(I don't have a title for this yet, and the endings kind of weak)...
Everyone remembers the house they grew up in. It’s like a part of your childhood that you don’t forget. But for me, the last memories I had in that house weren’t the kind that you want to remember. The house haunts me with memories of loneliness, hurt, and addiction affecting one of the people that I love the most; my dad. And all I could do was sit there helplessly and watch him fall deeper and deeper into his own sadness.
My sophomore year in high school my parents became another statistic in the ever-rising divorce rate. While my mom moved in with her mother, my younger brother and I decided to stay with my dad, in the house we had grown up in. It was rough at first, my dad missed my mom and my mom was upset that her two kids hadn’t left with her. So as anyone could guess, there was a lot of fighting occurring on a daily basis. But eventually the dust had settled and everything seemed to be on its way to getting back to normal.
Then Melissa came along. Young, beautiful, and someone every newly single man could want, but none should ever go after. They started “dating”, or so my dad thought. It was more like them going out and my dad spending money on her and her daughter. Don’t get me wrong, I loved Melissa, but more like a big sister (considering she was only 11 years older than me and my dad was 48) not as a new mommy.
She kept this charade going on for a few months, allowing my dad, lonely and vulnerable, to get into debt while trying to impress her. Eventually she said she was done with it, and shattered my dad’s already wounded heart. He wasn’t the same after that. All of his built up emotions from the divorce came pouring out after this happened. A person can only take so much rejection. He had hit his breaking point, and had turned to the numbing powers of alcohol to help him forget.
He became so absorbed in his self medicating that he hardly left his bedroom, stopped going to work, and neglected the one kid that stayed with him through everything; me. Things stayed like that for a week or two, but instead of staying at the level of bad it started at, things escalated and got much worse. His drinking got so bad he could hardly move, and I had to do almost everything for him. At age 16 the last thing that should be on your mind is how you’re going to take care of your father, but that was my reality for that short period in my life.
My dad started letting his depression take over. Suddenly, the strongest person I knew became like this lost little puppy dog. And then he gave up. He decided that nothing in life was worth living for anymore. He was as drunk as I’d ever seen him, and as he walked out the door, keys in hand, he slurred the words “I’m sorry”, and looked at me with a sense of regret mixed with Johnny Walker in his eyes.
I called my aunt, his sister, the only person I could think of to try and find him and talk some sense into him. She did the only thing she could think of, called the police. She gave them his license plate, thinking that a whole bunch of cruisers had a hell of a better chance at finding him then she and I would. But before any searching began he pulled back into the driveway. Still full of thoughts of suicide he began screaming at those who were there only to help him.
Next to pull into the driveway were the police, only to find my dad screaming at everyone around him. They decided to take him away, to put him in some hospital that could hopefully help him, but all I could see at that point was my dad being put in the back of a police cruiser in handcuffs, looking more lost than ever before. Everyone around tried to comfort me, but I just sat there, stunned. A whirlwind of emotions fluttered around inside me, and I wasn’t exactly sure which one I was supposed to be feeling. Grief; that all of this was happening, joy; that my father hadn’t gone and killed himself, fear; of what would happen to him now and where I was supposed to live, and regret; that maybe I could have done something to stop all of this from happening. After all of this had happened my mom thought that it would be best if I moved in with her.
My dad came out of that hospital a completely different person. He seemed happy, of course, the new medication that they had given him could have had something to do with that. But still, my mom wouldn’t let me move back in with him. That house that I had grown up in would never be my home again. I could never go back there and remember all of the fun times I had, I could only remember the horrors I had seen there over the past few months.
The things that I saw go on have stuck with me to this day. I didn’t realize it until recently, but it’s all made me the person that I am today. I have chosen not to drink, do any drugs, or do anything that could make me lose control like I’d seen my father do. I never want to have to be in a situation where I cannot control everything that’s happening to me, and have to have someone watch over me like I’m some kind of toddler. So as traumatic as this situation was for me, without it I could have ended up choosing a much different path than the one I’m on right now.
