By Whitney.....
Today I was thinking about how perception can cloud our thoughts and how things we believe with all our hearts to be true, often are not. There were years that Daddy was drunk the majority of the time, drinking secretly all day and all night. He would sneak drinks at work and came home and continue to drink. I honestly do not remember him drinking in front of us nearly as much as I remember how he went outside to "lock the car" about thirty times every night, staggering a bit more each time he came back into the house. The more times he "locked the car", the more violent he became until he finally passed out. This was our nightly routine. He moved out when I was 12, and my mom found multiple bottles of whiskey in the walls of our garage as well as in many other hiding places. Perhaps drinking in secret made him feel less guilty, even though the minute the alcohol hit his bloodstream it was glaringly obvious what he was doing. Daddy was a staunch defender of himself and would become belligerent if questioned. He made it very clear that he was doing nothing wrong and couldn't understand why everyone was angry with him.
I remember going to AlaTeen and later to Adult Children of Alcoholics meetings and listening to people talk about their parents "disease". To be honest, it pissed me off. Daddy was choosing to drink; nobody else was holding that bottle to his lips. Nobody else was forcing him to spend money we didn't have on whiskey. Nobody else was having violent outbursts. It was all him. In my mind, calling his own actions a disease was a nothing more than making excuses for his behavior. My perception of Daddy for many years was of a man who cared more about his next drink than he did for his family; a man who could control his drinking if only he would. And that is where I was wrong. The truth is, after two years of being free of my own hurt feelings toward him, I am finally able to see that he was hurting too. And he did have a disease. Does this excuse his behavior? No. But does it give me some peace? Absolutely, but it also breaks my heart all over again, because I did not understand how sick he was until it was too late.
If I had any doubts about my change of heart they were removed when I read his writings and found this from 1992:
The time for dreaming is gone, the time for lying is over. I cannot control alcohol. I am allergic to alcohol. I am sure I have one more drunk left, but I know I have no more recoveries. There is no vaccine, no therapy that can cure this disease. We are born with it so in turn we feed and nurture it and in the end it engulfs us like cancer. But cancer patients die with some family member holding their hand. If we die from alcoholism, we die without pride, without dignity and 90% of the time alone in a hotel or on the street or in a car wreck. And we are always remembered as "He was a good old boy, BUT HE WAS AN ALCOHOLIC. So our road is long and hard and we have to try harder to prove that we are good people with a terminal disease and that we never do these things on purpose, we simply cannot control it.
During the few years that Daddy was sober he would often say, "I've not had a drink in a long time and I shouldn't have even one. It's like waking a sleeping tiger and every time you wake that tiger up, it is ever harder to get him back to sleep." I think the last year of his life was spent trying to lull that tiger back to sleep, but sadly, it had been awakened far too many times to be tamed. Daddy was right about how the end of his life would be too. He did die drunk and all alone and people did say he was a good man, BUT he was an alcoholic, like it made him less of a person. In reality, he was a good person with a terribly destructive disease and my heart is shattered because it took me so long to understand. I hope he knows that I get it now.
Today I was thinking about how perception can cloud our thoughts and how things we believe with all our hearts to be true, often are not. There were years that Daddy was drunk the majority of the time, drinking secretly all day and all night. He would sneak drinks at work and came home and continue to drink. I honestly do not remember him drinking in front of us nearly as much as I remember how he went outside to "lock the car" about thirty times every night, staggering a bit more each time he came back into the house. The more times he "locked the car", the more violent he became until he finally passed out. This was our nightly routine. He moved out when I was 12, and my mom found multiple bottles of whiskey in the walls of our garage as well as in many other hiding places. Perhaps drinking in secret made him feel less guilty, even though the minute the alcohol hit his bloodstream it was glaringly obvious what he was doing. Daddy was a staunch defender of himself and would become belligerent if questioned. He made it very clear that he was doing nothing wrong and couldn't understand why everyone was angry with him.
I remember going to AlaTeen and later to Adult Children of Alcoholics meetings and listening to people talk about their parents "disease". To be honest, it pissed me off. Daddy was choosing to drink; nobody else was holding that bottle to his lips. Nobody else was forcing him to spend money we didn't have on whiskey. Nobody else was having violent outbursts. It was all him. In my mind, calling his own actions a disease was a nothing more than making excuses for his behavior. My perception of Daddy for many years was of a man who cared more about his next drink than he did for his family; a man who could control his drinking if only he would. And that is where I was wrong. The truth is, after two years of being free of my own hurt feelings toward him, I am finally able to see that he was hurting too. And he did have a disease. Does this excuse his behavior? No. But does it give me some peace? Absolutely, but it also breaks my heart all over again, because I did not understand how sick he was until it was too late.
If I had any doubts about my change of heart they were removed when I read his writings and found this from 1992:
The time for dreaming is gone, the time for lying is over. I cannot control alcohol. I am allergic to alcohol. I am sure I have one more drunk left, but I know I have no more recoveries. There is no vaccine, no therapy that can cure this disease. We are born with it so in turn we feed and nurture it and in the end it engulfs us like cancer. But cancer patients die with some family member holding their hand. If we die from alcoholism, we die without pride, without dignity and 90% of the time alone in a hotel or on the street or in a car wreck. And we are always remembered as "He was a good old boy, BUT HE WAS AN ALCOHOLIC. So our road is long and hard and we have to try harder to prove that we are good people with a terminal disease and that we never do these things on purpose, we simply cannot control it.
During the few years that Daddy was sober he would often say, "I've not had a drink in a long time and I shouldn't have even one. It's like waking a sleeping tiger and every time you wake that tiger up, it is ever harder to get him back to sleep." I think the last year of his life was spent trying to lull that tiger back to sleep, but sadly, it had been awakened far too many times to be tamed. Daddy was right about how the end of his life would be too. He did die drunk and all alone and people did say he was a good man, BUT he was an alcoholic, like it made him less of a person. In reality, he was a good person with a terribly destructive disease and my heart is shattered because it took me so long to understand. I hope he knows that I get it now.