18-Year-Old Female from NJ
My Dad and Me
My father has struggled with addiction and alcoholism my entire life. I feel like I somehow knew and didn’t know at the same time when I was younger, I knew when he went to rehab, but I never knew what for.
I remember the first time he left. I was six years old, and he was staying with my grandparents (who I lived with my whole life) and me at a rental house. I would get up super early every morning, and so did my dad, so mornings we always spent together. I remember going downstairs to where he was staying, and he was walking out the door with a big duffel bag and some of his stuff. I asked him where he was going, and he told me he had to go away for a little while to get help and that he was trying to leave before I woke up so he wouldn’t upset me.
I know now that he was looking out for himself rather than me so that he didn’t have to see me cry when he left and hear me beg him to stay with me. I hugged him, and we both cried and cried, and I watched him go. I didn’t see him for years after that, and he was in Florida, homeless, and doing drugs and drinking.
He eventually found a Christian rehabilitation center where he stayed for a couple of years and thought he changed his life. I was eleven years old when he returned home. I remember he had a shaved head and gained a lot of weight, and felt like a stranger to me, but I was so happy to see him. He was in and out of my life after that for a long time. He had relapsed many times and spent some time throughout those years in inpatient hospitals and rehabs.
One time after he left a sober home he moved in with a girlfriend, which ended up not working out about a year and a half later. He has lived with my grandmother and I again for the past couple of months and has made an effort to change his life. Although I love to see him doing so good and am so proud of him, I cannot get attached to him like I want to because I never know what will happen, and I now avoid that heartbreak and trauma at all costs. Although things are not perfect, they are better now, but I don’t think the walls I have around me will be coming down anytime soon. -MW
