Answer Addiction

Tag: Father’s Day

  • A Newborn Kitten, 12 Steps, and One Night of Fatherhood

    A Newborn Kitten, 12 Steps, and One Night of Fatherhood

    When I put him in his makeshift little crib I had the first of several revelations that night: “When you were using you probably would have let that kitten die.” At that moment I fully embraced the experience.

    As a product of too many 12-step meetings to count in my multi-decade fight with three addictions, many themes stream through my inner recovery. One recurring theme that is anchored in that addiction library is the seminal moment when a fellow brother shares their impending fatherhood as a monumental reason for getting sober. Having been denied the opportunity of fatherhood myself (through the trifecta of alcohol, gambling, smoking), I secretly envied those who could use parenthood as an inspiration for getting clean.

    Rightfully so! What could be a more powerful reason for getting clean than wanting to be present physically and spiritually during perhaps the most important time in your life? Especially when most of us enter adulthood as wounded children with no modern-day guide to change that reality. Consequently, parents need every vicissitude of human awareness to help their partners raise a child in as stable a way as possible. The idea of getting a fresh start and having an AA or GA baby is uber-logical to even the most helpless addict.

    However, even the strong evolutionary pull in our chromosomes for parenthood is sometimes no match for the intense psychological and physical demons that obfuscate our nature when addiction has hijacked our soul. Since I was never in a position to experience fatherhood, I could only postulate from the ill-formed axons, dendrites, synapses in a substance abuser’s brain that the conscious mind desperately wants to rise to the occasion, but the unconscious is probably already working out the details of its next encounter with dopamine.

    Fortunately, I have seen many addicts seamlessly climb out of the abyss and become great parents. There are a small minority who work on a quick timeline and apparently “will” themselves to sobriety, leaving the rest of us marveling at how easy they make it look. These are what I call the “one and done group.”

    The rest of us have to get well in small increments. If we are sincere about our recovery, we need to rehab for as long as it takes to get a reasonable modicum of sobriety. Detox, if needed, happens quickly, but it’s the ability to handle environmental cues that is the 800-pound gorilla. That learned process can take years to build adequate defenses to handle cravings. The good news is no matter what threshold you’re at, just the contemplation of getting clean for parenthood’s sake is huge.

    Most of my adult life I was in self-destruct mode and the insanity of it all was that I was conscious of it, but if anyone tried to stop me, I would hit the jettison button sooner rather than later. Even though when I was high, I often wished that a stork would knock at my door and a wife and a child would magically appear, I knew deep down that I was not equipped for fatherhood at that time and it would have been an unmitigated disaster.

    Fast forward many years and today at 58 I have been clean of all the aforementioned vices “for many a 24 hour” as they say in 12-step parlance. It took many years but fortunately I stopped just short of the triple-crown (insanity, prison and death). I was a very slow learner.

    When I look back at my state of entropy, what bothers me the most was how selfish I was. If I saw a person who needed help or a good friend needed a ride to a doctor’s appointment I would give them a half-baked excuse. The only time I did something for others was if it furthered my self-interest. Today I cringe just thinking about how I let so many people down (including myself). I was oblivious to the world that existed outside my addictions.

    Today I feel like I am one with the universe. Whether it is an injured bird or counseling work with addicts, I am grateful that my desire to help people has been restored to what I feel is my purpose in life. I try to put forth a reparative approach to all organisms in the universe whether animals or humans (I draw the line with candida in my gut). However, my one big regret which I am patiently learning to accept is that I will never be a father. But that all changed a couple of weeks ago. I experienced one night of fatherhood that only could have happened if I was clean and sober. Ironically, the experience left me higher than a kite!

    My Fatherhood Tripalogue

    We are all guilty of talking the talk and not walking the walk at times. It is especially true of writers/addicts like myself who are sometimes guilty of “pontification by proxy,” whereby we sit on our cozy perch and lecture about things we may not have experienced, but we have book or third party knowledge of. While I have street and book credentials about addiction, I have never been a father. But after 58 years on this planet, sooner or later you’re apt to experience a temporary role as a father, even if the source of your caretaking is a kitten. And this kitten was especially dicey because it was only four ounces.

