and returned to pretending to be strong and ok. I was left emotionally stunted. I was jealous of my friends that seemed to have a “normal” family and felt happy because the only real feelings I knew were, fear, panic, anger, sadness, loneliness, resentment, shame, and loss.