Andy's Addiction

Chapter 5: Youth and Whiskey

My story starts when I was born. I was a premature baby, because my mom was pregnant with twins. At the time, no one knew she was pregnant with twins. The doctors were so convinced that my mom was going to lose me, that they sent her 2 hours away to have me.

By the time she gave birth to me, I was a dry birth and only 4 lb. My dad wasn't even there. I had to be in the NICU for 2 months. The whole time, the hospital kept telling my mom she was losing me. My dad flipped out in the waiting room and they never sent him a bill. We later found out that they never sent him a bill because they felt guilt for hiding the fact that she did lose me, in a sense.

She lost my sister. The hospital hid what happened because it was their own fault. They thought hiding my sister's death because I was born, would conceal their negligence enough to not get sued. What they should have known, is that my mother was not smart enough to sue. She was too timid to sue. She didn't know how to stand up for herself.

The older I got, the more I thought it was just me she didn't know how to stand up for. She cared more about my older brother then she did me. I was always an afterthought. On top of that, my parents were both somewhat functioning alcoholics. I found out when I was 25 that all of this was probably because my dad wasn't my dad. His brother was.

They didn't know I knew, I didn't tell anyone. My dad always tried to treat me like his own child, and he did quite well with it, but I could still tell he didn't quite know how to interact with me.

My dad and my uncle had an agreement. They  wouldn't tell anyone, as long as my dad protected me and acted like I was his own. He knew if he didn't, my real dad would kick his ass.

My dad would "reprimand" my brother with force as a kid, but he never laid a finger on me. His spanks would leave hand prints up and down my brother's whole back.

My brother on the other hand, is a whole chapter of my life in itself. My brother has mental health issues. He's on the autism spectrum, has tourette's, and has ADHD. Eventually he would also be tortured with PTSD, agoraphobia, insomnia and bipolar.

His insomnia mixed with his bipolar would result in explosive anger. He would have extreme sensory overload when he had a lack of sleep, which was very common with autistic people, but he wasn't good at managing the emotions it made him feel.

The blood I saw shed from my brother's hands scared me. He would beat my dad. As my brother got older, he got bigger. When we got to highschool, my brother became bigger then my dad. He was taller, heavier, and younger. The perfect trifecta to make my brother the perfect weapon against my dad.

My parents would get drunk; my brother would explode; Fighting would break out; I would see blood. I'd try to hide in my room, but the shouting would penetration my walls like they were single ply toilet paper.

I tried to hang on as long as I could. They were my family and I loved them more then anything. Eventually, I couldn't hang on anymore. I started slipping away into the dark abyss of depression. I wanted to numb the world. I wished I could hibernate until all of the horrible things passed. I wished I'd wake up and be an adult away from all of the arguing and pain.

When I locked myself into my room, I would blast my music in my ears. When I found Black Veil Brides, it felt like I had found someone that knew what I was feeling and going through. It felt like he was singing directly into my soul. His songs are what stopped me from self-harming.

The day I left changed everything. I was preparing it for a while, but I still was not fully ready. The day I watched the life start to fade from my dad's eyes until my brother dropped him from his cold hand and he gasped for air on my bedroom floor, was when the preparing started.