    About 6 p.m. one day last week I was returning from the grocery store, looking forward to putting on the baseball game and relaxing. As I walked up the three wooden steps to my front door, I heard this faint whine and between the wood steps was what looked like a small baby stuffed animal, the size of a potato. Wait a minute, I thought, stuffed animals do not make sounds unless you wind them up. This rocket scientist then realized it was a newborn kitten. Wonderful, I thought as I picked it up gently. I know as much about newborn kittens as I do about opera.

    My first response was I wanted to bolt, like the first time I went to AA and wished I was in the witness protection plan and was relocated to Siberia, but sanity prevailed and I assessed the situation.

    I realized that the kitten was no more than a few hours old. Not only was it not of my species, but now we’re talking about neonatal care of a kitten. Now Mr. Bigshot, purveyor of love, a Holden Caulfield wannabe was thrust in the middle of a conundrum: do I take care of the cat or watch the ballgame? Thankfully, since getting sober I’ve learned not to trust my first instinct.

    I thought of a compromise: I will pass the kitten off to all those cat lovers I know! But my sudden relief didn’t last as all of those ubiquitous cat lovers were not calling me back. A neighbor passing by told me to go get kitten milk and wait several hours for the mother to come back.

    Guilty thoughts permeated: “well that’s what I get for not going to enough meetings or maybe because I lied about jury duty or some other white fib, the gods were punishing me.” I stood in the open doorway waiting and watching for what seemed like an eternity for the mother to come back. (I was feeding it special kitten milk and put a light knitted blanket on it and picked it up every 15 minutes.) I then had a horrible thought: the nocturnal raccoons would probably eat it.

    Right then and there I drew a line in the sand and said to myself “that ain’t happening on my watch.” I picked the little guy up (I did not know the gender) and brought him inside and realized that at least for that night I was going to be his father and mother. When I put him in his makeshift little crib I had the first of several revelations that night: when you were using you probably would have let that kitten die. At that moment I fully embraced the experience.

    After giving him a couple of drops of milk (not as easy as it seems—I managed to get more on the little guy’s cheeks and neck then in his tiny mouth), I figured the cat and I would have a long snooze. No such luck, 10 minutes later he was crying. I petted him for a bit and got back into my crib. A cat person friend finally called and said “it is 50/50 whether he will survive the night without his mother.” Once again I said chauvinistically “that ain’t happening on my watch.”

    “Just hold him as much as you can,” she said. Realization #2 then crept into my brain: Whether you like it or not, you are going to have to be a surrogate parent for the night. Incredulous as this sounds, I said to myself, “here is your shot at fatherhood.”

    As the night drew on, I would pick him up for 10 minutes then put him down and he would cry, and just by hearing my utterance “it is all right little friend,” he would sleep for about 20 minutes. (Once I learned that kittens can’t hear or see for a week after birth, I realized my talking was a placebo for me; it calmed me down and maybe my little buddy sensed that and also relaxed). After holding him for another 10 minutes, I realized I was too nervous to sleep and at about 3 a.m. I took him with a towel and small knitted blanket and put him on my chest. He only cried three brief times after that. I think the little guy probably thought I was his feline mother because he positioned his body right over my heart. 

    It is incredible: these little guys do not have working ears, eyes, legs at birth and their thermostats are very nebulous. No wonder my cat friend gave him a 50 percent shot of making it through the night!

    When light befell this newly anointed kitten kennel, I realized I was responsible for the kitten’s life. Eye-opener #3: I might have saved him from the raccoons that night, but most importantly, his welfare was in my hands and I knew I had to get him some professional help.

    As soon as 8 a.m. rolled around, I went to the local vet and lucky for me, the newbie, they said they would take care of him and find a home for him. I felt relieved, but then epiphany #4 hit me like a load of bricks: I realized I would miss this itsy bitsy bundle of joy.

