I am the adult child of alcoholic parents. I never doubted their love for my older sister and me—certainly we were never abused—but they were not there for us most of the time, and when they were it was usually in a blur. I think it's fair to say we raised ourselves, and for the most part we did a good job, considering the lack of attention we received growing up.
But I craved discipline, or at least some encouragement and guidance. I was a bored and troubled long-haired Los Angeles punk in the early 1950s. My life revolved around hanging out with my friends and cruising Hollywood Boulevard after sneaking out in my dad's car. We spent a lot of time getting drunk, getting in fistfights with other teens, stealing cars and hopping freight trains to points unknown. I quit school in the ninth grade and generally engaged in activities that would today put you in a juvenile facility. If nothing else, I had many stories to tell, and tell them I did.
I recall the year when I hopped a train at the Los Angeles freight yard with my pal Tommy, and a few days later ended up alone somewhere in Texas. Tommy had, in an unusual demonstration of good sense, jumped off somewhere before our final destination, and I continued alone. I was 15. After spending a day in the freight yard in Dallas, I met an ex-convict recently released from a penitentiary in Oklahoma, and decided to share a train car with him for the trip back to L.A. I jumped from the train at a remote outpost somewhere in the southern California desert, close to Barstow, because he had on more than one occasion made me uncomfortable.
A week after I had left L.A., I arrived in Barstow. There I borrowed a nickel from a cop to call home to let my parents know I was on my way. I was convinced my parents missed me, but as I remember, they hadn't been particularly concerned. After all, I had disappeared for days at a time before.
By my midteens I was getting into more trouble than I could handle: car thefts, drunken driving and vandalizing property. Finally, I ended up spending a few days in jail. When my father arrived at the courthouse for the release hearing, the judge wouldn't let my father drive me home because Dad had shown up drunk.
In those days, the only options for many troubled young men were jail or military service. I wisely decided to join the Navy. Thank God for the Navy, which taught me about discipline and teamwork. I thought I was finally on the road to personal recovery.
After my discharge four years later, I spent the next 20 years raising a family and living a fairly typical, semi-successful life as a sales rep. The trouble was, all during this time I had self-esteem issues and acted out with bizarre behavior to get the attention I so desired. I bragged about education, wealth and self-confidence that I didn't have. If it weren't for certain people at my workplace who liked and understood me, I surely would have been fired.
As the years went by, I acknowledged and explained away my behavior, because I was convinced it wasn't my fault and didn't recognize I was seeking attention to boost my self-confidence. I blamed everything on my parents' drinking and didn't accept any personal responsibility.
When I was in my late 30s I heard about an organization called Adult Children of Alcoholic Parents. I attended a few meetings and found that the other ACAP members' personalities almost exactly paralleled my own. All of them desired attention, and each one had an overwhelming need to please. It reinforced my belief that my parents were to blame.
It was only after they died a few years later that I began to change my way of thinking. My sister asked me to pick out and have inscribed the marker that would be placed at their grave site. After a considerable amount of thought and soul-searching, I had it inscribed THEY DID THEIR VERY BEST. I finally forgave them and came to the belief that most parents do indeed try their best when raising their children, but many times it doesn't measure up to what is required to raise a confident, capable, well-rounded human being.
The grave marker is in place today and is a constant reminder to me that we all must be responsible for our own behavior, because no matter how many demons we may have faced, it is our responsibility to get on with life.
Milroy lives in Lakeside, Calif.