Smeared Glasses and Broken Screens

Click play to enjoy or be repulsed by a reading of the piece by me:

My Dad wasn't a bad man, not intrinsically. He was a deeply flawed, old-school Glaswegian 70s/80s Dad who was not the most emotionally available. By my late teens, he became a social alcoholic. I resented him for that because I didn't feel a connection beyond blood and recognising he was a hard worker. My go-to thing was to say, "I got my eclectic music taste from my dad." That was it.

By the time I was 18, he’d come home so pissed, falling asleep leaning on the kitchen counter with a plate of curry and his glasses smeared into it. Depression grappled me, and I wanted to escape. Eventually I met Ruth and escaped to Essex. I always joke about how technically I am still there on that visit, even though 25 years have passed.

While I was away, Mum and Dad divorced. I only saw him once in that time when our youngest was born. When I moved back to Scotland with my own family, I still wanted nothing to do with Dad. He had messed up and I didn't want him to forget it. I was resolute in my determination to stay virtually non-contact.

Then after some issues at work he got sober to protect his job. Then he was diagnosed with dementia. Even seeking out resolution felt pointless. Then his vascular dementia took a tighter grip and he was placed in a care home through COVID. Sadly.

I developed a porn and sex addiction that properly took root when we came back to Scotland. With any addiction, you look at where it came from, and childhood usually plays a part. If your dad is a man who had issues with alcohol, that could be a marker. So I have had many issues with online affairs, emotional affairs, and porn use. Often I'd manage it through sobriety alone, but that is never a good way to tackle addiction.

Anyway, I kept telling Mum I didn't want to see him. As his memory slipped, it seemed pointless to sit in a room with a guy who didn't know who I was. So I didn't. Then things took the expected turn and talk was of him having weeks, not months.

Life is cruel in its irony. While this was all going on, I was digging holes and momentarily digging out of them. As I developed a greater understanding of my own addiction and tried to give myself some grace, that meant I had to offer the same to my dad, who had seemingly beat his drinking. Before he was ill, he had a couple of years of sobriety... quietly I was proud, and I should have been more loudly proud.

But the hurt didn't dissipate. Until it did. When I realised I was too similar to him. I had issues with emotional distance with my sons. I had let addiction anaesthetise what I couldn't cope with in life, and only now am I trying to repair the damage.

The cruel irony is that when I had my Selah moment and realised with full conviction that I forgive my dad, the disease had taken the chance of closure from me. The beauty of realising I forgive him came with the guilt of holding onto hatred for so long, then the horrible realisation I couldn't do anything but hold it close to me. I couldn't give him the forgiveness that maybe could have granted him some peace. I know he loved us with the capacity he was able to. But I couldn't tell him I forgave him and how I understood him.

*

Thanks for reading

This is for Shirley Belk's The Space Between Unofficial Challenge. Which you can find out more about by clicking the link.

Authors notes: The piece is 600 words exactly. But wanted to include some details. I chose My Father's House by Bruce Springsteen by his exceptional album, Nebraska, because the realisation of being too late to offer meaningful forgiveness to my dad  came too late.

The choice of Caravaggio’s painting might seem unexpected at first glance. However, Goliath features the artist's own face, widely interpreted as Caravaggio addressing the heavy regrets of his youth from the perspective of his older self. This deeply mirrors my own journey: realizing that to truly heal from my own addictions and forgive myself, I had to finally offer that very same forgiveness to my dad.