    Before my deep seated abandonment issues kicked in, out of nowhere a warm sense of calmness pervaded my being. Vision #5: I was “high.” For the last 10 hours my ego went into some sort of dissolution…I was tripping, like a psychedelic high — my sense of well-being was no longer about me, my whole apparatus shifted to the care for a four ounce cat.

    That is about as stoked up as I ever felt in recovery.

    HAPPY FATHER’S DAY!

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • You Are Not My Father

    You Are Not My Father

    I had spent my whole life seeking certainty and security and this break exposed the foolhardiness of that quest. Here was the raw slate of rock bottom once again.

    Last year, a few days before Father’s Day, we were driving home after a week in South Carolina with my parents, the kids asleep in the back. My husband and I had basically just spent a whole week as strangers, sleeping in different bedrooms, not connecting. He had to work late every night — his reason for sleeping in a separate room. I felt our bodies repelling each other from the moment we arrived at their house. I had sensed that force around him often but something about the new setting made it more palpable.

    For months I had been unable to wear my wedding bands because a rash flared up each time I kept them on for more than a few hours. Denial protected me from these not-so-subtle warning signs.

    On one of the first nights of the trip my son woke up screaming with ear pain. It could have been from the pool water or from the mounting pressure of his parents’ silent stalemate. His dad very kindly ran out to get him medicine; he was always very loving about things like that. Our little boy’s seeming agony mysteriously vanished as quickly as it came on and we retreated to our separate rooms.

    I made some really terrible meals that trip. I had brought my Insta-pot, which I was not yet savvy with. I made big pots of mushy things amidst a lot of steam. I worried he was quiet because the food sucked; he wasn’t super on board with my change to a plant-based diet. It was both sweet and heartbreaking how hard I was trying. As if I could make it all okay by making a good enough meal; so the family could be good enough, so I can be good enough. Food wasn’t going to fix it.

    The hardest moment was on the third day of the trip. We were in the living room and it was late morning. He and I had been coming and going in opposite directions. He’d take our son to a golf lesson early, then I’d take the kids to the beach while he stayed at the house to work. That third morning I decided to speak up.

    “Do you have to work so much? Usually when people go on vacation they send an auto-response email that they will be unavailable until such and such time. Do you think you could do that?”

    To be fair, I don’t even know if I asked him. It’s very possible that I was indirect, and just insinuated that he was being a big old disappointment for working.

    He erupted. He was clearly under stress and I had poked the bear. His explosive anger was nothing new. On that day I didn’t know the full extent of what was really going on with him, but I would find out soon enough.

    I decided to make the most of the trip with the kids and my parents’ company. I made sure I got to some recovery meetings. I called my sponsor. I’m sure she and I laughed at some things. Which brings me back to the beginning of this story about the end of my 12-year marriage.

    I was sitting on the passenger’s side, well into the 13-hour drive back to New Jersey, when he turned to me.

    “What are you going to get me for Father’s Day?”

    Cool as a cucumber, out glided: “Why would I get you a Father’s Day gift, you’re not my father.” Suffice to say I got the intended reaction, both from him and for myself. He raged and banged the steering wheel saying I was so heartless and cruel, while I was able to seal myself off inside, emotionally protected and walled off. The next day I tried to make it right with a card and apology. My comment that day in the car is not the reason for what happened next, but it has taken me a long time to truly accept that.

    By the end of that week he told me he was leaving, that our relationship had been “too turbulent” and that he “needed to stop living his life trying to please other people.”

    I didn’t see my husband as a man, but as a burden, an overgrown child. At times I hated him for that and other times I took advantage of it. That is not a partnership and this was no longer a union. I suspect it may never have been. A part of me understood his announced departure. The loudest parts of me did not.

