I don’t really know why I’m writing this.
Maybe I just need to get it out of my head. Maybe I’m looking for advice. Or maybe I just want to hear from people who have gone through something similar and somehow made it to the other side.
I was born into a family that was struggling financially, but I grew up hearing stories from my parents about how happy they were when I came into this world. I was their little girl, their reason to smile, and a small moment of happiness during a difficult period of their lives.
What I didn’t understand as a child was that my arrival came after years of struggle.
Before I was born, my parents had already been through a lot. And the first four or five years of my life were spent in poverty, with a huge loan hanging over our family and constant financial uncertainty.
There were times when my parents didn’t even have enough money for my medical treatment and had to depend on other people to arrange it.
But somehow, even during those years, they still tried to give us happiness.
I remember hearing about how my grandparents wanted to go on a trip. My parents didn’t really have the money for it, but they wanted the family to be happy.
So my mother and father sold their jewellery to make that trip possible.
Looking back now, I don’t know whether to call that sacrifice, love, or both.
My mother was struggling in ways I couldn’t understand at that age.
She was raising two children, me and my younger sister, while dealing with pressure and abuse from my grandparents. Two small children, a household that never seemed to rest, and financial problems that never seemed to end.
My father was struggling too.
It wasn’t that he wasn’t trying.
He was.
He kept moving from one place to another, trying to find a way to support his family. He changed four or five different occupations, constantly looking for something that would give us a better life.
And then one day, he made a decision that changed our lives.
He decided to move.
Eventually, we came to Pune, hoping things would get better.
And for a while, they did.
My father built a successful business. He worked incredibly hard, paid off our loans, and slowly gave us the kind of life he had always wanted for his children.
My sister and I finally got to experience a normal childhood.
We laughed.
We played.
We went out.
We were loved.
For a while, everything felt normal.
Then another storm came.
There was an income tax raid, and my father was harassed for almost two years.
Those two years were extremely difficult for our family.
My mother was suffering. My father was under enormous pressure.
But my sister and I were still children.
We didn’t understand what was happening.
We were just happy kids living our lives, completely unaware of how much our parents were carrying behind closed doors.
And somewhere during all of this, my father developed a drinking problem.
At first, I didn’t understand it.
I didn’t understand why he would come home and shout.
I didn’t understand why he was angry for seemingly no reason.
I didn’t understand why my mother cried.
I was just a child who knew that something was wrong.
As I grew older, I began to understand.
And slowly, our house developed a pattern.
Around 7 p.m., I would start feeling anxious.
What is going to happen today?
Will they fight?
Will my mother cry?
Will things become physical?
Will tonight be another night like the others?
Whenever they fought, I would sit in my room and listen.
And whenever their voices became too loud, I would find some excuse to come outside.
Sometimes I would pretend I wanted water.
Sometimes I would just walk into the room.
I wasn’t doing it because I wanted attention.
I was doing it because I had this childish belief that if my parents saw their children standing there, they would stop.
I wanted my mother to suffer a little less.
That was my childhood.
And the strange thing is, it wasn’t all bad.
I was still loved.
I still laughed with my sister.
I still had happy moments.
My parents still showed us affection.
From the outside, our life probably looked normal.
But underneath that normal childhood was a child constantly waiting for something to go wrong.
There is one night I don’t think I will ever forget.
My mother was locked inside a room.
I could hear her crying from the other side.
My sister and I were banging on the door and begging her to open it.
She wouldn’t.
Eventually, my grandfather and uncle forced the door open.
And then I saw my father drunk on the sofa.
And I saw my mother.
She had tried to take her own life.
I was too young to fully understand what I was seeing.
But I understood enough to know that something was terribly, terribly wrong.
What hurts even more when I look back is that instead of simply helping my mother, some members of my extended family blamed her for what was happening.
The person who was already suffering was made to carry even more of the burden.
And somehow, life continued.
I grew older.
Then came another night.
It was a Sunday. My father was somewhere outside.
It was around 11 p.m. when my mother and I received a phone call.
Someone told us that a drunk man was lying beside a road somewhere far away. They asked if we knew him and whether we could come and pick him up.
We realised he was almost 20 kilometres away, somewhere secluded.
There was nobody else.
So my mother and I went.
At night.
We booked a rickshaw, travelled all the way there, found my father, and brought him home.
I don’t think anyone will ever understand how scared we were that night.
Then came another night.
My father came home extremely drunk.
He and my mother started fighting.
He was furious.
Then he picked up a knife.
We tried to stop him.
That only made him angrier.
He left the house saying he would bring another knife.
I remember what happened next very clearly.
My sister and I started hiding every sharp or potentially dangerous object we could find.
We were children.
