Vodka on the Rocks...

Childhood for me is a blur; I cannot remember most of my life prior to age eight or nine though I am not sure how rare that actually is. I imagine it is true for most people.

What I do recall is vague and random. I remember the forest green carpet in the living room and the wood paneled walls. I remember the cloud of cigarette smoke that seemed to permanently exist in that same living room, hovering thick in the air. I remember riding on the back of our yellow lab, Sheba. I remember sledding down the hill in our orchard by myself for the first time and ultimately crashing into one of our fruit trees resulting in a huge lump on my forehead. I remember sleeping in my parents bedroom in the summers when it was hot because theirs was the only bedroom with an air conditioner.

Those are the okay memories, the neutral ones, the memories that aren't laced with trauma and confusion. Like the countless times my dad walked me through the kill floor at his job where I could smell blood and fear thick in the air, cattle huddled together knowing their impending fate.

Or the times he got drunk and passed out leaving my sister and I to fend for ourselves. Or the time he took my sister and I on a walk in the woods only to fall, too drunk to get back up, and my six-year-old self had to take my sister and find our way home through the thick, prickly bushes and mud to get help.

Or the time he drove with us drunk and almost crashed his SUV into a telephone pole because he fell asleep at the wheel.

There was the time I woke up my dad after he had fallen asleep in his recliner to excitedly tell him that I found a squirrel in the basement only for him to get up, take his shotgun downstairs, and kill it. He brought the dead squirrel upstairs to show me, blood dripping from it's fur, proud of what he had done.

There was a time when my dad took us to my aunt and uncle's house to stay the night while they were away only for my sister and I to end up locking ourselves in my aunt's bedroom to keep away from him and his drunken, harassing antics.

I remember hiding out with my mom in my grandparent's summer cabin in the dead of winter to get away from my dad. There was no heat, no water, no electric.

My dad was a hunter, mostly deer from what I remember. He would bring a dead deer back home after a hunting trip and string it up on our swing set to drain the blood out and then skin it and butcher it. It was a horrific sight and still makes me cry to this day, many years later.

I remember going to a party with my parents when I was young and watching some of the men that were there pick my dad up and throw him in the swimming pool in his clothes because he was drunk. I remember the heartache of watching these men do this, yelling at him. It broke my heart that my dad was being treated that way.

I saw the insides of more bars before the age of ten than most people see in their whole lives. They were scary and dark and smoky. They smelled bad and the people in them stared and made my skin crawl. The Shirley Temples with extra cherries that my dad bought me to keep me quiet never came close to easing my fears. I would look out of the corner of my eye at the countless men on their barstools drowning their sorrows in glasses of amber-colored liquid, too drunk to walk a straight line out the door when they ran out of money.

I could go on and on telling stories like this but it would be a waste of time I suppose. I remember sitting in the funeral home during the memorial service for my dad when I was seventeen years old listening to these people go up and tell stories about how wonderful my father was. He was funny, the life of the party, a great worker, a great man. It has taken me many years, lots of therapy which continues to this day, and lots of self-reflection to become honest with myself about how I feel about my father.

I didn't know there was someone underneath the person who chose to believe that he had no choice, that alcohol made him someone else, that he was sick. But those beliefs about him were harmful because they aren't the truth and only served to diminish his responsibility for the harm he caused.

The truth is, I am angry. I am angry that no one at that funeral or at any other point even after his death, particularly within his family of origin, told the truth about him. They ignored every awful thing he did and placed blame on other people when they couldn't ignore it. The portrait they paint of him is vastly incomplete. It is not accurate. I am here to tell everyone that regardless of whether or not addiction is a disease, he is still the one who was the cause of trauma and heartbreak throughout my life. It was him. He did those things. By choosing to ignore how fucked up my father was, those people negate my experiences. They imply that they don't matter because the alcohol made him someone else and it really wasn't the real him that had done those things.

Addiction may be a brain disease, but it does not start out that way. Long-term substance abuse alters and rewires the brain, yes. Maybe that truly does make it seem impossible to stop. I don't know because I am not an addict nor am I an addiction treatment professional. However, at some point, he had a choice. He had a choice, and he chose his vodka with a splash of ginger ale above all else. He chose to leave my mom in the hospital after I was born early and hooked up to machines in an incubator to go drink and snort cocaine. He chose to skip visitations to drink. He chose to move hours away from us. He chose to leave during visits with him to go drink, often his absence lasting hours. Those were his choices, regardless of the alcohol.

Fact is, I was never a priority to my father. If I had been, he would still be here. He would not have drank himself to death. I wouldn't have had to watch him turn yellow when his liver failed. I wouldn't have had to act grown prior to entering the first grade. I could have been a kid with the life that I deserved, but I didn't get that. And that is my father's fault. He is the direct cause of all of the shadows that I carry with me and am now responsible for banishing on my own.

Maybe one day I will forgive him. I don't know. I certainly am not ready yet. I suspect it will take me many more years. Right now, I am content to sit and allow myself to sit with the anger and the pain that is my reality today. I will no longer let anyone who knew him tell me how great he was because they don't know. They didn't live with it. They didn't see the things that I saw. They saw none of it. They do not have the right to speak about who he was no matter how well they thought they knew him.

My greatest accomplishment is that I have created the family that I should have had. I have a dedicated partner, two little girls, a house, two incomes, our bills are paid every month, and we have food on our table. We laugh every single day, we spend time together, we eat dinner together every night, and we adore each other. I made a promise to myself when I was twenty-one and pregnant with my first daughter that I would make sure she didn't grow up the way that I did. I vowed to protect her from addiction as much as I could, and I have. I have made my share of mistakes. I have chosen the wrong partners, I have yelled when I shouldn't have, and I have made the wrong decisions at times about how to handle the many challenges that come with raising kids.

I can't speak to addicts because I do not feel qualified. I can, however, speak to those who experienced a similar childhood.

It is unfair. All of it. Someone else caused you pain and damaged you and now you are left with it. Even if the perpetrator is still alive and well, those demons are now your responsibility to fix. It is okay to be angry. It is okay to be bitter, and it is okay to be resentful. Those feelings are valid and so are your experiences.

BUT... Do not let those feelings consume you forever. Sit with them, feel them, cry, scream, yell, write letters you will never send and burn them into ash, but do not stay there. Even if it takes years, do whatever you have to do move forward. Take responsibility for your shit. Do not rely on those who have wronged you to fix you because even if they wanted to, they can't. No amount of apologies from anyone will fix it. You have to.

More than anything, do what you need to do to create the life you deserve because it is possible and you deserve it. Do not be complacent in your journey. Take control of your life as much as you can and create what you want, create what you didn't get to have.

You are worthy.

You deserve it.