    For the first month I chewed on his abandonment (I mean break-up) speech in my mind and was reminded of what my first sponsor said to me when I disingenuously bemoaned my people pleasing defect. She looked me in the eye and said “Jane, there is no such thing as people pleasing, the only person you are interested in pleasing is yourself.” That resonated. I had considered myself a virtuous victim and was seeking attention for how taken for granted I felt. But I wasn’t able to use that card anymore. And yet here I was, years later, applying my sponsor’s observation to my husband’s behavior so I could justify my resentment, superiority, and self-pity. Ugh, I had become a smug sober person.

    He had to rehearse his break up speech to me several times, as I tried coaxing him to go see a therapist together or be open to any more conversation about it. He was resolute, and he moved out the next day. He had been in therapy for six months and knew this is what he wanted. The last night with him in the house, I lay alone in the giant king-size bed, a terrified child. I had spent my whole life seeking certainty and security and this break exposed the foolhardiness of that quest. Here was the raw slate of rock bottom once again.

    From the beginning my wrongs and disappointment haunted me: I see-sawed between guilt/shame and blame/anger. I had been sober long enough at this point to remember men and women who had walked through the death of children, unexpected illness, and other horrific circumstances, and they continued to show up and not drink. So I knew I could do that too, one day at a time.

    The following weeks and months after were brutal. I rapidly dropped 20 pounds, found a lump in my breast, got into twisted relations with an older man in a 12-step meeting and did my best to care for two confused and upset children as an angry-hungry-tired-lonely-just-not-drinking mommy. I got an excellent therapist right away. I upped my meditation game by taking the TM training and sticking with it. I wrote a fourth step, did the fifth, immediately tried to make amends and get him back (yes I’m embarrassed to write that).

    After about six months I started coming out of it. I learned that my willingness to talk and express and work things out with people can go to an extreme, placing me in a position to be harmed. I made my circle smaller. Slowly I’ve experienced a loosening of all the places inside me that had wrapped and toiled and contorted to survive in what I had perceived as a very unfriendly place to live, because it had been, because of how I had been living.

    We got married before I got sober. We spent 15 years together, during which I discovered 12-step recovery. My husband never objected to my meetings and I was able to make recovery the center of my life from the beginning. While together, I gave birth to two healthy, loving, fearless children. I’m grateful for all that my marriage gave.

    I’ve grieved the loss of what I thought we could have had. There are days when I am hurt and take his choices and continued actions personally but I do not miss his presence in my life. I’ve experienced a year full of character defect withdrawal. I notice how the spaces where the unhealthy behaviors used to be sometimes fill up with stories about how terrible I am, how unworthy I must be of love and belonging, how I’m too much, and don’t really matter. These stories are loud and call for my attention. I tell them I hear them and continue taking positive action in my life anyway.

    Now, a year out from that car ride and the ensuing events, I am changed. I speak up where I once would have avoided a conversation, I am no longer interested in being all things to all people, I don’t feel the need to be busy all the time, and I’m really good at enjoying my own company. My relationship with my family of origin also dramatically changed this past year and sometimes I feel that as an unexpected additional loss. And yet, having grown up within a family with the disease of alcoholism, it’s a loss I have been suffering my entire life and not grieving.

    My husband’s leaving revealed a lot of my dependencies. I had used his presence as a source of security after getting sober. His absence is no longer a source of insecurity.

    On Father’s Day this year I know my God as an unconditionally loving parent. Like it says in the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous “He is the father, we are his children.” I didn’t have to drink to hit bottom and find a new relationship to a Power that allows me to thrive. If I had continued living like I was, I would be missing out on the experience of my own sobriety.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • An End to the Parent-Child Role Reversal: Taking Care of Me

    An End to the Parent-Child Role Reversal: Taking Care of Me

    When my dad drank, he folded in on himself and quietly disappeared. When this happened, I’d wait patiently for his return while dreaming up myriad ways to make his life better.

    There was a little more than a week to go before my wedding day. Left on my to-do list was an array of tasks:

    • Pick up the marriage license.
    • Finalize the seating chart.
    • Tell my dad he wouldn’t be walking me down the aisle.

