When your father is an alcoholic you grow up thinking that maybe it's okay for dads to drink that much "beer," or whatever that is. Your mom sits on the couch trying to read a book in Spanish, because that's all they both know how to speak.
You think that the bottles that you use to build castles out of in the living room are normal and it's something all the other kids do too. But you find out later that it isn't, and they don't.
When your father is an alcoholic you get yelled at. A lot. Everybody does. Your parents argue about everything that has gone wrong with their world, but in yours, everything that has gone wrong was a constant. There was never any right to begin with.
When you're four years old your sister calls the police on him and he gets court mandated to go to anger management instead of A.A. So he goes and you tag along because mom is at work. You play in a daycare with all the other kids with fucked up parents and don't think anything of it until you're older.
When your father is an alcoholic you never invite the friends you make over to your house because you don't want them to know that the word daddy sounds a lot like the word drunk, and the word love sounds a lot like a can of beer clicking open again and again and again. But just because you can't invite them over, it doesn't mean that they won't invite you over to their house.
When your best friend at the time invites you over for Thanksgiving, you reluctantly say yes and have such a good time that you have to excuse yourself to go to the bathroom to cry because this isn't your normal and it's overwhelming. Your normal is a plate of food you made and your room, where you eat dinner alone because no one sits at the table at your house and you can't go to the living room because your dad is drunk and talking to the TV about the family ranch that was sold years ago. Your normal is going home and wishing that your home was at your friend's house.
When your father is an alcoholic you get your heart broken a lot and get kicked out of your house a lot. It doesn’t matter how old you are because your father has been breaking your heart since before you knew what a broken heart was.
He was supposed to be the only guy who would never do that, but you get used to it and you get kicked out of your house for the first time at 12. Then again and again until you're old enough to actually leave. You spend those in between years wishing you could live with another family member but your family on your father's side never wants to see you again and your family on your mom's side has enough of their own problems to deal with.
When your father is an alcoholic the audience looks a lot like a room full of empty chairs. You play the viola or sing in the choir to a room full of empty and it feels like a surge of anger when someone you know decides to show up for the first time and you want to cry but you can't because you're supposed to be performing. You resent them for never coming before and you tell them to leave and to never come see you sing ever again.
When your father is an alcoholic forgiveness feels a lot like drowning. Growing up you fill yourself with so much sadness, insecurity, hate, and anxiety that when you learn how to forgive someone it hurts more than it relieves. You learn that keeping everything inside yourself only leads to self-destruction, and you never want to end up like him. So you decide to forgive.
Forgive everything and everyone who has ever done you wrong and as the years go by you start to feel better and better, and suddenly you aren't drowning anymore because your friends are there to teach you how to swim and they hold you up.Then when you pass by the living room and see him sitting there on the couch alone, surrounded by his addiction, you feel sorry for him. You forgive him for never knowing how to love you the way you deserved to be loved as a child.
When your father is an alcoholic, you learn how to be a good parent before you ever even think about having a child. You learn what to do to help build a person up and what not to do. You learn the type of person that you don't want to be, so you try your best to be the exact opposite. You learn that, although you have lived your whole life with this type of person, watching what they do and being hurt by what they say, you don't have to end up like that. And that is the only thing that you thank him for.
