30 Days of Truth: Day 7
Originally published at Skyspun.org. You can comment here or there.
Day 7 > Someone who has made your life worth living for.
My parents were married 16 years before my mother divorced my father.
I have very vivid memories of their life together before that point. My father was an alcoholic with a lot of unresolved issues who had made a point to take it out on my mother. There were nights I hid my brother in my bedroom with me as the yelling and slamming raged outside in the living room and kitchen.
One night, my father came home in a drunken fury. My brother, thankfully, was already in bed and I was watching television. I must have been seven or eight years old at the time. He and my mother began to argue, and my father started threatening her. It ended with him grabbing her arm and pulling her out of the recliner she was in… tipping the entire chair over in the process. I stood there and watched as he dragged her on the floor, ripping her shirt off, trying to pull her to the front door and screaming that she needed to leave. I had no idea what to do. I knew that if he had gotten her outside, I wouldn’t be able to get her back. I had to stop him.
So… in my nightgown, in the middle of the night, I ran out the front door. I ran and into the street and started yelling, running in circles. My hope was that my father would chase me and give my mother time to get up and compose herself. It worked.
The cops came that night. I remember sitting in my neighbor’s house with my brother, wrapped up in a blanket and seeing the flashing lights reflecting in their front window. My brother was confused. I knew exactly what was happening, even at seven.
Fast forward a few years. It was my thirteenth birthday. My mother had already divorced my father, and was taking me to visit him at the hospital. I remember walking into the wing of the hospital, thinking that no one really looked “sick”. I didn’t understand what was wrong with my dad. He seemed ok. I felt awkward. He gave me a Talkboy. Later I would find out in a therapy session that he had tried to commit suicide shortly after the divorce started, and the hospital wing he was in was the psych ward.
You’re probably wondering why this story has anything to do with the topic given. How could someone who had given me so many awful, tragic memories make my life worth living for?
I’ll tell you why. My father has overcome so many obstacles I have lost count. He pulled his life together, stopped drinking and got help. He is a completely different person than he was when I was a child. And while many people would find it hard to forgive their parent for “screwing up their childhood,” he was the only person growing up who understood me. Out of the two children he had, I was the one who ended up with many of the same psychological problems he suffers from. I was also diagnosed with asthma, which I got from him. And whenever I had a moment that I felt completely alone, my father would understand every single thought that went through my head.
All I would have to say is “Hey daddy” and he would know something was wrong. He just… gets me. And he has given me hope that no matter how bad your life becomes, you can always make a difference. It’s just a matter of how badly you want it.
My father is amazing. My father is the strongest person I’ve ever known. I am so proud to be able to say he’s my dad. And he has given me so much strength in my own life that I don’t even know what to do with it.
Thank you, daddy.