Authors note: I wrote this short story about the relationship between my father and I. It was about the bad experiences that I've had with him, and how I've overcome them.
I felt my stomach flip when my mom delivered the worst news I had ever received. I remember every moment like it was yesterday. My mom had called us to her room and informed us that my dad had attempted suicide and was in the hospital, he lost a battle with himself. I swear on everything I own, that time stopped and my whole body froze for a good minute. How do you react to that? Normal kids aren’t taught how to respond to situations like this, and unfortunately my life was the furthest thing from society’s idea of “normal”. Luckily, I’ve slowly learned to accept that.
For me, growing up was extremely difficult. From preschool to 2nd grade, I went to a private school. Everyone there was so perfect in my eyes. They never had a worry in the world, and I was so jealous. I remember how awkward I always felt because even though we were so young, it seemed like everyone had everything – and then there was me. My parents were constantly fighting and I never knew how to deal with it.
As a young child I dreaded Sunday nights because I knew I had to go to ala-teen, a meeting where kids my age got in a little circle and talked about having an alcoholic in their lives. Everyone there constantly spoke of their feelings and how the meetings helped them deal with it, but to be completely honest, I have no idea how. I constantly had the vibe that everyone there was fake because I knew I was. I would never share my actual stories because I didn’t want to be judged. Bottling feelings inside and putting on a fake smile was something I grew into very quickly and easily. The hatred I felt when I actually had to speak or tell a story was completely indescribable. I would say stupid things like “I say a prayer to help me get through a rough night.” Everyone would look at me and think I was a genius. Really, I just wanted to get out of there so I did absolutely everything in my power to do so.
Since my parents were divorced, I had to go to my dad’s house from Friday after school to Sunday afternoon every weekend. I had no social life because every weekend I was trapped inside his teeny tiny house with absolutely nothing to do. Eventually, we lost all contact with my dad and I started to actually make friends. There were a million reasons for this, but one particular night blew everything out of proportion. I will never be able to forget that night; no matter how hard I try, because nothing like this had ever happened to me.
It was a regular Friday and I was in 4th grade, so about 9. I was pissed off because I knew I had to go to my dad’s house that night. My siblings and I would get off the bus on the way home from school and just cry because we were terrified of my dad. What was he going to do this time? There was never a fun weekend or even a weekend when we would come home happy, for that matter. This time, when my dad came to pick us up, he was drunk. No surprise or anything but this time it was over the top drunk. My mom wouldn’t let us get it the car and she tried to call the cops but my dad stormed into our house and ripped the phone right out of her hands with no problem and chucked it so hard you would have thought he was pitching a baseball. Luckily, she had a cell phone and could contact the police before my dad could hurt us.
When the police came, we had to go downstairs but we could hear my dad screaming “this is bullshit” and “give me my kids”. My two siblings and I just sat down stairs. I can remember the tension in the room and how none of us spoke because we had nothing to say, it was something we never expected. For the first time in over a year, we didn’t have to go to my dad’s house because he was taken away in a cop car and that was the last we heard from him in a long time.
My dad tried so hard to try to get us back in his life, but to prove what? He never cared about us or he wouldn’t pick us up drunk. My hatred from him grew and grew as the days past. Many months after we were leaving church in Wauwatosa with my dad. For some reason he had to have the bulletin every week to give to his parents as if they needed some sort of proof that he took his children to church. When he went back in the church to grab it, I started to cough a lot so I grabbed his water bottle. Innocently, I took a sip of it unaware that it wasn’t water but vodka. After I had a sip my throat burnt as if I just took a sip of the fiery flames in hell.
After I told my mom, she called him and just went off for hours, her insults somehow made me awfully happy for some sick reason. I wanted my dad to feel like shit just so he knew what it was like. The heaviest of weights was lifted from my shoulders because now he knew that I didn’t like him – at all.
A few years later we received the call that he had attempted suicide. We decided it would be right to visit him in the hospital. After not seeing my dad for a while, it was the biggest eye opener seeing him like that. He was just skin and bones anything good about the situation. We didn’t know what he did or why he didn’t and he was in no position to answer our questions. He had never looked that weak or depressed and his parents and the nurse acted like it was normal. And all the while we sat and looked in at him, as if he was a museum exhibit, his eyes glistened with tears for he was looked at as a fighter, and now he was losing his fight. Slowly the awkward silence grew louder and louder, but I surely wasn’t going to be the first one to talk.
I couldn’t do anything for weeks because I was beyond confused as to why my dad did this. Was it me? Was I the reason he hated his life? I had to be. There was no other explanation. If I would just have kept my mouth shut we could have still been living the fake life that I hated so much. But I often find myself questioning if I would have rather been living like that.
About a year has gone by and now our relationship is slowly getting back to the way I would like it to be. Sometimes I feel like he is just buying our love or taking us out to eat because he knows that we’ll be happy that way. And, I hate to admit it – but its working. I guess I’m just happy that things are working out and my dad is living a happier life, but, no matter how hard he tries, his past will still drag down the way we look at him.
