Virginia Ironside, British journalist, agony aunt (British for "advice columnist") 
and author, wrote this poignant post for the Daily Mail. Here's how it starts:
Aged just ten, I certainly had no idea that my elegant, glamorous mother was an alcoholic. But to this day I still feel a tightening of my stomach, a nervous feeling in my core when I remember those evenings when she'd look at me and slur: 'You're so beeootiful, dahling!'
She would sway and stare and when I would protest, angrily, at her continued gawping, she'd always say: 'But why can't I look at my beeootiful daughter, dahling?', breathing fumes all over me.
It's almost 60 years on since those sad days, but as I remember it today my heart still starts to pound faster, my mouth goes dry and I feel consumed by fury.
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