Knowledge

Hannah Sterkel, 17

When I was very young, I thought my parents were always right. I thought that they could never get sick. I thought that they were never mean. They never lied. This philosophical foundation that I built my entire life on started decaying the day I was told that my mother is an alcoholic. It did not crash and fall around me. It was much more subtle than that. It was chips in the paint. It was loose floorboards. It was cracked windows. The structure only really collapsed the day my mother left for rehab. I was seven years old and all of a sudden I didn’t have my mom, at least not for a while. People say that knowledge is power and if that is true then I wanted to be powerless again. Back to when I was five or so, when nothing was ever wrong. It is true that I didn’t have much power at that time but I didn’t want the responsibility that came along with it. Not yet. I wasn’t ready. The truth is nobody knows what they can handle until they have to.

I learned that my parents are human. That they have vulnerabilities. And that is okay. My mother worked incredibly hard to get sober and has now been sober for eight years. My dad worked incredibly hard to take care of my sister and me while also having a full time job. My sister and I did our best to look out for each other. So it is true, the knowledge of my mother’s greatest vulnerabilities scared me and forced me to rebuild my life around this new knowledge. It forced my entire family to rebuild. This whole experience taught us all a lot though. We are stronger together and we can count on each other. It ultimately brought my family closer together and that knowledge is invaluable.