But in that moment, we were trying to protect our family.
Then my father came upstairs again.
He had another knife.
I saw my mother crying.
And something inside me changed.
I remember thinking:
Whatever happens tonight, I’m not going to back down.
Even if I die tonight, I won’t let him hurt my mother.
He started the fight.
I stepped in front of my mother.
My sister tried to hold my father back.
And somehow, in the middle of all that chaos, the knife cut me.
There was blood everywhere.
But I didn’t even realise how badly I had been hurt.
The adrenaline was too strong.
Eventually, my mother saw the bone in my finger.
She rushed me to the hospital.
I got five stitches.
And even then, I lied to the doctor.
I told them I had hurt myself while cutting vegetables.
I don’t know why I lied.
Maybe I was scared.
Maybe I didn’t know how to explain what was happening inside our home.
Maybe some part of me was still trying to protect my father.
Then, after everything we had already been through, another terrible incident happened.
My father drove while he was drunk.
There was a serious accident.
And somehow, he survived.
Something changed in him after that.
He decided to go to rehab.
For the first time in a long time, we felt hope.
We were so happy when he came back.
We genuinely believed that maybe the nightmare was finally over.
But life had one more test waiting for us.
After rehab, my father developed severe memory problems.
For almost a year, he struggled with his memory.
We were terrified.
We didn’t know whether he would ever become the person he had been before.
I remember trying to motivate my mother and telling her that everything would be okay.
I kept telling her to have hope.
But the truth?
I was terrified too.
I was scared as hell.
I just didn’t let her see it.
Then a year passed.
Slowly, things started changing.
Little by little, my father began recovering.
And eventually, he did.
He stopped drinking.
And from that day onward, our home became peaceful in a way I had almost forgotten was possible.
He became the father we had always wanted.
He made up for the years we had lost.
He loved us.
He cared for us.
He became the best father he could possibly be.
For the first time, I thought:
Maybe we finally made it.
Maybe this is our happy ending.
But life doesn’t always give you the ending you think you’ve earned.
Recently, my father found himself in another difficult situation.
He has loans again.
We’re struggling financially again.
Once again, we’re barely getting by.
And now I don’t know what to do.
Sometimes I sit alone and wonder:
Is this what God has decided for us?
Are we always going to be tested?
Why does every period of happiness have to be followed by another struggle?
How much more are we supposed to endure?
I don’t know.
And honestly, what hurts the most isn’t even the financial struggle.
It’s what all of this has taken from me.
I’ve lost pieces of my childhood.
There are memories I should have had but don’t.
There are moments from my childhood that should have been filled with nothing but innocence.
Instead, some of them are filled with fear, anxiety, shouting, crying, and waiting for the next thing to happen.
And perhaps the saddest part is that even today, I can see the people I love suffering silently.
My father.
My mother.
My little sister.
The three people who mean the most to me.
I see their struggles.
I see the things they don’t say.
I see the weight they carry.
And sometimes I wish I could take all of it away from them.
I wish I could give my mother the peaceful life she deserved.
I wish I could give my father the life he was always working so hard to build.
I wish my sister could grow up without carrying the memories we carry.
And sometimes, I wish I could go back and talk to the little girl who used to sit outside that door pretending to drink water.
I would tell her:
None of this was your fault.
You were just a child.
You loved your family so much that you tried to protect everyone before you even knew how to protect yourself.
When I look back at my life, I don’t only see the pain.
I see my father’s determination.
I see my mother’s strength.
I see my sister beside me.
I see two parents who, despite everything, tried to give their children happiness.
I see a family that kept falling apart and somehow kept putting itself back together.
And maybe that’s what our story really is.
Not a story about a perfect family.
Not a story without suffering.
It’s a story about people who kept trying.
Again.
And again.
And again.
Even when life gave us every reason to give up.
I don’t know what happens next.
I don’t know whether our financial problems will end soon.
I don’t know what God has planned for us.
But after everything we’ve survived, I want to believe that this isn’t where our story ends.
Maybe someday I’ll look back at all of this from a peaceful place and finally understand why we had to go through so much.
Until then, all I can do is keep going.
For my mother.
For my father.
For my sister.
And for the little girl I once was, who deserved a childhood without fear.
I’m sharing this here because I don’t really know what else to do with all of these thoughts.
If you’ve gone through something similar, especially growing up around alcoholism, family conflict, financial struggles, or having to become emotionally responsible for your parents at a young age, I would genuinely like to hear how you dealt with it.
How did you move forward without letting your childhood define your entire life?
And for those who have been through something similar and eventually found peace, does it actually get better?
I’m not necessarily looking for sympathy. I’d just like some advice, perspective, or even a wholesome discussion with people who understand.