We were on holiday in Greece when I was 10 and knew day after a normal day at the pool I went up to out hotel room with a towel round me and my mother was in bed and started shouting at me, very drunk and aggressive
She shouted
“you’re the only reason I’m still with your father!!”
I then cried through shock and she said “if you want to cry go out to the balcony!” So I went to the balcony.
i used to love playing on the Pac Man machine and my mum used to give me change - this time she gave me a shed load of change to go down and play - but even though I loved the game before - it had now lost its appeal.
me and my dad then went down to dinner where I was quiet and traumatised
We the went back to the room and sat in silence.
My mum when turned to me and said “do you want to go out for a walk with me?” I said “yes”.
when we were on the walk she said to me “you WOULD make ME come on this walk and not your father, wouldn’t you?”
We then went back to the room but me and my mum later that evening went out with a family we’d met on holiday to watch a show in a local taverna type place. My Dad stayed in the hotel.
Next morning my parents were holding hands and my mum turned to me and said :
”you see me and your father can’t split up otherwise we wouldn’t be allowed to carry on going to St Joseph’s” (St Joseph’s is the church we went to)
My mum never once said she was sorry for behaving the way she did that night - we were all just meant to carry on as normal as if nothing had happened!
After this, I lost interest in the type of things 10 year old girls are typically in to - like birthday parties, for instance. I never had another birthday party after this - when one of my friends asked me why I didn’t have a party I just said “my mother works” - but it wasn’t because of that - my mum’s always worked and I’ve had parties before - it was just because of this incident - I’d lost my mojo!
Thing is - by this time I didn’t care if not having parties made me less popular with my peers - I didn’t care much about anything by this time ! I also hated other girls’ parties - I just thought I had nothing in common with girls in my class!
AIBU to think that my childhood effectively ended because of this incident aged 10? I was never quite the same afterwards. Just for context I wasn’t even in my last year of primary school