‘Bristol has and always will be the place that saved me’

This article contains discussion of alcoholism.

On the week of April 12, we’re allowed to go to the pub garden again. According to my misplaced optimism in a weather report over a month into the future, it should be 17°C that day.

It will also be my birthday and, if all goes to plan, I will be sat in Bristol, in the Full Moon‘s beer garden. Aged 24, radiating a subtle but powerful aura of authority, cider in hand, sun beating down.

The issue is I already know I’m kidding myself. Covid worries, social distancing angst and ludicrously positive weather reports aside (can God really be that great?) – what I’m really worried about is my mum.

Because, if the world, including me, is suddenly fancying a pint in the sun – why wouldn’t she be? Because in every second of my life, when I’m queuing in Tesco, when I’m walking home, when I’m talking to a client at work, waiting for the kettle to boil, sat on a bus or talking to my best friend, I am worried about my mum.

My mum is an alcoholic. I hate typing that – because she hates thinking that; so much so that she won’t admit it.

Despite her whole life being plagued with black outs, with hidden bottles, with literally thousands of repeated conversations, of family arguments which start gentle and end up with pouring every bottle of alcohol down the sink – she won’t admit it.

What it means to be an “alcoholic” is too demeaning; too destructive – it doesn’t describe her, she tells me.

An “alcoholic” is a shabby looking man passed out on a park bench; she is a mother of two and she doesn’t even drink that much.

“I’ve cut down so much,” she tells me. “Nearly everyone I know drinks more than me,” she tells me.

But if she cares that little about alcohol and if nearly every time she drinks, she blacks out or experiences psychosis, suicidal thoughts and pushing her family to desperation, why can’t she stop? And if she really has stopped, why is there a new empty bottle every week?

Natalie Walker* hopes to be in the Full Moon’s garden on April 17. But she’ll be thinking of her mum. Photo: Bristol24/7

When the pandemic came and everyone was forced to stay at home; I found part of myself grappling with a perverse sense of relief. It meant that she wouldn’t be alone. It meant she would have my dad and sister with her to keep her from pressing self destruct.

Then the weeks and months went by and the desperation to see her, to satiate my obsessive need to check in on my family grew louder and louder, like a ringing in my ear.

I knew that all of the interactions that she relies on so heavily, like pottery or aqua aerobics would be taken away from her. Worst of all, I worried that she was lonely and, when I think like that, it makes me feel like some part of me is shutting down.

Bristol has and always will be the place that saved me. Simply put, it soothes me. The landscape of this city feels like placing aloe vera on a burn; it doesn’t make things go away but it stings less.

I sit on top of Nine Tree Hill or on the Downs, I have a coffee with a mate in Stokes Croft, I do something unexpected and oh-so-Bristol, and for a while I am just me.

There’s no huge burden on my shoulder; no big knot to unravel. I make my way through the life I have made for myself here and I realise that, at the core, my life can be simple. But, an itch needs to be scratched and I never stay away from home for long. I need to know everyone is okay and when it’s not, I need to go home and make it better.

Place such as the Downs have helped Natalie to cope with her situation. Photo: Lowie Trevena

You see, alcoholism doesn’t affect one person; it rots through the family and everyone has a different approach, different traumas, and you’re all fighting so hard to “fix” something that eventually a lot more ends up broken.

Consequently, and against all rationale, I put the pressure on myself to go home and be the one that helps. I allow myself to indulge in the saviour complex. But how could I when I was stranded here?

For the first time in my life, I physically couldn’t check in on her. In some ways, it gave me the reason I needed to take a break for myself. But, on the other side, the obsessive element of how I feel about her was not helped by the enforced distance.

I feel sorry for her. I see how society leans so heavily on alcohol whilst simultaneously stigmatising it and I can’t help it.

I think of things like Dry January, a whole month which skirts around the fact that millions of people have an unhealthy relationship with drink and it makes me want to forgive every second of the hurt she has ever caused me.

Society plays with alcoholics. It tells them alcohol is the solution to all life woes and joys, and when it goes too far we soak that person in shame. We leave their families helpless. We leave six-year-olds like me lonely and confused. Growing up too early so they can be clever enough to work out how to make their mum less sad.

I walk past gift shops with plaques that say things like “I’m on the gin diet, so far I’ve lost five days” and I want to burn them to the ground. They wouldn’t joke if they knew.

I look around and sometimes it feels so clear: I see our normalisation of binge drinking, how “alcoholics” exist as caricatures in our media, how we understand “alcoholism” to mean a bottle of vodka a day, not a longing for a drink when you’re sad. And I just think, what have we done?

I know this article sounds dark, and that’s because the situation is sad. I don’t want to come to some forced conclusion that rounds this off in a hopeful sentence. There is hope though and I do want to let you know that I am okay. That we’re okay. That we’re on a journey.

Despite difficulties that her mum faces, Natalie highlights that there is more to her than a label. Photo: Lowie Trevena

I want to tell you that I could spend the rest of my life writing page after page and I would not be done writing a love letter to Bristol. It’s beautiful people, it’s beautiful winter sunsets, its weirdness, its steep hills and green squares which patch together a life in which I can breathe.

I want to tell you all about the wonderful resources that help me, like Bristol Mind, who, piece by piece, inch by inch, are teaching me how to worry less.

I want to tell you about my mum. That I’ve told you the least interesting, least important thing about her.

What I really want to tell you is that she has this huge unfathomable love for chickens. That when she went to pottery class, every week she would make me a clay red rose.

That my house would look rubbish without her because she taught me how to fill a room with life. That she is capable of anything.

That I don’t judge her for struggling because there is no shame in addiction. I want to hold her face in my hands and stare into her eyes and tell her I have never judged her. And the people who do judge her, well fuck them.

I want to tell her that on April 17, I hope it will be sunny, and that I hope my outfit ushers in an “effortlessly cool” era of my life.

I want to tell her that I’m sure that in one moment there will be a lull in the conversation and my mind will go to her and that sometimes makes me sad.

But, mostly I want to tell her that, if God came down in one tremendous moment and shocked everyone out of their wits in the Full Moon’s beer garden, if he/she or they sat down next to me and offered me a life without her, that I could forget every moment ever that I wish I could forget, and I would never have to worry about you again – I would be the first person ever to throw a glass of Thatchers over the Lord Almighty.

I wouldn’t have to think. I wouldn’t even have to say it out loud. I wouldn’t swap you for anyone or anything in this world.

*Natalie Walker is a pseudonym.

For more information on this topic, go to www.bristol.gov.uk/social-care-health/drug-and-alcohol-misuse-support

Main photo: Lowie Trevena

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