Section 1 Elayne Ingram

 

	ELAYNE: Okay I grew up in an alcoholic home. At first only my dad drank. My mom didn't drink along with him in the very beginning. And I finally recalled after many, many years my first lesson in denial, ah. You know you've heard about that story about the elephant in the living room, well this happened in the living room. Dad came in. I was sleeping. I had a bed in the living room. He came in. It was Christmas time. He was staggering and Mom grabbed onto him and helped him and they walked right past me. And as they walked past he knocked over the Christmas tree. That's what, I had been sitting near admiring the Christmas tree. I was probably three and a half year old because my younger sisters weren't born yet at that time and I'm four and a half years older than them. When Mom came back out I asked her what was wrong, what's wrong with Dad, and she said, "Nothing." And she picked up the Christmas tree and started putting it back together. And that's all I remember from that period of time. But you know when you're that young and your parents tell you nothing's wrong, what I saw there was something wrong but her telling me there was nothing wrong I had to believe her. And so that's when I first started doubting my own feelings or shutting down my own feelings. DANTE: Because someone was telling you that what you saw didn't happen. ELAYNE: Un-huh, yeah and that nothing was wrong with that picture you know even though there was something wrong. And then later on in life she started drinking along with him and they'd have fights and at first, there were five of us siblings, and at first we'd get up and scream and jump up and down and try to make them stop fighting you know and they were drunk. And after a while, after seeing that that was useless, my sisters and I would, I think all of us, but I've shared with my one sister that we'd lay there and not move and barely breathing knowing that it was useless to get up and try to stop it because we couldn't stop it. And there was a term later on that I learned while I was in the counseling field about children of alcoholics and having frozen tears. I can remember laying there and tears would just trickle down the sides of my face. And it wasn't like I was crying, the tears would, be then my inner feelings were mostly shut down and then pretty soon those tears dried up. And it was during that time that I would tell myself I was never, ever going to drink. I would never do anything like that to my kids. DANTE: And how old were you then? ELAYNE: Probably about ten, twelve, fourteen somewhere around in that age. And it was probably somewhere around that age that I took my first drink too. I distinctly remember my 16th birthday and they threw a party for me and of course they had a bottle of vodka there so I think that I drank one time prior to that, and that was a couple of beers probably around, oh I was about 14 years old. But at my 16th birthday in my head was still really strong that I was never going to be a drinker and I drank some but when I'd start feeling the effect, when they'd pass the bottle to me I'd blow in the bottle instead of sucking it out. And so everybody thought I was really guzzling but I wasn't because I still didn't, my message in my head was that I was never going to be a drinker was still very strong. So most of my, I drank maybe once every six months or eight months when I was in high school, and then seldom ever drank when I went into Anchorage to go to school. I just didn't want alcohol to be a part of my life. Then I got married at age 19 and had my first daughter at age 20. And at that point in time we still weren't heavy drinkers. But we moved out to Oregon and when my husband at the time was with his buddies then the drinking escalated. I still don't feel like I was an alcoholic at that point in time. I was definitely a battered wife at that time. And I ended up leaving him briefly and then going back to him. We finally divorced after three kids. After I saw that in that marriage that somebody was going to die, because the beatings by then were so bad that I weighed 96 pounds, I couldn't sleep, I couldn't eat, my mind was racing. I had attempted suicide I thought if I committed suicide that would be a way out but then at the last minute I envisioned my kids growing up with him and that thought was horrifying. It was at a point where I figured it was going to be me that died and somehow, someway God gave me the strength to get up one morning and just pack our stuff and then away we went me and the kids. But I was so emotionally distraught at that point in time. I don't know, I didn't have the strength personally to do what I did. You know to get out. Shortly thereafter I was remarried. I dated this guy who could provided better financially for us. Hindsight is 20/20 and we lived so poorly in my first marriage that I was looking for security. And I found it. And then I worked on the pipeline. And when I became financially secure I left him. By then the drinking… it was alcoholic drinking by then. DANTE: For both of you? ELAYNE: For both me and my second husband … It was, the drinking had escalated and by then I had four kids. It seemed like every time I got a divorced I ended up with one more kid and less money than when I went into the marriage.

 

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