    I called him on a Sunday afternoon, and he responded the following Thursday. After awkwardly discussing the weather, I said, “Dad, I need to talk to you about the wedding.”

    As I waited for him to say something, I pictured him gently resting his cigarette in an ashtray on the kitchen table, leaning back in a chair and adjusting his thin-rimmed glasses away from the tip of his nose. Finally, he cleared his throat and let out a long and careful, “Okaay.”

    “Listen, I want you to know this isn’t because I’m angry.” I paused. “It’s just I’ve thought about it and…I’ve decided it wouldn’t be appropriate for you to walk me down the aisle.”

    “Mmm hmm,” he grunted.

    “I mean…I wanna hear whatever you have to say,” I told him. “Do you want to ask me anything? Do you want to talk about it?” I waited. I wanted to know what he was thinking, and I thought he’d do so with words, but instead, he chose silence.

    “Do you have anything at all to say about this?” I asked.

    “Nope,” he snapped. “I got nuthin to say.”

    *

    If you ask my mother, my father didn’t come to the hospital the day I was born. It’s not that he didn’t know my mom was in labor, or that I arrived earlier than expected, it was because he didn’t believe I was his. And, knowing my father, he probably assured my mother he’d be there, in the delivery room, and then decided not to come and didn’t think to tell her.

    But despite his absence, which I was dull to as a newborn, as a kid I possessed an untempered affinity for my father. When my parents divorced when I was four years old, they agreed he would keep the house and my mother and I would move a 30-minute drive away, back to her hometown of East Falls, Philadelphia. On the day we left, I sat on my parents’ bed with my Raggedy Ann doll and watched my mother dump her side of their dresser into a suitcase, whining to the back of her head, “I don wanna leave daddy. I wanna stay wit daddy.”

    As I was growing up, my dad was drunk more often than I realized. I watched him stumble and bump into walls, and walked in on him passed out, chin on chest at the kitchen table. I sat and listened to his drunken, swear-laced ramblings about his bastard father, the assholes at work and the overall unfairness of life, but I never considered my dad an alcoholic because he didn’t behave like the ones I knew. Unlike my mom and stepdad whose drinking guaranteed violence, when my dad drank, he folded in on himself and quietly disappeared. When this happened, I’d wait patiently for his return while dreaming up myriad ways to make his life better.

    At some point, this dysfunctional pattern led to a complete role reversal: my father regressed into the helpless child, and I became the dutiful parent.

    When he was drunk and while I still believed in Santa Claus, we slipped effortlessly into our roles, but when I became a teenager who needed more than my father could give, the cracks in our relationship began to show.

    During my junior year of high school, I got a job as a telemarketer selling frozen beef. One night after a shift, I headed outside to the parking lot, expecting my dad’s truck to be idling by the curb, but he wasn’t there.

    I waited about 10 minutes before I left the parking lot to use the payphone across the street. I called home collect at least a dozen times and each time the operator came back with the same disappointing response, “No one’s home,” she said. “Do you want me to try again?”

    After an hour of pacing in the dark, I embraced my only option and started walking. By car, the drive home would’ve taken 20 minutes, but on foot, it took me over two hours. At 11 pm, I arrived home to find I couldn’t open the front door because my father had jammed a kitchen chair under the handle. When he finally let me in, he refused to believe that I’d walked for two hours.

    “Where the fuck were you?” He screamed.

    “Where was I?” I punched back. “Where the hell were you?”

    “I was in the parking lot, and you weren’t there,” he lied.

    “What are you talking about? I waited an hour, and I called a million times,” I yelled.

    “Who were you with?” He took a long drag from his cigarette.

    “What do you mean who was I with?” I roared. “I walked home alone, two hours down Germantown Pike like a freakin’ prostitute.”

    “No, you didn’t.”

