By: Angelia O., Sky J., Alia A.

Addiction

    This is my last week in Alcoholics Anonymous, reflecting on the past couple of years of my life. I think this is the most at peace I have felt since I was 15. I never developed my own person or gave myself the chance to truly find myself, just as my therapist Julia tells me.  

“Martin has never truly been Martin, do you know who Martin is?” said Julia in our one-on-one session last Thursday. 

Maybe now I can allow myself to be the true Martin, although I might be a few years too late. 

Today I received my 1-month chip, this marks one month being clean, and one month without contact with my son; Jack. With our past in mind, I never thought this is how my life would end up, I never thought I would make my son relive the life I had lived, an absent alcoholic father who pushed everyone away except the bottle sitting beside him. 

But I would never admit I have become my father, especially not to my own son. 

I worked to just pass by, spending most of my paychecks on a bottle just about every night, never having the money to give my son. As a young boy, I worked harder than my father, working to pay for myself to stay alive and to support his addiction. 

As a child I built resentment towards my father, never wanting to be like him, constantly taking the higher roads to be a real man and own up to myself unlike my father ever could. The older I got, the worse it all became for me, to be forced to raise myself and teach myself the things a father should have shown me. An absentee father who could do no good for me but deemed me as unworthy of his love. 

I was never close with my father as a young boy, it was always “your mother will help you with your homework” or “sorry son I just have too much to do tonight”. I never knew how to rely on him but I never stopped loving my father.  

He still always made sure to provide for his family until he didn’t anymore, until family and father-son time became an even bigger burden, when the bottle took over his life. 

       The first time I knew my father had a problem was when I was at the age of 10. My mother had just passed away from a car accident. Although I was in the vehicle, due to me being seated in the back of the car I made it out of the vehicle unscathed minus a fractured leg and a few stitches. On the day of the funeral my father was very distant and solemn towards me. 

When we had made it home, although there were the two of us, the house seemed vacant and the air was still. My father began to pour himself a drink from the liquor cabinet. I sat at the table watching him from a small distance. He poured drink after drink mixing between three bottles of different colored liquors. When he got to the bottom of the third bottle full of emotion he spoke, “your mother should still be here”. I began to agree with what he was saying but he cut me off stating that it wasn’t “fair to take one and leave the other”, not really understanding what he was saying, I stared at him dumbfounded as he continued his drunken speech. He downed drink after drink until he passed out on the couch. I never knew this would become an every night routine, that this would soon become the normal night in the Gilbert household.  

        At the age of 15. I walked into the house putting my pack back on the floor and hanging my keys up on the rack. I saw that there was another set next to mine, which can only mean that my father was home. Which was unusual for a weekday and not because he was supposed to be at work, he had been fired for some years now. He spent his days from evening to sunrise clocking in and out of the bar running up a tab, I would later have to scrape up money leftover after paying the bills. Which was a struggle enough with the cleaning and waiter shifts I worked at the diner down the block paying so little. 

My father being home at 10:00 pm on a weekday had to mean he had gotten overly drunk and rowdy at the bar, that the bartender called him a cab home, another bill I would have to scrape up the leftover money for. Him being drunk already doesn’t stop him from drinking more when he arrives home. I tip-toed from the front door and across the living room when I was stopped by a liquor bottle crashing against the wall. I stepped dead in my tracks and faced the direction that the bottle was thrown from. Standing at a looming 6 feet, with a ripped t-shirt and bloody knuckles was my father. He began to yell, demanding me explain why I was coming home so late. I could have given him the answer I always give him on these days and tell him I was working. This day was different, as I stared at his drunken stance and a rage grew inside of  me. “I went from 8 hrs at school to work my shifts at the diner down the block, for MINIMUM WAGE AND AND TIPS I have to scrape up to pay off  YOUR ALCOHOL TAB at the bar as well as keep the lights on and water running in the house!”.

 His facial expression stayed the same. He didn’t yell, didn’t throw anything, he sat down and poured another drink. It wasn’t the same after that, things began to escalate quickly and my father was in and out of the hospital every couple of months until I was 18, when he finally passed and all that he left me was the unpaid hospital bills and bar tabs to remember him by.

It wasn’t fair and I knew it. Not fair to myself and especially not to Jack. I would look into my fathers eyes everyday as a boy and repeat “I’ll never be like you, never. I’ll be better, stronger than you’ll ever be” and How does that saying go? Never say never right? I remember the burning rage I felt as a young boy seeing my father in such a vile state, feeling his glare on me but knowing he was staring right through me, like I didn’t exist. I only existed when he needed to let his frustration out, to be his punching bag, to take the blame. I felt the smooth “1 Month Clean!” chip between my pointer and thumb. Flipping it over and over, re-reading the words “Clean” in my head. That voice in my head refusing to believe it, was it my fathers or my own? I couldn’t tell. My own person, an achievement I was blind to after alcohol became my only escape. 

“C’mon man! One beer can’t hurt!” I remember my buddies would stay at the bar during game nights, because at first drinking was just a game night thing. 

“Maybe I deserve a drink” I would say after a long day, because drinking was just an unwinding thing. 

“I need a drink” well, because drinking was my thing. 

I remember sitting behind my old computer as a kid, typing away on the internet, question after question. “Why does my dad act crazy after being outside at night?” my innocence was admirable, at the age where alcohol wasn’t even in my vocabulary. I wonder if Jack did things like this, my son, his confusion being a carbon copy of mine as his age. I remember the instances in which I became aware of my fathers words, his actions coming from my body. Jack’s innocent eyes staring up at me with a toy in his hand, asking to play. “You know, i’d much rather watch my show and have a couple of beers” I’d never say such a thing out loud, especially to Jack, which I thought made me better than my father. I’d pat him on the head and walk to the kitchen and do exactly that, and I thought I was better than my father. I remember after my father passed, sitting behind a much newer computer that I had barely gathered the pocket change to pay for and new questions were typed into the search bar. “Alcohol addiction…effects of the brain…reward system? withdrawals?” Every search harbored new information, learning more about my father from search tabs rather than old tales of his childhood. I knew every route to take in order to avoid every lousy mistake my father made, and I took the wrong one. Experiencing the trauma itself and acknowledging the science behind it didn’t prevent me from obtaining my addiction. 

I can’t deny that I have an addiction and validate it by saying that I’m a better father than my dad was, I haven’t even seen Jack in a month, it’s almost comical. I guess I deserve to laugh, it is my trauma after all. I know I won’t be able to face Jack until I bring this to a close, just the thought of any part of my father speaking to Jack through my words, it’s parasitic. Waiting too long will lead to Jack’s resentment growing stronger against me, it disgusts me. I want my son to sit behind a computer searching things that any pre-teen would be curious about, and not questioning their fathers behavior. 

I want my son to ask me to help him with his school projects, to help him with his homework, or advice about making a move on his crush. I don’t want my son to tip-toe around me, afraid of his existence. I was missing out on my son’s life for years out of self pity. It’s painful and I know I’ll never get the answers to the hundreds of questions my inner child still keeps to himself, or the apology I rightfully deserve. What I do know is that, although it’ll never be fair to me, I can make this right for Jack and I can cut the cycle. My son doesn’t deserve to face what I had to through my childhood. I remember the phrase I would often hear at the beginning of this winding journey, from Julia, from my support group coordinator “The first step to facing your addiction is to admit you have an addiction in the first place.” “My addiction” I whispered and I securely tucked the “1 Month Clean!” token into my back pocket and for the first time I craved my son’s smiling face in my arms than the taste of alcohol on my tongue.

The end.