    “I didn’t?” I asked in disbelief. “Look at me: I’m soaked with sweat. Look at my feet!” I pointed at the dirt filled cuts and raw blisters my sandals left behind. Halfway through my journey, when the pain became unbearable, I ripped them off and walked the rest of the way barefoot. The black layer of grime and dried blood coating my feet was all the proof I thought my father needed. But he was drunk, and he’d already made up his mind.

    “You’re a fuckin liar.” He slurred as he looked at my feet.

    *

    My father’s greatest disappearing act occurred when I was in my freshman year of college. After months of chat room flirting, my stepmother packed up her car and drove to Florida to be with her Internet lover. On the day she left, my father called and left a message on my dorm room answering machine.

    “She left me for a guy living in a trailer park! She’s telling everyone I beat her,” he wailed. “You’re all that matters to me now; it’s just you and me, kiddo.”

    That weekend I drove home to be with my father. When I walked through the front door I found him drunk at the kitchen table, smoking a cigarette and staring blankly at the white wall in front of him. I sat and watched him cry, promising him that the pain he felt was temporary and that my stepmother was a complete fool for leaving him. Driving to a Friendly’s restaurant for dinner one night, I sat in the passenger seat and watched my father get lost on a route that he’d driven a thousand times before. Seeing him hurting so profoundly cut me wide open. And although I didn’t have the tools to fix it, I knew he needed me, and I was going to be there for him even if it meant losing myself along the way.

    Back at school, worrying about my father edged out my sanity. I worried about him driving drunk, I worried about him feeling alone, and I lost sleep over the fear of him taking his own life. I became so consumed with him that I barely noticed the cloud of depression that stopped me from brushing my teeth or the bursts of anxiety that stole my sleep. But still, I answered my father’s every phone call, I walked with him through the grief, and I did my best to coach him back to life.

    And then one day, he stopped calling and just disappeared.

    Fearing the worst, I stalked his phone. I called and left messages on his voice mail until the mailbox was full. After a week of torture, I reached his co-worker.

    “Oh yeah, your dad’s fine,” he told me calmly. “He’s on vacation with your stepmom in Florida.”

    *

    To my shock and surprise, my father showed up on my wedding day, and from the sidelines he watched me walk down the aisle. Since then, almost seven years have passed, and I can honestly say I don’t regret my decision because it reflected the truth about my relationship with my father: he’s always been the petulant child while I’ve played the role of the ill-prepared adult. For years, I took care of him, catering to his every emotional need while he couldn’t bother to be concerned with mine.

    On my wedding day, I retired from that role and did what was right for me.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • I'm Sorry Daddy, I Won't Be at Your Funeral

    I'm Sorry Daddy, I Won't Be at Your Funeral

    I used to think my relationship with my father was unique, different: complicated on its best day and toxic, disruptive, and unbearable on its worst. I know now it’s not unique.

    I have always known—well maybe not always, but for a very long time—that I would most likely not be attending my father’s funeral. I made that choice in my mind and in my heart a long time ago. Not due to lack of love, but for personal preservation. For my own health. For my own happiness. For my sanity. For my spirit. He didn’t need to be sick for me to envision the day that he would pass; after all if I have learned anything in my 49 years of this journey, it is that we are all dying. And we should not assume it is going to be when we are old.

    My dad was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer a few months back and it had spread to various parts of his body—the prognosis wasn’t good. I really don’t know all the details; most of my family members didn’t speak to me about it, and I take responsibility for not asking. For the ones who stayed silent to protect me and my heart, I am forever grateful. And for those who didn’t whisper a word because they thought I was a self-centered, disrespectful, heartless, unkind, unforgiving, uncaring, cold-hearted, and insensitive daughter, I understand those perceptions too; that is part of my internal struggle and at times exactly how I feel about myself.

    I used to think my relationship with my father was unique, different: complicated on its best day and toxic, disruptive, and unbearable on its worst. I know now it’s not unique. There are many people who for a variety of reasons have infrequent contact (or like me, no contact at all) with one or both of their parents.

    I am what is known as an ACOA: Adult Child of an Alcoholic.

    My parents divorced when I was nine years old, and the oddest thing is I have no memory whatsoever of anything happy or any special moment with my father before that time. None.

    The only memory I have of my daddy from my childhood before age nine is the drunken fighting. The chaos, the yelling, the screaming, the violence; my little brother and me not being picked up from the babysitter’s when it closed because he was out at the bar, and other memories of having to flee the house in the middle of the night. I have no recollection of any Christmas mornings opening gifts under the tree; a birthday party or vacation; a family dinner. No memory whatsoever, although we did all of those things. I know there were happy times, I have seen pictures of our family. My beautiful mom, my little brother, me, and our daddy in slightly cracked, old, seventies pictures looking like a perfect family.

    But after years of therapy, I have learned and continue to learn so much, not only about being the child of an alcoholic but about trauma. I believe that things that terrify you—make you feel unsafe, frightened, scared—far outweigh any good.

    My permanent estrangement from my dad came much later. I am filled with many happy memories after my parents’ divorce: weekend visits, camping, fishing, four-wheel driving in his big truck, snowmobiling, and mostly big family get togethers with all of my aunts, uncles, and cousins. Some would ask if I had forgiven my father for the past, and the honest answer is that I never looked at it in those terms. I didn’t need to forgive my father, I didn’t blame him or hate him; I felt nothing but love for him. Sure, the drinking continued throughout my teenage years, but I ignored the things that bothered me. It wasn’t that bad.

    As I grew into a young adult, got married, and had children of my own, the dynamic changed. Or maybe it was exactly the same, only I saw things through a different lens. I now had two little boys of my own who were witnessing, analyzing, and interpreting, just as I did when I was a little girl. There was no violence or anything of that nature, but wounds don’t always leave broken bones and bruises. The drama-filled drunken theatrics continued and so our relationship was off and on. Off. On.

    For me, the point of no contact with my father came when my younger brother became another alcoholic branch in our family tree. While I was trying to survive a war zone of 911 calls, hospital stays, psychiatrists, psychologists, seven rehab stays, several suicide attempts, denial, blame, and absolute destruction, the drunken late night calls from my father became too much. I never told him how they hurt me, like spraying gasoline on an inferno. I just simply hung up the phone. And eventually the calls stopped.

    That was more than 12 years ago. As in my early childhood, the bad eventually overpowered any good.

    Since I was a little girl, my perception was that alcohol was responsible for everything bad that happened in my life. And I did not come to this realization easily or lightly. Long before I was married, long before I had children of my own, there was my mom. My dad. My brother. And eventually a baby sister. The ones I loved more than anyone else in the whole world. I wish with all of my heart I could have changed some of these dynamics in my family and, God knows, I gave it my best shot. But I know now that task was not mine; it’s just my overdeveloped sense of responsibility coming from an alcoholic home.

    Sadly, my brother lost his battle with alcohol addiction and mental illness in March 2012 by taking his own life. My brother’s drinking affected all of our lives in a negative way. I would have welcomed the chance to sit face to face with my own father if he wanted to and tell him that I understood, and that he should hold no blame where my brother is concerned. We were all in way over our heads. And that I love him, and my brother did too. I wish I had done things differently back then, as I made many mistakes myself. 

    My father and I do not need to work out out differences, we are are out of time. But we could both say sorry for hurting each other, it wasn’t intentional. My brother’s death could have brought our family closer together; he would have wanted that. 

    Perhaps for my dad, the point of no return was when I did the unthinkable. I wrote a memoir of my journey with my brother in the hope of helping other families to see the effects of childhood trauma, to not make the same mistakes, to take a different path, and to change.

    But the truth is my father and I were estranged long before the mention of a book. So, it would not be fair to put our estrangement solely on my shoulders. I only take responsibility for my part.

    After a few months, Dad’s cancer had spread, and I heard that he was hospitalized. I knew he didn’t have much time so, to look after my own thoughts and feelings, I made an appointment with my therapist. I have worked very hard to be a better and healthier version of myself—I take my own recovery very seriously. And I do mean recovery; although I don’t drink, I too had to “recover.”

    As my therapist and I talked for that hour, I accepted what was to come, and what I was sure of: I wasn’t going to cry when he died. Not because there was a lack of love, but I had mourned the loss of my father a long time ago.

    Less than a week later, I woke up early on February 5th, put on my robe, poured myself a coffee, and turned on my iPhone. As I scrolled through Facebook I saw a post, something about heaven got another angel. My father had passed away.

    A whirlwind of pictures flashed though my mind.

    I had completely misjudged my reaction: my eyes instantly filled with tears. I was wrong. I did cry. And cried. And cried. I was overwhelmed with emotion: this is all so messed up; it is not how families are supposed to be. It is not what I would want and totally against who I am.

    I spent the next two evenings crying myself to sleep as I knew it was official—I wasn’t going to the funeral.

    I won’t stay away out of anger, spite, or stubbornness. Whether someone else thinks I am right or wrong, what is best for me is being steadfast and confident in my knowledge that I am the daughter, not the parent. If it had been my instinct to run to my father’s side when he was sick, I would have done that when he was healthy. In my life, I do not react anymore out of pity or guilt, misinterpreting those sentiments as love. I did that most of my life, and I lost my own identity in the process. 

    I will stay away from the funeral, not because I didn’t love my dad, but because I did. We all must live with the consequences of our choices and I am no different from him. I would never disrespect his wife, his other children, his friends, or even some of my own family by being there. I would never want to cause them pain with my presence and I am sorry for their loss.

    My father’s drinking affected my life in a negative way, but that doesn’t mean he wasn’t a good person. He was loved by many, had lots of friends, other children who accepted him for who he was, and he continued a relationship and was married to his third wife for almost 27 years. Most likely, the funeral home will be filled with a couple hundred people. All of this is true.

    My absence just means that on this journey of life, the relationship between him and me wasn’t good for me. It wasn’t healthy and what I needed. And I am allowed to decide.

    It’s days later. While still crying, I am imagining all of those people at the funeral tomorrow wondering why I’m not there; judging and whispering that I am self-centered, disrespectful, heartless, unkind, unforgiving, uncaring, and cold-hearted.

    I have been plagued with the haunting visions of my father leaving his little farmhouse for the last time, knowing he was going to the hospital to die. Looking to the right at the garden where the children had Easter egg hunts, to the left at the creek where we used to snowmobile together in the cold Alberta winters. Perhaps as he got closer to the car, he looked to the right and the garage where we all used to sit in front of the campfire as a family that included my brother, my sister and her daughter, and my husband and me with our sons. Happy. A simpler time, years before all of this fell apart. And then I realized, maybe that isn’t what my dad saw; maybe it’s what I see.

    As I crawled into bed, my feelings of guilt had begun to subside, no more visions of my frail father lying in a hospital room hoping his daughter would arrive. I would have no reason to believe he ever thought that—and I know that is just my heart playing with my head.

    I do wish things were different, and I am sorry that I won’t be at my father’s funeral.

    What anyone thinks of that really has nothing to do with me.

    Sometimes it is hard for the outside world to understand. But for your own survival you need to think of your own needs over and above someone else’s. That is not selfish or callous (I have learned this too). It’s necessary. 

    My tears will eventually subside; they always do. But for tonight, if you don’t mind, I am going to shed tears for the little girl whose Daddy didn’t call.


    Jodee Prouse is a mom, wife, sister, friend and author of the memoir, The Sun is Gone: A Sister Lost in Secrets, Shame, and Addiction, and How I Broke Free. She is an outspoken advocate to eliminate the shame and stigma surrounding addiction and mental illness and empowering women through their journey of life and family crisis. Visit jodeeprouse.com to learn more.

    View the original article at thefix.com